Table 2:
The Long-Run Effects of the 1980–1982 Recession on Education
| Dependent variable: | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HS/GED attainment | Any college attendance | Any college degree attainment | Four-year college degree attainment | Two-year college degree attainment | Years of schooling | |
| (1) | (2) | (3) | (4) | (5) | (6) | |
| Panel A. Interaction between 1979–1982 decrease in log real earnings per capita and age in 1979 | ||||||
| 0–10 | −0.020 (0.047) |
−0.269 (0.158) |
−0.444 (0.174) |
−0.470 (0.179) |
0.025 (0.059) |
−1.967 (0.868) |
| 11–19 | 0.055 (0.046) |
−0.141 (0.122) |
−0.297 (0.107) |
−0.286 (0.107) |
−0.010 (0.043) |
−1.065 (0.573) |
| Panel B. Average value of dependent variable in years 2000–2013, by age in 1979 | ||||||
| 0–10 | 0.936 | 0.932 | 0.414 | 0.321 | 0.093 | 13.57 |
| 11–19 | 0.932 | 0.537 | 0.380 | 0.288 | 0.093 | 13.39 |
Notes: Panel A reports estimates of the interaction between the 1979–1982 decrease in log real earnings per capita in individuals’ birth county and indicators for age in 1979. The interaction for individuals age 20–29 is normalized to equal zero. Regressions include indicators for gender-by-age at time of survey, race, birth county, age in 1979-by-birth state, and survey year, plus indicators for age in 1979 interacted with several covariates measured in individuals’ birth county: the 1950–1960, 1960–1970, and 1970–1980 change in log real median family income and log population, and the 1960 level of log population, log population density, percent urban, percent black, percent foreign, percent with a high school degree, and percent of families with income below $3,000. Regressions are estimated by 2SLS, using the predicted log employment change from 1979–1982 as an instrumental variable. Standard errors in parentheses are clustered by birth state. The sample in Panel A contains 23.5 million individuals born in the continental U.S. from 1950–1979 with a unique birth county, unique PIK, and non-allocated variables. Panel B reports average values of the dependent variables for a comparable sample from publicly available 2000 Census and 2001–2013 ACS data.
Sources: BEA Regional Economic Accounts, Census County Business Patterns, Confidential 2000–2013 Census/ACS data linked to the SSA NUMIDENT file, Publicly available 2000–2013 Census/ACS data from Ruggles et al. (2015)