A continuous income-based grade gap decomposition on university course grades. Issue 31 (3rd July 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Ulrick, Shawn W.; Mongeon, Kevin P.; Giannetto, Michael P.
• Is Part Of: Applied economics. Volume 50:Issue 31(2018)
• Page Start: 3388
• Page End: 3404
• Publication Date: 2018-07-03
• Subjects: Grade gap -- decomposition -- education -- socio-economic status -- income; C1 -- J7 -- I2; Economics -- Periodicals; 330
• DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2017.1420893
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0003-6846

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The earnings premium for education, and higher education in particular, is well documented. This article examines the college achievement gap between students coming from positions of high and low socio-economic status. Other papers have also looked at this issue, often by employing, at least in part, an Oaxaca decomposition. Past papers artificially divided socio-economic status into binary groups of high and low, in order to employ the decomposition. Socio-economic status is innately a continuous variable. Therefore, we implement a continuous version of the Oaxaca decomposition. Higher socio-economic students are both slightly better prepared in terms of observable characteristics and have better returns to their characteristics than lower socio-economic students. Notable differences across results obtained from the binary and continuous decomposition methods are discussed.