The authors investigate why the economic value of education stopped rising over the past ten years. They conclude that the most likely explanation seems to be that the booming economy of the late 1990s helped to increase the average earnings of all workers, including those at the low end of the skills distribution. (Contains 13 notes and 2…

Using data from the U.S. Decennial Census and the National Longitudinal Surveys, we find little evidence of differences in the return to schooling across racial and ethnic groups, even with attempts to control for ability and measurement error biases. While our point estimates are relatively similar across racial and ethnic groups, our conclusion…