The thesis compares education attainment levels and the returns of education investments of three native-born ethnic groups, Mexican Americans, non-Hispanic whites, and African Americans. Using two ordinary least square (OLS) regression models and data from the 2000 5% Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS), the analysis determines if lower levels of earnings and occupation prestige status among native-born Mexican Americans are the result of low levels of education or are attributed to lower returns on their education. The first model compares income earned across the ethnic groups while the second model compares occupational prestige status across the three groups. The study shows that Mexican Americans continue to have the highest levels of high school dropouts and as a whole continue to lag behind whites in education attainment especially among the higher levels of education beginning at the college degree level. However, the results from the multiple linear regression analyses provide a positive outlook for Mexican Americans who attain higher levels of education receiving comparable or greater returns on their human capital investments. First, the results suggest that any additional year(s) of education attainment above a high school diploma provides greater returns for Mexican Americans given the anemic state of higher education levels for this ethnic group. Second, attaining a college degree has the greatest effect on labor market outcomes. Finally, the results do provide empirical evidence of structural discrimination especially in the case of African Americans with respect to income earned. In addition, at the professional degree attainment level whites receive greater returns in income despite having the same level of education and occupation prestige status when compared to Mexican Americans and African Americans.

Edition de : Dissertation : Education : Chicago : 1911. / Notes bibliographiques.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Washington State University, December 2009. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Feb. 12, 2010). "School of Economic Sciences." Includes bibliographical references (p. 64-66).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Cornell University, 1984. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 187-193).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 133-141).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Department of Economics, August 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

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In 1938 Dunlop challenged the assertion in the General Theory that wages moved countercyclically. The resulting debate on the cyclical movement of wages deserves study as an episode in the history of economic thought. This is done in chapter 2 which reviews the theoretical issues and chapter 3 which reviews the empirical work. To understand this history requires some analysis of the meaning and significance of the debate. At one level the debate can be interpreted as the search for a 'stylised fact'. This is apparently an empirical question and part of the thesis will be concerned to use data for various countries, time-periods, cycle phases, and industries to examine whether there is any systematic cyclical pattern in wage movements. The conclusion of the empirical analysis is that there is no such empirical regularity. At a second level the debate was theoretical. The empirical observation that wages moved procyc1ica1ly was thought to falsify a prevailing theory. What is interesting about this debate is the light it sheds on the response of economists to apparent falsification. A third level of the debate is the issue of inference. Keynes tended to treat theory as prior, attacking 'pseudo natural science procedures'. Keynes was not opposed in principle to statistical work informing theory: although in practice he did not attempt the empirical investigation into cyclical wages for which he called. Thus from a different methodological standpoint Burns and Mitchell criticise the theorist who 'often stops before his work is finished'. Current econometrics would emphasise the need for identifying assumptions before estimates could be used to test hypotheses. In this framework, the implications for theory of any reduced form regularity would be ambiguous in the absence on non-data based identifying assumptions. This thesis uses the history of the debate and the empirical analysis to illustrate these themes of observation, theory and inference.