Drawing on the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we document a startling empirical pattern: the career earnings premium from a four-year college degree (relative to a high school diploma) for persons from low-income backgrounds is considerably less than it is for those from higher-income...

This paper examines the idea that the increasing return to college is reducing intergenerational mobility by differentially impacting the investments in children by parents across education groups. A larger return to college will create stronger incentives to invest in children by parents with...

This article investigates the relationships between ethnicity, class, and prospects of educational success. For this purpose, we compared the effects of family socio-economic characteristics on children's educational attainment in four ethno-religious groups in Israel (Muslim, Christian, and...

This paper documents differences across higher-education courses in the coverage of frontier knowledge. Comparing the text of 1.7M syllabi and 20M academic articles, we construct the "education-innovation gap," a syllabus's relative proximity to old and new knowledge. We show that courses differ...

We investigate the role played by the social environment in the development of gender differences in competitiveness and earnings expectations. First, we find that the gender gap in competitiveness and earnings expectations is more pronounced among adolescents with low socioeconomic status...

We investigate the role played by the social environment in the development of gender differences in competitiveness and earnings expectations. First, we find that the gender gap in competitiveness and earnings expectations is more pronounced among adolescents with low socioeconomic status...

Due to the large social costs of juvenile crime, policymakers have long been concerned about its causes. In the 2009-10 school year, the State of Hawaii responded to fiscal strains by furloughing all school teachers employed by the Department of Education and cancelling class for seventeen...