Is more always better? Early career returns to education in the United States and Norway

This paper compares early career returns to education in the United States and Norway. Longitudinal data is used to follow national cohorts of 10th graders who have made the transition from school to work within 10 years. OLS and quantile regression analyses show that whereas the relationship between educational attainment and income in the United States follows a linear pattern with higher returns to longer and more intellectually prestigious educations, this is not the case in Norway. In Norway, it pays off to choose vocational education in high school and college, especially for men. The results show that women and minorities benefit more from education than non-minority men in both countries. The findings from the quantile regressions indicate that this has partly to do with the fact that women and minorities are more disadvantaged at the lower end of the income distribution and at the lowest levels of educational attainment.