Edward Conard

Top Ten New York Times Bestselling Author

  • “Unintended Consequences is far smarter and more thought-provoking than most economics written for the general public” - Greg Mankiw, Harvard University, Former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors
  • “…a comprehensive explanation of the modern economy.” - Julian Robertson, Founder, Tiger Management
  • “Unintended Consequences provides a provocative interpretation of the causes of the global financial crisis and the policies needed to return to rapid growth. Whether you agree or not, this analysis is well worth reading.” - Nouriel Roubini, New York University; Chairman, Roubini Global Economics
  • “…a very valuable contribution.” - Larry Summers, former Secretary of the Treasury and director of the National Economic Council, president emeritus, Harvard University
  • “…reminds us that inequality sends a signal of what society lacks most, in America’s case, entrepreneurship and risk taking.” - Lawrence Lindsey, CEO, The Lindsey Group, former Director of the National Economic Council
  • “…a must-read for serious students of economic policy.” - Glenn Hubbard, Dean, Columbia Business School, and former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers
  • “…reminds us that inequality sends a signal of what society lacks most, in America’s case, entrepreneurship and risk taking.” - Lawrence Lindsey, CEO, The Lindsey Group, former Director of the National Economic Council
  • “…a very valuable contribution.” - Larry Summers, former Secretary of the Treasury and director of the National Economic Council, president emeritus, Harvard University
  • “Unintended Consequences offers deep and well-argued analyses on almost every issue.” - The New York Times
  • “Unintended Consequences should be read by anyone who takes for granted the superiority of progressive taxation and has not thought carefully about the trade-offs involved.” - The New Republic
  • “A full-throated defense of economic dynamism.” - The Wall Street Journal
  • “There are an amazing number of good ideas and interesting points made in Unintended Consequences. The thinking underlying it, and the obvious depth of understanding of the author, are very impressive.” - Steven Levitt, coauthor of Freakonomics; 2004 John Bates Clark Medal
Upside of Inequality Oxford Unintended Consequences

AI Summary. The authors estimate that students assigned teachers who inflate average grades have lower future test scores, high school graduation, college enrollment, and earnings, with a one standard deviation increase in a teacher's average grade inflation reducing the present value of students' lifetime earnings by $213,872. Inflating passing grades instead raises graduation with limited long-run effects.

Jeffrey Denning, Rachel Nesbit, Nolan Pope and Merrill Warnick National Bureau of Economic Research
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Data from Los Angeles and Maryland linking high school, postsecondary, and earnings records suggest that one class-year with a teacher with 1 SD higher mean grade inflation reduces the PDV of their students’ lifetime earnings by ~$213,872.

How does teacher grade inflation affect students' long-term outcomes and earnings?

Core argument: The authors estimate that assignment to a teacher with one standard deviation higher average grade inflation reduces the present discounted value of students' lifetime earnings by $213,872 per year.

We develop two teacher-level measures of grade inflation: one measuring average grade inflation (the year-specific teacher fixed effect showing the teacher’s average contribution to grades after controlling for the student's contemporaneous performance in the focal subject as measured by the corresponding subject test score as well as prior test scores, prior grades, and other background characteristics), and another measuring a teacher's propensity to give a passing grade [which affects primarily students near the bottom of the distribution]. A [separate] cognitive value-added measure [included in the regressions] is a teacher fixed effect capturing how much a teacher raises students' standardized test scores relative to what would be predicted from the students' prior test scores and background characteristics. Grade-inflating teachers have moderately lower cognitive value-added and slightly higher noncognitive value-added. The two [grade-inflation] measures differentially impact students' long-term outcomes. Being assigned a higher average grade inflating teacher reduces a student's future test scores, the likelihood of graduating from high school, college enrollment, and ultimately earnings. A teacher with one standard deviation higher average grade inflation reduces the present discounted value [PDV] of lifetime earnings of their students by $213,872 per year.  In contrast, passing grade inflation reduces the likelihood of being held back and increases high school graduation, with limited long-run effects. [Figure 7 in the gallery].

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. The authors estimate that assignment to a teacher with one standard deviation higher average grade inflation reduces the present discounted value of students' lifetime earnings by $213,872 per year.
  2. Higher average grade inflation by teachers lowers students' future test scores, high school graduation likelihood, college enrollment, and earnings, while passing-grade inflation instead reduces grade retention and raises high school graduation with limited long-run effects.
  3. Grade-inflating teachers have moderately lower cognitive value-added, measured as a teacher's contribution to standardized test scores beyond what students' prior scores and background characteristics predict, and slightly higher noncognitive value-added.

Related Articles:

  • Steeper At The Top: Cognitive Ability and Earnings in Finland and Norway — Administrative data on over 350,000 men each in Finland and Norway show a convex relationship between earnings rank and cognitive ability measured by military conscription tests: top-percentile earners score about 1 standard deviation above median earners, who score about 0.5 above bottom-percentile earners. The lowest scores are almost absent among top earners.
  • Never Enough: Dynamic Status Incentives in Organizations — Data on over 5,000 German fighter pilots show performance rose markedly as pilots approached the eligibility threshold for each medal in a tiered awards ladder and slumped immediately after receiving it, with the effect repeating at each successive rung. The authors estimate the ladder added 3,000–5,000 aerial victories, 5–10% of the total.
  • Killer Incentives: Status Competition and Pilot Performance during World War II — Analysis of over 5,000 German World War II fighter pilots finds that public peer recognition was associated with higher victory scores among skilled pilots without higher mortality, while average pilots gained little in victories but died at higher rates. The authors conclude status-based awards can have uneven effects in high-risk settings.

AI Summary. An analysis by the nonprofit Class Action finds that freshman enrollment of underrepresented minority students rose 8% at public flagship universities, while at the nation's 50 most selective schools black freshman enrollment fell 27% and Latino enrollment fell 10%. At the 12 "Ivy Plus" schools, black freshman enrollment fell two percentage points, a 25% drop in share.

Stephanie Saul New York Times
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After 2023’s Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, black and Hispanic enrollment at the 50 most competitive colleges and universities declined 27 and 10%, respectively, while “flagship” state universities enrolled 8% more underrepresented minorities.

How are minority enrollment shifts differing between selective and public universities?

Core argument: Black freshman enrollment fell 27% and Latino enrollment fell 10% at the nation's 50 most selective schools, according to an analysis by the nonprofit Class Action.

Overall, freshman enrollment of underrepresented minority groups increased by 8% at public flagship universities. The analysis, by a nonprofit organization, Class Action, concludes that those schools were among institutions that benefited as a result of higher rejection rates for black and Hispanic students at the nation’s 50 most selective schools. At those top 50 schools, black freshman enrollment was down by 27% and Latino enrollment down by 10%. Many four-year private schools with less selective admission requirements than the Ivy League also saw big increases. The data show a significant impact on the demographics of the nation’s very top schools. Black freshman enrollment declined by two percentage points at the 12 schools known as the Ivy Plus, which includes the eight schools in the Ivy League as well as Duke, Stanford, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago. But that represented a 25% drop in the share of back students in the freshman class, the report noted.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. Black freshman enrollment fell 27% and Latino enrollment fell 10% at the nation's 50 most selective schools, according to an analysis by the nonprofit Class Action.
  2. Freshman enrollment of underrepresented minority groups rose 8% at public flagship universities, which Class Action concludes benefited from higher rejection rates for black and Hispanic students at the most selective schools.
  3. Black freshman enrollment declined by two percentage points at the 12 Ivy Plus schools — the eight Ivy League institutions plus Duke, Stanford, MIT and the University of Chicago — a 25% drop in their share of the freshman class.

Related Articles:

  • Diversifying Society’s Leaders? The Determinants and Causal Effects of Admission to Highly Selective Private Colleges — Children from top-1% families are more than 2x as likely as middle-class students with comparable SAT/ACT scores to attend an Ivy-Plus college, with two-thirds of the gap attributable to higher admissions rates. The authors attribute this advantage to legacy preferences, weight on non-academic credentials, and athlete recruitment.
  • The Long-Run Impacts of Banning Affirmative Action in US Higher Education — State-level bans on affirmative action in US higher education are estimated to reduce under-represented minority women's college degree completion, earnings, and employment relative to non-Hispanic White women, driven largely by effects on Hispanic women, widening racial and ethnic gaps among women. Effects on under-represented minority men are more ambiguous and vary across states.
  • Military Officer Quality in the All-Volunteer Force — The authors find a steady decline in U.S. Marine Corps officers' General Classification Test scores, which is statistically associated with the expansion of college attendance and explains 96% of the measured change. They also find a positive association between African American officers and mean test scores, arguing affirmative action has not lowered officer quality.

AI Summary. Adjusting for time spent, tuition costs, and completion probability drastically reduces the estimated return on a master's degree, leaving master's programs with the lowest adjusted return among degree types. Averages mask wide variation: business master's degrees show a negative return on average, while top programs' graduates can earn millions more.

Mark Schneider American Enterprise Institute
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Mark Schneider @AEIecon reviews the ROI of master’s degree programs and finds “vast differences among fields of study and among programs in the same field of study.” He argues that policymakers need to provide accurate ROI metrics to applicants.

Do master's degrees pay off for students after accounting for costs?

Core argument: Adjusting lifetime earnings gains for time spent in school, the cost of the degree, and the probability of completion drastically reduces the return to master's students and places master's degrees last on adjusted ROI.

The absolute increase in lifetime earnings is the average gain in income between students completing the degree and the counterfactual earnings of similarly situated students without the degree. Incorporating the time spent getting a master’s degree, the cost of obtaining the degree, and the probability of completing a program generates an “adjusted ROI.” Taking these costs into account drastically reduces the return to the student—and puts the return for master’s degrees dead last. [But] Averages Hide Lots of Information. Business is the single largest field of study for master’s students; but, on average, business master’s degrees have a negative ROI. But graduates from the top performing programs—including Dartmouth, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Pennsylvania— can earn millions more than graduates from other business programs. Students who choose badly could experience a negative ROI of over $1 million. Even in computer science, the field with the highest overall ROI, graduates from some programs experienced negative ROIs.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. Adjusting lifetime earnings gains for time spent in school, the cost of the degree, and the probability of completion drastically reduces the return to master's students and places master's degrees last on adjusted ROI.
  2. Business, the single largest field of study for master's students, has a negative ROI on average, while graduates of top-performing programs at Dartmouth, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania can earn millions more than graduates of other business programs.
  3. Students who choose badly could experience a negative ROI of over $1 million, and even in computer science, the field with the highest overall ROI, graduates of some programs experienced negative ROIs.

Related Articles:

  • Why Do Wages Grow Faster for Educated Workers? — College graduates sort into professional, non-routine occupations where wages rise much more with job tenure, and the author estimates this occupational sorting explains at least half of the life-cycle growth in the college wage premium. That premium is estimated at 22% at age 26, 49% at age 40, and 56% at age 60.
  • Diversifying Society’s Leaders? The Determinants and Causal Effects of Admission to Highly Selective Private Colleges — Children from top-1% families are more than 2x as likely as middle-class students with comparable SAT/ACT scores to attend an Ivy-Plus college, with two-thirds of the gap attributable to higher admissions rates. The authors attribute this advantage to legacy preferences, weight on non-academic credentials, and athlete recruitment.
  • Multidimensional Human Capital and the Wage Structure — The wage return to cognitive skills has declined, from about 10% higher hourly wages per standard deviation of test score in the 1980s and early 1990s to 4.5% in the 2000s and early 2010s, while returns to a bachelor's degree rose. Social skill-intensive occupations grew as a share of US jobs, with faster real wage growth.

AI Summary. Living in an area with more college graduates is associated with lower mortality even after accounting for individuals' own education, and more than half of that correlation can be explained by area differences in smoking and obesity rates. The authors find evidence for both regulatory policies such as workplace smoking bans and peer effects about the harms of smoking.

Jacob Bor, David Cutler, Edward Glaeser and Ljubica Ristovska National Bureau of Economic Research
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Bor, @Cutler_econ, Glaeser, and @lj_ristovska find a strong negative correlation between the % of college graduates in an area and all-cause mortality, even after controlling for individual education.

Does living around college graduates lengthen life?

Core argument: The authors find a strong, robust relationship between area human capital and mortality that persists after controlling for individual education, with more than half the correlation explained by differences in smoking and obesity rates across areas.

[There is] a strong and robust relationship between area human capital and mortality, even after controlling for individual education. More than half of the correlation between area human capital and mortality can be explained by differences in smoking rates and obesity rates across areas, and that [these effects are] strong even after controlling for individual education. More than half of the correlation between area human capital and mortality can be explained by differences in smoking rates and obesity rates across areas. We find empirical evidence for [both] regulatory policies such as workplace smoking bans, and peer effects about the harms of smoking. Health-related behaviors are particularly sensitive to human capital spillovers among younger individuals, implicating the role of changing social norms around smoking and obesity across generations in the widening geographic gaps in health between high and low human capital areas.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. The authors find a strong, robust relationship between area human capital and mortality that persists after controlling for individual education, with more than half the correlation explained by differences in smoking and obesity rates across areas.
  2. The authors find empirical evidence for both regulatory policies, such as workplace smoking bans, and peer effects regarding the harms of smoking.
  3. Health-related behaviors are particularly sensitive to human capital spillovers among younger individuals, implicating changing social norms around smoking and obesity across generations in the widening geographic health gaps between high and low human capital areas.

Related Articles:

  • Comments On: “Accounting For the Widening Mortality Gap Between American Adults With and Without a BA” By Anne Case and Angus Deaton — Selection plausibly accounts for most or all of the widening mortality gap between US adults with and without a bachelor's degree: high school achievement measures have not risen since the early 1970s while the share earning degrees rose, and national youth survey data show non-graduates increasingly negatively selected on aptitude scores.
  • Accounting for the Widening Mortality Gap Between American Adults With and Without a BA — The mortality gap between American adults with and without a four-year college degree widened across three periods—falling mortality for both with larger gains for graduates, then diverging, then rising faster for the less educated during the pandemic—reaching an 8.5-year difference in adult life expectancy. Americans with a degree, treated as a separate country, would rank just below Japan.
  • How Disadvantage Became Deadly in America — The author calculates that the average age of death among the shortest-lived 10% of Americans is 36, versus 55 in the Netherlands and 57 in Sweden, after falling by about eight years over the past decade. Wealthy Americans live equally long regardless of local opioid use and gun violence, while poor Americans in those areas live far shorter lives.

AI Summary. Selection plausibly accounts for most or all of the widening mortality gap between US adults with and without a bachelor's degree: high school achievement measures have not risen since the early 1970s while the share earning degrees rose, and national youth survey data show non-graduates increasingly negatively selected on aptitude scores.

Caroline Hoxby Brookings Papers On Economic Activity
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Caroline Hoxby argues that Anne Case and Angus Deaton’s recent findings on the divergence btw Americans with a BA and those without is largely driven by a compositional shift that has occurred as more Americans have graduated college.

Does selection explain the widening mortality gap by education?

Core argument: Selection is plausibly responsible for most or even all of the widening mortality gap between American adults with and without a BA, according to this commentary on Anne Case and Angus Deaton's work.

I find it entirely plausible that selection accounts for most or even all of the widening mortality gap. Measures of achievement have not risen among 12 graders and other high school students for essentially the entire period since we started to measure them in a consistent way (i.e. since the early 1970s). However, the share who obtain a BA degree has increased quite dramatically over the same period. An NLSY [National Longitudinal Survey Youth] exercise shows that non-BAs are increasingly negatively selected. A comparison between the NLSY79 (1979) and the NLSY97 (1997) shows that the distribution of ASVAB [Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery] percentiles of non-BAs is shifted to the left for 97 vis-a-vis 79.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. Selection is plausibly responsible for most or even all of the widening mortality gap between American adults with and without a BA, according to this commentary on Anne Case and Angus Deaton's work.
  2. Comparing the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth cohorts of 1979 and 1997, the distribution of ASVAB percentiles among adults without a BA is shifted leftward for 1997, suggesting non-BAs are increasingly negatively selected.
  3. Measures of achievement among 12th graders and other high school students have not risen since consistent measurement began in the early 1970s, while the share obtaining a BA degree rose dramatically over the same period.

Related Articles:

  • Accounting for the Widening Mortality Gap Between American Adults With and Without a BA — The mortality gap between American adults with and without a four-year college degree widened across three periods—falling mortality for both with larger gains for graduates, then diverging, then rising faster for the less educated during the pandemic—reaching an 8.5-year difference in adult life expectancy. Americans with a degree, treated as a separate country, would rank just below Japan.
  • Why Are Americans Dying So Young? — One in 25 American five-year-olds is projected not to reach age 40, making deaths among the young a defining feature of US mortality. These deaths are overwhelmingly caused by external factors such as drug overdoses, gun violence, and dangerous driving.
  • Who Won the Cold War? Part II — Americans born around 1990 had higher death rates in their 20s than peers in affluent allied countries, and the gap widened across young adulthood. By age 29, US mortality for that cohort was about 2x New Zealand's, 2.5x France's, 3x Japan's, and 4x Italy's or Spain's.

AI Summary. The mortality gap between American adults with and without a four-year college degree widened across three periods—falling mortality for both with larger gains for graduates, then diverging, then rising faster for the less educated during the pandemic—reaching an 8.5-year difference in adult life expectancy. Americans with a degree, treated as a separate country, would rank just below Japan.

Anne Case and Angus Deaton Brookings Papers On Economic Activity
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As of 2021, US adults with a college degree have a life expectancy at age 25 on par with Japan, but US adults without a BA have a life expectancy that’s 8.5 years lower, significantly below rich country norms.

How large is the mortality gap between college and noncollege Americans?

Core argument: The adult life expectancy gap between Americans with and without a four-year college degree reached 8.5 years by the end of 2021, after widening in each of three periods: 1992–2010, 2010–2019, and the COVID pandemic.

From 1992 to 2010, American adults with and without a four-year college degree saw falling mortality, but with greater improvements for the more educated; from 2010 to 2019, mortality continued to fall for those with a BA while rising for those without; during the COVID pandemic, mortality rose for both groups, but markedly more rapidly for the less educated. In consequence, the mortality gap between the two groups expanded in all three periods, leading to an 8.5-year difference in adult life expectancy by the end of 2021. One remarkable finding here is that Americans with a college degree, if they were a separate country, would be one of the best performers, just below Japan, though there was some decline in 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. The adult life expectancy gap between Americans with and without a four-year college degree reached 8.5 years by the end of 2021, after widening in each of three periods: 1992–2010, 2010–2019, and the COVID pandemic.
  2. From 2010 to 2019, mortality continued to fall for American adults with a BA while rising for those without one, and during the COVID pandemic mortality rose for both groups but markedly faster for the less educated.
  3. Americans with a college degree, treated as a separate country, would be one of the best performers, just below Japan, though their performance declined somewhat in 2020 and 2021.

Related Articles:

  • Why Are Americans Dying So Young? — One in 25 American five-year-olds is projected not to reach age 40, making deaths among the young a defining feature of US mortality. These deaths are overwhelmingly caused by external factors such as drug overdoses, gun violence, and dangerous driving.
  • Who Won the Cold War? Part II — Americans born around 1990 had higher death rates in their 20s than peers in affluent allied countries, and the gap widened across young adulthood. By age 29, US mortality for that cohort was about 2x New Zealand's, 2.5x France's, 3x Japan's, and 4x Italy's or Spain's.
  • Who Won the Cold War? Part III — In the US, death rates at age 39 for the cohort born in 1980 exceeded those of cohorts born in 1970 and 1960, and death rates at age 29 for the 1990 cohort were indistinguishable from the 1950 cohort's. In Japan, mortality at 29 fell over 80% across comparable cohorts versus under 8% in the US.

AI Summary. Children from top-1% families are more than 2x as likely as middle-class students with comparable SAT/ACT scores to attend an Ivy-Plus college, with two-thirds of the gap attributable to higher admissions rates. The authors attribute this advantage to legacy preferences, weight on non-academic credentials, and athlete recruitment.

Raj Chetty, David Deming and John Friedman National Bureau of Economic Research
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.@OppInsights finds that the “Ivy-Plus” (Ivy League, plus UChicago, Duke, MIT, Stanford) admit students from the highest income families scoring in the top 1% of SAT/ACT at far greater rates than those from lower-income families.

Why are high-income students likelier to attend highly selective private colleges?

Core argument: Children from top-1% families are more than twice as likely to attend an Ivy-Plus college (Ivy League, Stanford, MIT, Duke, Chicago) as middle-class students with comparable SAT/ACT scores.

Children from families in the top 1% are more than twice as likely to attend an Ivy-Plus college (Ivy League, Stanford, MIT, Duke, and Chicago) as those from middle-class families with comparable SAT/ACT scores. Two-thirds of this gap is due to higher admissions rates for students with comparable test scores from high-income families; the remaining third is due to differences in rates of application and matriculation. The high-income admissions advantage at private colleges is driven by three factors: (1) preferences for children of alumni, (2) weight placed on non-academic credentials, which tend to be stronger for students applying from private high schools that have affluent student bodies, and (3) recruitment of athletes, who tend to come from higher-income families. Highly selective public colleges that follow more standardized processes to evaluate applications exhibit smaller disparities in admissions rates by parental income than private colleges that use more holistic evaluations.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. Children from top-1% families are more than twice as likely to attend an Ivy-Plus college (Ivy League, Stanford, MIT, Duke, Chicago) as middle-class students with comparable SAT/ACT scores.
  2. Two-thirds of that attendance gap comes from higher admissions rates for high-income students with comparable test scores, and the remaining third from differences in application and matriculation rates.
  3. The high-income admissions advantage at private colleges reflects preferences for alumni children, weight on non-academic credentials that tend to be stronger among applicants from affluent private high schools, and recruitment of athletes, while highly selective public colleges using more standardized evaluation show smaller disparities by parental income.

Related Articles:

  • Why Do Wages Grow Faster for Educated Workers? — College graduates sort into professional, non-routine occupations where wages rise much more with job tenure, and the author estimates this occupational sorting explains at least half of the life-cycle growth in the college wage premium. That premium is estimated at 22% at age 26, 49% at age 40, and 56% at age 60.
  • Multidimensional Human Capital and the Wage Structure — The wage return to cognitive skills has declined, from about 10% higher hourly wages per standard deviation of test score in the 1980s and early 1990s to 4.5% in the 2000s and early 2010s, while returns to a bachelor's degree rose. Social skill-intensive occupations grew as a share of US jobs, with faster real wage growth.
  • The Economics of Inequality in High-Wage Economies — United States Income, Wealth, Consumption, and Inequality Diana Furchtgott-Roth

AI Summary. Most of the return to education reflects workers learning more over time rather than the initial quality their credentials signal, since signaling may secure a better first offer but longer-run wages reflect what has been learned. Signaling models of education fit awkwardly in dynamic rather than static settings.

Tyler Cowen Marginal Revolution
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.@tylercowen thinks @ProfDavidDeming new paper implies that wages are driven by training not quality, suggesting the signaling theory of education is overstated.

.@tylercowen thinks @ProfDavidDeming new paper implies that wages are driven by training not quality, suggesting the...

Do wages grow faster for educated workers because they learn more?

Core argument: Cowen argues that most of the return to education comes from learning more over time rather than from signaling an initial level of quality, since long-run wages reflect what workers have learned.

You will note how this relates to the signaling vs. human capital debates over education. Signaling your quality may put you in a position to learn more over time, as your initial offer likely will be better if you come out of Harvard. But over the longer haul, the wages you earn are the result of what you have learned, not just your initial level of quality. So, most of the return to education is that you learn more over time, and thus most of the return is learning-related rather than initial quality-related. Overall, signaling models behave rather awkwardly in dynamic rather than purely static settings.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. Cowen argues that most of the return to education comes from learning more over time rather than from signaling an initial level of quality, since long-run wages reflect what workers have learned.
  2. Signaling quality, such as by graduating from Harvard, likely yields a better initial offer that can place a worker in a position to learn more over time, according to Cowen.
  3. Cowen contends that signaling models of education behave awkwardly in dynamic settings rather than purely static ones.

Related Articles:

  • Why Do Wages Grow Faster For Educated Workers? — College graduates sort into professional, non-routine occupations where wages rise much more with job tenure, and the author estimates this occupational sorting explains at least half of the life-cycle growth in the college wage premium. That premium is estimated at 22% at age 26, 49% at age 40, and 56% at age 60.