Education Quality and Returns to Schooling: Evidence from Migrants in Brazil
利用2010年巴西数据构建各州教育质量指数，通过移民数据估计不同州教育回报，发现巴西各州教育质量差异几乎与国家间差异相当，调整质量后人力资本解释力提高60%。
We provide a new education quality index for states within a developing country using 2010 Brazilian data. This measure is constructed based on the notion that the financial returns obtained from an additional year of schooling can be seen as being derived from the value that market forces assign to this education. We use migrant data to estimate returns to schooling of individuals who studied in different states but work in the same labor market. We find very heterogeneous educational qualities. In fact, Brazil displays cross-state educational quality variation almost as great as that observed across countries. We compare our index with standardized test scores, educational outcome variables, and public expenditure per schooling stage at the state level, producing new evidence related to education in a large developing country. We conduct an education quality–adjusted development accounting exercise for Brazilian states and find that human capital accounts for 26%–31% of output per worker differences. Adjusting for quality increases human capital’s explanatory power by 60%.