Chasya Hoagland
Dissertation Papers
Perceived Ability’s Continuing Impact on Labor Market Outcomes
(Job Market Paper)
Abstract:
Self-perception of ability is a key driver of educational and career achievement. However, the role that self-perception plays in the pursuit of education and career advancement has been largely ignored in human capital investment literature due to their anchoring assumption that individuals are fully informed of their abilities and invest in education optimally to maximize their expected life-time utility. This paper explores the differential impact of self-perception, relative to “demonstrated ability”, on education choices and performance outcomes. Using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, I examine the impact of subject specific (math and English) self-perceived ability on investment in education and labor market outcomes, after controlling for test scores and grades. I also measure the impact of dissonance (when perception, test scores, and grades do not align) on these outcomes. I find that test scores, grades and perception are all positive and statistically significant indicators of the years of education attained, and dissonance between the measures does not appear to affect investment in education. However, perception outperforms test scores when predicting later wages. Interestingly, overestimating English ability (perception > English test scores) is punished, but overestimating math ability (perception > math test scores) is rewarded in terms of later wages. These findings challenge the standard assumption that individuals have perfect information about their ability, and points to the importance of understanding self-perception formation and their contribution in explaining future success.
"Do returns to education for Hispanic males vary by country of origin?"
with Claus Portner
Abstract
This paper examines variations in the returns to education experienced by Latino men in the United States, specifically the difference in returns by country of origin and citizenship status. Using 2000 Census data, we find that there are significant differences in the returns to education by country of origin for adult immigrants. This suggests that the differences in the returns to education by immigrant ethnicity is biased by the national composition on the immigrant population. We find that the country-level difference is much smaller for child immigrants. We also find that, while Hispanic identity continues to impact returns to education for later generations, there is no difference in returns by country of heritage.
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