Gender and Private Returns to Education : a Cross-European Analysis

The paper compares private returns to education of men and women for fourteen E.U. countries. Building on de la Fuente (2003), I define the rate of return as the discount rate equalizing marginal costs and benefits of education. I extend his model by estimating separately the values of the relevant parameters for men and women and introducing variables specifically related to maternity leaves and benefits. The main result is that, given the profiles of earning of a man and a woman studying the average numbers of years in each country and working full-time up the end of their active lifes, women's rates of return are higher for most countries.