New Study on Older Data: Catholic School Grads Made More $

Ever wonder what a Catholic education is really worth? A recent study by an economist at Kingston University attempted to answer this question by examining the impact of Catholic education on wage earnings later in life.
 
Using data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) – a random selection of approximately 3500 students who graduated from Wisconsin schools in 1957 – Dr. Kim estimated the impact of the kind of school attended (i.e., public or Catholic) on factors such as rigor of academic coursework, quality of teachers, college attendance, and ultimately, wages earned in 1974 and 1992.
 
Major findings from this study indicated that “Catholic school students earn significantly more [than public school students] 17 and 35 years after graduation” and that “Catholic schools tend to have more highly educated teachers and offer a more extensive curriculum in math and foreign language courses” (Kim, 2011, p. 547). Catholic school students also completed more years of college than did public school students.
 
It should be noted, and the author rightly acknowledges, that these data were collected during a markedly different era of Catholic education. Most teachers would have been women religious who were likely to have received more education than the general public and even other educators. Additionally, graduates of Catholic high schools in 1957 were likely to be white and to have parents that graduated from high school or college.  And yet, controlling for these and other variables such as IQ, Kim demonstrated that Catholic schools provided students a high quality education that had a significant, positive effect on wage earnings at mid- and late career time points.
 
Click here to access the abstract of the journal article.

Kim, Y-J. (2011). Catholic school or school quality? The effects of Catholic schools on labor market outcomes. Economics of Education Review, 30(3), 546-558.