Abstract
This study examines the extent to which high school students respond to education and labor market incentives when making decisions about homework. Student and state fixed effects estimators are used to control for unobserved individual and geographic heterogeneity and selection. I find that students’ choices about homework respond to unemployment rates and changes in the minimum wage, but not to changes in the price of higher education. These responses are not constant throughout the population: female students, low income students, and low achieving students in particular increase their homework time in response to a higher minimum wage, while male students are more responsive to changes in the unemployment rate.
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Notes
Leighton and Mincer define “wage prospects” as the minimum wage times the perceived probability of finding employment in the covered sector. In the case of risk neutrality, this is equal to the expected wage, in the case of risk aversion, wage prospects will be lower than the expected wage.
Agell and Lommerud (1997) propose a model in which the effect of a minimum wage is to increase investment in education among those of moderate skill, and decrease education among those with low skill.
Because homework time is conditional on a student not dropping out of school, all of the results for this section are valid for the sample of students who remain in school at least through the 10th grade; this is not an overly restrictive assumption given that most students who do not graduate drop out in the 11th or 12th grades.
The CPS person weights were used to ensure that these averages were representative of the state population.
This homework measure combines all subjects, thus very few students report doing zero hours of homework per week. For this reason, tobit estimates of the impact of labor market conditions on homework time are extremely similar to OLS estimates.
In specification 3, the state effects are jointly statistically different from zero at the 1% confidence level.
These results are similar when compared to a specification that uses the natural log of homework as a dependent variable.
The family characteristics are not time-variant in this data, and thus it is not possible to include them in the individual fixed effects specifications.
These results are robust to changes in the specification. Neither adding interaction terms or relaxing the linear specification changes the qualitative results.
There are a number of reasons that women and men might respond to labor market signals differently, at the time that this data was collected, women had lower high school graduation rates, lower college attendance rates (conditional on high school completion), and lower labor force attachment (Card and Lemieux 1997). For this reason it makes sense that more women might be on the margin between entering the labor market or not, and are more likely to be swayed by changes in the minimum wage or returns to education. Similarly, with lower labor force attachment, they may be less influenced by unemployment rate changes.
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The author would like to thank Tom Mroz, David Blau, Donna Gilleskie, David Guilkey, and Helen Tauchen, for their excellent assistance, and Calvin College for supporting this research.
Appendix A: Variable Definitions
Appendix A: Variable Definitions
Hours of Homework
This variable measures the number of hours that the student spends per week on homework in all subjects. The NELS data records the hours of homework completed in a series of categories. Each student is assigned the mean value for their category. The question in the NELS survey presented to students is as follows: “In the following subjects and overall, about how much time do you spend on homework EACH WEEK, both in and out of school?”
Assigned Homework
This is a continuous variable recording the average hours per week that the students’ interviewed teachers assigned. The source variables were all continuous, though the base year was a weekly variable and the second and third waves asked for daily amounts. I multiplied the daily homework amounts by 5 to get the weekly amount.
Locus of Control
This is a composite of three questions, which measures the degree to which the student has an “internal” locus of control. Students with an internal locus believe that their actions and choices can shape their future, where students with an external locus believe external events will be the primary determinants of what their future is like. A higher number indicates that the students’ locus is more internal. The questions ask the student to agree or disagree (five point scale) with the following statements:
“In my life, good luck is more important than hard work for success.”
“Every time I try to get ahead, something or somebody stops me.”
“My plans hardly ever work out, so planning only makes me unhappy.”
Minimum Wage
The highest legally binding minimum wage for the student’s state of residence, either the statewide or federal minimum. This variable is adjusted for inflation to 2005 dollars.
Unemployment Rate
The 2 year average of the monthly unemployment rate for the students’ state of residence.
Industry Mix
An industry-education index. This variable takes the nation-wide average education level for employees in a given industry based on the 1990 IPUMS CPS March supplement. The index is a sum of this statistic for each industry in the state, weighted by the number of people in the state that are employed in that industry.
Parents’ Income
Annual family income recorded in 1988. The variable is recorded in 14 categories. The value of this variable is the average of the category range, those in the top category were assigned 1.5 times the top value.
Parents’ Education
The average years of schooling of the student’s parents.
Family Owns More Than 50 Books
A dichotomous variable indicating whether or not the student’s family owns more than 50 books.
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McMullen, S. How do Students Respond to Labor Market and Education Incentives? An Analysis of Homework Time. J Labor Res 32, 199–209 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12122-011-9113-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12122-011-9113-x