Adamecz, Anna;
Dickson, Matt;
Shure, Nikki;
(2025)
The labour market returns to graduation: reconciling administrative and survey data estimates.
Economics of Education Review
, 108
, Article 102701. 10.1016/j.econedurev.2025.102701.
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Abstract
This paper contributes to the literature on the earnings returns to university graduation. Recent evidence using administrative earnings data from England suggests a zero return to graduation for men and positive returns to graduation for women in annual earnings at age 26. We show that once hours worked are taken into account – typically not available in administrative tax data – returns to graduation in hourly wages are considerably smaller for women than returns in annual wages at this age. Graduate women work more hours than comparable non-graduate women; thus, not taking hours worked into account leads to overestimating returns to graduation for women by more than two-fold. This highlights the importance of using both survey and administrative data sources when estimating the returns to university graduation.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | The labour market returns to graduation: reconciling administrative and survey data estimates |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.econedurev.2025.102701 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2025.102701 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
| Keywords: | Social Sciences, Economics, Education & Educational Research, Business & Economics, Returns to graduation, University, Gender differences, Survey data, COLLEGE-EDUCATION, HEALTH |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Social Research Institute |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10216325 |
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