Study title

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

This project studied the consequences of potentially misrecorded educational attainment for the estimation of returns to education. The focus was on the British educational system, in which educational investments are best summarised by categorical qualifications rather than continuous years of education.

The aims of the study were to explore the consequences of misclassification for returns to education from a general methodological point of view, and to explore empirically how the biases from measurement error and from omitted variables interact in the estimation of returns to educational qualifications in the UK.

Data for male respondents to the fifth wave (conducted in 1991) of the National Child Development Study (NCDS) (held at the UK Data Archive (UKDA) under GN 33004) were used to explore the interaction of measurement error and ability biases, and to assess the plausibility for the two biases to cancel out in the estimation of returns. See documentation for further details.


Main Topics:

The data files include variables covering type of school, educational tests, parents' social class and educational background, social class, occupational status, qualifications and measures to assess bias.