Returns to Schooling in Europe: Evidence From Quantile Regression on EU-SILC Data

In this paper the effects of schooling on wage inequality across a group of European countries are examined. Using the latest available EU-SILC data set, a positive relation between these two variables is found across the whole distribution by means of a quartile regression (QR) approach. Such effect is stronger effect at the highest quartiles than at the lowest. This result corroborates the possibilityof an increase in the wage dispersion when higher educational attainments are achieved and it is found to be rather robust as showed by linear hypothesis tests. Finally, the country-specific results highlight that the OLS technique misleads relevant information over cross-countries heterogeneity in the impact ofeducation on within group inequality at different points of the wage distribution compared to the QR approach.