Returns to Human Capital in Europe. A Literature Review

“Public Funding and Private Returns to Education - PURE” is a two-year EU-TSER financed research project that started on November 1, 1998. It involves as many as 15 European countries: Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. The overarching objective of PURE is to study the impact of different systems of public financial support on school attendance and of differences in educational differentiation and school admission rules on observed outcomes in the labour market, in particular, in terms of private returns to education and education-related inequality in earnings. More information on the project is available at PURE’s web-site www.etla.fi/PURE This volume is the first product of PURE. It provides a comprehensive review of the current state of knowledge in each partner country concerning rates of return to human capital in general and education in particular. This review of the existing empirical evidence on these topics thus draws a baseline for the results that will be produced within the framework of PURE