[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/hastef/0430.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

On the Adjusted Rate of Return to Women fs University Education: A Preliminary Study of OECD Countries

Author

Listed:
Abstract
It is a well known fact that on average, women in all countries earn less than men. Although less pronounced among OECD countries, the fact remains that the gender gap in earnings still persists to a significant degree. Less well known is that the rate of return (ROR) to university education is larger for women than men among most OECD countries. This higher ROR may partly explain the general pattern that there are more women than men enrolled in universities among these countries. This paper introduces an eadjusted f rate of return to women fs university education. The adjusted ROR is estimated by comparing the earnings of female university graduates to the earnings of male high school graduates. Results from a comparison of seventeen OECD countries reveal that the overall average of the adjusted ROR is actually negative: On average, female university graduates earn less than male high school graduates. My analysis also finds that women fs enrolment in university education can be better explained by the adjusted than the true ROR. In other words, women fs economic incentives for pursuing university education is shaped by both the magnitude of the premium obtained from university education, and the gender gap in earnings. These findings present a classic case in which theory departs from practice. Although the true ROR may stand on firmer ground in theory, in practice, women are more responsive to the adjusted ROR which reveals a more realistic scenario of where women stand relative to men. The adjusted ROR may be a helpful measure in policy analysis, both in broadening the perspectives of ROR estimations, and in future discussions which involve gender equality in education and labour market outcomes. Because of the limitations of data available in international comparisons, the research is still in its rudimentary stages. The full paper first guides the reader through interpretations and implications of the basic statistics. This section is followed by a theoretical discussion of the adjusted ROR, estimations of the adjusted ROR using OECD statistics, a more detailed analysis of the concept using Japan as an illustrative case, and a discussion concerning the relationship between the adjusted ROR and women fs enrolment in university education. The paper concludes by exploring possibilities for future research in further developing the concept of the adjusted ROR.

Suggested Citation

  • Ono, Hiroshi, 2001. "On the Adjusted Rate of Return to Women fs University Education: A Preliminary Study of OECD Countries," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 0430, Stockholm School of Economics, revised 01 Aug 2001.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:hastef:0430
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    human capital; returns to education; gender inequality;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I22 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Educational Finance; Financial Aid
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • N30 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - General, International, or Comparative

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:hastef:0430. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Helena Lundin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/erhhsse.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.