Educational Attainment and Cohort Size
Journal of Labor Economics
1988
"We argue that the postwar baby boom [in the United States] caused substantial fluctuations in both the economic rewards to education and educational attainment over the last 3 decades. If substitutability between young and old workers diminishes with education, the present value of lifetime earnings for a boom cohort is depressed more for highly educated workers, reducing incentives for educational attainment. The opposite is true for pre- and postboom cohorts. The diminishing substitutability hypothesis explains the declines in both the returns to college and college completion rates in the 1970s and predicts a substantial increase in educational attainment for postboomers."
- DOI
- 10.1086/298186
- Volume
- 6 (3)
- Pages
- 330-361
- Language
- en
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- BibTeX
- Sources
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