A new paper by James Heckman claims to have found that “account[ing] for selection bias and sorting on gains … there are substantial non-market benefits to education,”—chiefly lower probability of incarceration and use of welfare—and that these benefits “appear to be larger for low-ability individuals.”
James J. Heckman, John Eric Humphries, Gregory Veramendi, “The Non-Market Benefits of Education and Ability,” National Bureau of Economic Research, October, 2017. https://hceconomics.uchicago.edu/research/working-paper/non-market-benefits-education-and-ability