Volume 13, Number 3 (Summer) 1978
Bartlett, Susan. 1978. "Education, Experience, and Wage Inequality: 1939-1969." Journal of Human Resources 13(3):349-365.
This study uses Census data to estimate changes in the effects of education and work experience on annual income for males between 1939 and 1969. The benefits of an additional year of schooling fell by approximately 31 percent between 1939 and 1949 but were virtually stable between 1949 and 1969. The pattern of change in the effects of work experience is similar. Changes in the industrial mix do not adequately explain these changes in returns to schooling and experience. The analysis suggests that changes in returns to education and experience from 1939 to 1949 were mainly due to changes in the unemployment rate.
The author is Research Associate, Center for the Study of Public Policy, Cambridge, Mass. The research reported in this article was supported by the National Institute of Education and the Employment and Training Administration, U.S. Department of Labor, under Grant #NIE-G-74-0077 to the Center for the Study of Public Policy. The views expressed are entirely my own. I am indebted to Marshall Goldman, James Medoff, and to Christopher Jencks, Peter Mueser, and other project members for critical comments and advice on several earlier drafts.
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