Does Education Reduce Wage Inequality?.
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.
be driving this result.
Keywords: Returns to Education, Wage Inequality, Quantile Regression.
JEL codes: C29, J31, I21.
* 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.
Pereira, José Luis Raymond, Ali Skalli, Viktor Steiner, Panagiotis Tsakloglou, Ian Walker, Niels Westergaard-.
Nielsen, Rudolf Winter-Ebmer and Stefan Wolter. We also thank participants at several seminars and a referee and.
the associate editor for comments and suggestions. The usual disclaimer applies.
1 Corresponding author. Email: p.martins@warwick.ac.uk. Phone: +44/0 2476 528418. Fax: +44/0 2476 523032.
Address: Department of Economics, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK. Financial support from the.
European Commission, Fundazao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (SFRH/BD/934/2000) and the British Council is.
gratefully accredited.
2 Email: ppereira@uma.pt. Research support granted by Banco de Portugal and Fundazao para a Ciencia e a.
Tecnologia (POCTI/ECO/33089/99) is kindly acknowledged.
2.
1. Introduction.
Returns to education have been thoroughly analysed in the labour economics literature.
