Vintage Effects and Education

Abstract

This chapter describes the vintage effects and education. The term vintage is borrowed from capital theory in economics and applied to the economics of education: education is viewed as human capital which enhances embodied skill and productivity. Vintage effects are associated with productivity differentials across successive generations of graduates or cohorts with a given level or type of schooling. True vintage effects and can be broadly classified into two groups. First, there may be shifts in the educational production function through technological innovations in teaching methods and cooperating resources that improve methods of communicating existing knowledge. Second, the content of materials taught changes periodically through advances in knowledge. The lifetime returns to a given type of education may depend on the number in any given generation who choose it. In this case, vintage effects are inversely related to the size of cohorts. If members of different cohorts with the same level of schooling are imperfect substitutes in production, the real wage prospects at each point in the life cycle may be affected by considerations of supply.