Recent Flattening in the Higher Education Wage Premium: Polarization, Skill Downgrading, or Both?

Robert G. Valletta

NBER Working Paper No. 22935
Issued in December 2016

---- Acknowledgments ----

Prepared for presentation at the NBER Conference on Research in Income and Wealth, “Education, Skills, and Technical Change: Implications for Future U.S. GDP Growth,” Bethesda, Maryland, October 16-17, 2015. The author thanks David Autor for his highly constructive and detailed discussant comments, the editors of this volume (Chuck Hulten and Valerie Ramey) for their guidance with revisions, and participants in this conference and also the May 2016 Society of Labor Economists annual meetings for additional helpful comments. He also thanks Catherine van der List for outstanding research assistance. The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the Federal Reserve System, or the National Bureau of Economic Research.

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