Card (1995) proximity-to-college extract

A data extract from the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Men, as used in Card (1995) to estimate the return to schooling using proximity to a four-year college as an instrument for years of schooling. The extract adds a binary college indicator (16+ years of schooling) so the data can be used with IV-validity tests that require a binary treatment.

Usage

card1995

Format

A data frame with 2991 rows and 11 variables:

id

Integer row identifier.

lwage

Log hourly wage in 1976 (outcome in Card's specification).

educ

Years of completed schooling (continuous; Card's endogenous regressor).

college

Integer 0/1 indicator for educ >= 16. Use this when a test requires a binary treatment.

near_college

Integer 0/1 indicator for growing up near a four-year college (Card's instrument).

age

Age in 1976.

exper

Years of potential labour-market experience (age minus schooling minus six).

black

Integer 0/1 indicator for black respondents.

south

Integer 0/1 indicator for residence in the US south.

smsa

Integer 0/1 indicator for residence in a Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area.

married

Integer 0/1 indicator for married respondents.

Source

Card, D. (1995). Using Geographic Variation in College Proximity to Estimate the Return to Schooling. In Aspects of Labour Market Behaviour: Essays in Honour of John Vanderkamp, ed. L. N. Christofides, E. K. Grant, and R. Swidinsky, 201-222. University of Toronto Press. Original data from the 1966-1976 National Longitudinal Survey of Young Men. Cleaned extract via the wooldridge package on CRAN.

References

Card, D. (1995). Using Geographic Variation in College Proximity to Estimate the Return to Schooling. In Christofides, Grant, and Swidinsky (eds.), Aspects of Labour Market Behaviour: Essays in Honour of John Vanderkamp, 201-222.

Wooldridge, J. M. (2020). wooldridge: 115 Data Sets from "Introductory Econometrics: A Modern Approach". R package.

Examples

data(card1995)
summary(card1995$lwage)
#>    Min. 1st Qu.  Median    Mean 3rd Qu.    Max. 
#>   4.605   5.980   6.288   6.262   6.563   7.785 
table(near_college = card1995$near_college,
      college      = card1995$college)
#>             college
#> near_college    0    1
#>            0  738  214
#>            1 1449  602