Priceless: The Nonpecuniary Benefits of Schooling

Journal of Economic Perspectives - Tập 25 Số 1 - Trang 159-184 - 2011
Philip Oreopoulos1, Kjell G. Salvanes2
1Associate Professor of Economics, University of Toronto, and Research Scholar, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, both in Toronto, Canada and Faculty Research Fellow, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
2Professor of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, Bergen, Norway; International Research fellow, Center for the Economics of Education, London School of Economics, London, United Kingdom, and Research Fellow, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn, Germany.

Tóm tắt

Increasing wealth provides key motivation for students to forgo earnings and struggle through exams. But, as we argue in this paper, schooling generates many experiences and affects many dimensions of skill that, in turn, affect central aspects of individuals' lives. Schooling not only affects income, but also the degree to which one enjoys work, as well as one's likelihood of being unemployed. It leads individuals to make better decisions about health, marriage, and parenting. It also improves patience, making individuals more goal-oriented and less likely to engage in risky behavior. Schooling improves trust and social interaction, and may offer substantial consumption value to some students. We discuss various mechanisms to explain how these relationships may occur independent of wealth effects and present evidence that nonpecuniary returns to schooling are at least as large as pecuniary ones. Ironically, one explanation why some early school leavers miss out on these high returns is that they lack the very same decision-making skills that more schooling would help improve.

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Journal of Economic Perspectives

Tập 25 Số 1

159-184

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