Quantile Regression Evidence From Sixteen Countries*

Abstract: Quantile regression estimates of returns to education are used to address the relation

between schooling and wage inequality. Empirical evidence for male workers from sixteen

countries for the mid-1990’s suggests a robust stylised fact: Returns to schooling are higher for

the more skilled individuals, conditional on their observable characteristics. This suggests that

schooling has a positive impact upon within-levels wage inequality. Factors such as

overeducation, ability-schooling interactions and school quality or different fields of study may

Keywords: Returns to Education, Wage Inequality, Quantile Regression

* This paper was written under the scope of the 15-country ‘PuRE - Public Funding and Private Returns to

Education’ European Commission TSER project. The results presented here are based on work done by country

teams headed by Mahmood Arai, Rita Asplund, Erling Barth, Giorgio Brunello, Colm Harmon, Joop Odink, Pedro

The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 outlines the quantile regression methodology. The following

education. This approach allows us to assess the differences in the schooling-related pay increment across

were as similar and thus comparable as possible.

A related issue concerns wage inequality. After witnessing major increases in the spread of wages since

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