Predicting your children’s returns to schooling

Abstract

This article uses a Baltimore panel survey to show how parents and students revise their expectations of education over twelve years of school. Parents and students’ expectations about future education and occupations show a substantial disagreement, especially in elementary school. Students and parents in elementary school believed the wage returns to education were much smaller than the ones estimated by the literature, especially among families of lower maternal education. However, respondents’ beliefs about the wage returns to education became more accurate as the students reached high school. Black girls and their parents show the highest subjective returns to education.