Using the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth (NLSY), this article examines the influence of a region's industrial composition on the educational attainment of children raised by parents who do not have college degrees. The NLSY's geo-coded panel allows for precise measurements of the local industries that shaped the parents' employment…

Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and several alternative data sets containing proxies for industries' rates of technological change (including the Jorgenson productivity growth series, National Bureau of Economic Research productivity data, and the Census of Manufacturers series on investments in computers, the Research and…