This paper explores whether conditions during early childhood affect the productivity of later human capital investments. We use Romanian administrative data to ask if the benefit of access to better schools is larger for children who experienced better family environments because their parents...

When students are tracked into vocational and academic secondary schools, access to higher education is usually restricted to those who completed an academic track. Postponing such tracking may increase university attendance among disadvantaged students if additional time in school enables them...

This article surveys the existing evidence on the return to a college education and offers new calculations based on recent data. We focus on an individual’s decision and outline the standard conceptual framework used by economists to analyze investments in education. We then compare...