The DOI matches its Crossref record.
Omitted-Ability Bias and the Increase in the Return to Schooling
Abstract
Over the 1980s, there were sharp increases in the return to schooling estimated with conventional wage regressions. We explore whether the relationship between ability and schooling changed over this period in ways that would have increased the schooling coefficient in these regressions. Our empirical results reject the hypothesis that an increase in the bias of the schooling coefficient, due to a change in the relationship between ability and schooling, has contributed to observed increases in the return to schooling. We also find that the increase in the schooling return has occurred for workers with relatively high levels of academic ability.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cited by
EDUCATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP SELECTION AND PERFORMANCE: A REVIEW OF THE EMPIRICAL LITERATURE
Van Der Sluis, J., Van Praag, M., & Vijverberg, W. (2008) · Journal of Economic Surveys · doi:10.1111/j.1467-6419.2008.00550.x · Cited by 616
The Failure of Input-based Schooling Policies
Hanushek, E. (2002) · National Bureau of Economic Research · doi:10.3386/w9040 · Cited by 270
The Effect of Schooling on Cognitive Skills
Carlsson, M., Dahl, G. B., Öckert, B., & Rooth, D.-O. (2015) · Review of Economics and Statistics · doi:10.1162/rest_a_00501 · Cited by 260
In-school work experience and the returns to schooling
Light, A. (2001) · Journal of Labor Economics · doi:10.1086/209980 · Cited by 192
Verbal ability and socioeconomic success: A trend analysis
Hauser, R. M., & Huang, M.-H. (1997) · Social Science Research · doi:10.1006/ssre.1997.0604 · Cited by 117
Metadata
- Authors
- Blackburn, M. L., & Neumark, D.
- Venue
- Journal of Labor Economics
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Published
- 1993-07
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 521-544
- ISSN
- 0734-306X (ISSN-L)
- 1537-5307
- OpenAlex
- W2060487463
- Cited by
- 196
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 11.78
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Omitted-Ability Bias and the Increase in the Return to Schooling. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1086/298306
- The paper
- Blackburn, M. L., & Neumark, D. (1993). Omitted-Ability Bias and the Increase in the Return to Schooling. Journal of Labor Economics. https://doi.org/10.1086/298306
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
