CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 276Intergenerational and Educational Inequality StudiesHigher Education Research StudiesSchool Choice and Performance

The Evidence on Credit Constraints in Post-Secondary Schooling

Open access
Carneiro, Pedro, Heckman, James·2002·National Bureau of Economic Research
DOI 10.3386/w9055
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

This paper examines the family income --college enrollment relationship and the evidence on credit constraints in post-secondary schooling.We distinguish short-run liquidity constraints from the long-term factors that promote cognitive and noncognitive ability.Long-run factors crystallized in ability are the major determinants of the family income --schooling relationship, although there is some evidence that up to 4% of the total U.S. population is credit constrained in a short-run sense.Evidence that IV estimates of the returns to schooling exceed OLS estimates is sometimes claimed to support the existence of substantial credit constraints.This argument is critically examined.

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.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.3386/w9055

Cites

1 of 1 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

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.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • If families face credit constraints or are uncertain about future incomes, current and past income may have larger effects on investment decisions and test scores than does future income, producing direct effects of {Y1,...,YT} on e.

    “If families face credit constraints or are uncertain about future incomes, current and past income may have larger effects on investment decisions and test scores than does future income, producing direct effects of {Y 1 , …, Y T } on e”

    From Permanent Income and the Black-White Test Score Gap (2013) · cites this paper as Carneiro and Heckman, 2002

    The Introduction and Section 2 say that family resources during childhood can shape skills and college readiness, and discuss credit constraints as a possible influence on education decisions. Our copy does not make the claimed comparison with future income, address uncertainty about future income in this account, or state the proposed direct effects of {Y1,…,YT} on e. (LLM, conf=0.78)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 30

  1. Altonji, J. and T. Dunn (1996). "The Effects of Family Characteristics on the Return to Education," Review of Economics and Statistics 78 (4): 692-704.
  2. Becker, G. (1975), "Human Capital and The Personal Distribution of Income: An Analytic Approach" (W. S. Woytinski Lecture), In Human Capital, second edition, New York: Columbia University Press.
  3. Blossfeld, H. and Y. Shavit (1993). Persistent Inequality: Changing Educational Attainment in Thirteen Coun- tries, Boulder, Co: Westview Press.
  4. Cameron, S. and Heckman, J. (1998). "Life Cycle Schooling and Dynamic Selection Bias: Models and Evidence for Five Cohorts of American Males," Journal of Political Economy, 106(2): 262-333.
  5. _____ (1999). "Can Tuition Policy Combat Rising Wage Inequality?" In M. Kosters, ed., Financing College Tuition: Government Policies and Educational Priorities. Washington: American Enterprise Institute Press. _____ (2001). "The Dynamics of Educational Attainment for Black, Hispanic, and White Males." Journal of Political Economy, 109: 455-99.
  6. _____ (1999). "The Causal Effect of Education on Earnings" in Ashenfelter, O. and Card, D. eds., Handbook of Labor Economics, Vol 3A. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science, North-Holland, pp.1801-63.
  7. ____ (2001). "Estimating the Return to Schooling: Progress on Some Persistent Econometric Problems." Econometrica, 69(5): 1127-60.
  8. Carneiro, P., K. Hansen and J. Heckman (2001a). "Educational Attainment and Labor Market Outcomes: Estimating Distributions of the Returns to Educational Interventions," unpublished paper presented as Klein Lecture, University of Pennsylvania, September 2001; First Draft presented at Midwest Econometrics Group (MEG), October, 2000, forthcoming, International Economic Review, 2002.
  9. Carneiro, P. K. Hansen and J. Heckman. (2001b). "Removing the Veil of Ignorance Assessing The Distributional Impacts of Social Policies", NBER Working Paper No. 8840, and forthcoming, Swedish Economic Policy Review.
  10. Carneiro, P., J. Heckman and D. Manoli (2002), "Human Capital Policy", In J. Heckman and A. Krueger, Inequality in America: What Role for Human Capital Policies. Cambridge: MIT Press, forthcoming 2003.
  11. Carneiro, P., J. Heckman and E. Vytlacil (2001). "Estimating the Rate of Return to Education When It Varies Among Individuals." Paper presented as the Economic Journal Lecture at the Royal Economic Society meeting, Durham, England, April 2001. Also presented as the Review of Economics and Statistics Lecture, Harvard Univ., April 2001.
  12. Cawley, J., J. Heckman and E. Vytlacil (2000). "Understanding the Role of Cognitive Ability in Accounting for the Recent Rise in the Return to Education" In K. Arrow, S. Bowles, S. Durlauf, eds., Meritocracy and Economic Inequality. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  13. Cossa, R. (2000), "Determinants of school attainment in Argentina: An empirical analysis with extensions to policy evaluation", unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of Chicago.
  14. Dynarski, S. (2000). "Hope for Whom? Financial Aid for the Middle Class and Its Impact on College Attendance," National Tax Journal, 53: 629-62. _____ (2001). "Does Aid Matter? Measuring the Effects of Student Aid on College Attendance and Comple- tion," Working paper, Harvard University.
  15. Griliches, Z. (1977). "Estimating the Returns to Schooling: Some Econometric Problems," Econometrica, 45(1): 1-22.
  16. Hansen, K., J. Heckman and K. Mullen (2002). "The Effect of Schooling and Ability on Achievement Test Scores," forthcoming, Journal of Econometrics.
  17. Heckman, J. (1995), "Lessons from the Bell Curve", Journal of Political Economy, 103(5): 1091-1120.
  18. Heckman, J. (2000). "Policies to Foster Human Capital." Research in Economics, 54(1): 3-56. _____ (2001). "Micro Data, Heterogeneity, and the Evaluation of Public Policy: Nobel Lecture," Journal of Political Economy, 109(4): 673-748.
  19. Heckman, J., L. Lochner and C. Taber. (1998) "Explaining Rising Wage Inequality: Explorations with a Dynamic General Equilibrium Model." Review of Economic Dynamics,1: 1-58.
  20. Heckman, J., and R. Robb. (1986). "Alternative Methods for Solving the Problem of Selection Bias in Evaluating the Impact of Treatment on Outcomes" in Drawing Inferences from Self-Selected Samples, H. Wainer, ed., New York: Springer-Verlag. (Reprinted by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, New Jersey, 2001.)
  21. Heckman, J. and G. Sedlacek. (1985). "Heterogeneity, Aggregation, and Market Wage Functions: An Empirical Model of Self-selection in the Labor Market." Journal of Political Economy 93(6). (December 1985): 1077-1125.
  22. _____. (1990). "Self-selection and the Distribution of Hourly Wages." Journal of Labor Economics 8(1) (Part 2, January 1990): S329-63
  23. Hill, M. (1992), The Panel Study of Income Dynamics: A User's Guide, Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.
  24. Kane, T. (1994). "College Entry by Blacks since 1970: The Role of College Costs, Family Background, and the Returns to Education," The Journal of Political Economy, 102(5): 878-911.
  25. _____ (1996), "College Costs, Borrowing Constraints and the Timing of College Entry" Eastern Economic Journal 22(2): 181-194.
  26. _____ (1999), The Price of Admission: Rethinking How Americans Pay for College Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. _____ (2001), "College-Going and Inequality: A Literature Review", Working Paper. Russell Sage Founda- tion.
  27. Keane, M. and Wolpin, K. (2001). "The Effect of Parental Transfers and Borrowing Constraints on Educational Attainment," International Economic Review, 42(4): 1051-1103.
  28. Krueger, A. (2002), "Inequality: Too Much of a Good Thing,", In J. Heckman and A. Krueger, Inequality in America: What Role for Human Capital Policies. Cambridge: MIT Press, forthcoming 2003.
  29. Orfield, G. (1992). "Money, Equity, and College Access," Harvard Educational Review, 2(3): 337-372.
  30. Sattinger, M. (1978). "Comparative Advantage in Individuals", Review of Economics and Statistics, 60(2): 259- 267.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Carneiro, P., & Heckman, J.
Affiliations
National Bureau of Economic Research (US)
ORCID
Venue
National Bureau of Economic Research
Publisher
National Bureau of Economic Research
Published
2002-07
DOI
10.3386/w9055
OpenAlex
W2040998355
Cited by
276
References
1
Citations by year
2026: 1 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 10 · 2020: 16 · 2019: 7 · 2018: 15 · 2017: 13 · 2016: 10 · 2015: 19 · 2014: 22 · 2013: 13 · 2012: 15
Type
report
Language
en
Open access
Locations
National Bureau of Economic Research (publishedVersion)
Funders
  • National Science Foundation
  • American Bar Foundation
  • Royal Economic Society
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Intergenerational and Educational Inequality Studies
  • Social Sciences › Education › Higher Education Research Studies
  • Social Sciences › Education › School Choice and Performance
Keywords
credit constraints, college enrollment, returns to education, household income, liquidity constraints, cognitive ability, non-cognitive skills

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