Attendance, Completion, and Heterogeneous Returns to College: A Causal Mediation Approach

• Published in: Sociological methods & research Vol. 53; no. 3; pp. 1136 - 1166
• Main Author: Zhou, Xiang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.08.2024; SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: Attendance; Causality; College Attendance; Disadvantaged; Earnings; Mediation; Sensitivity analysis; Social research; Social science education; Youth; returns to college; debiased machine learning; causal inference; heterogeneity; causal mediation

A growing body of social science research investigates whether the economic payoff to a college education is heterogeneous — in particular, whether disadvantaged youth can benefit more from attending and completing college relative to their more advantaged peers. Scholars, however, have employed dif...