Credit Where Credit Is Due: An Approach to Education Returns Based on Shapley Values

We propose the use of methods based on the Shapley value to assess the fact that private returns to lower levels of educational attainment should incorporate prospective returns from higher attainment levels, since achieving primary education is a necessary condition to enter secondary and tertiary educational levels. We apply the proposed adjustment to a global dataset of private returns to different educational attainment levels and find that the corrected returns to education imply a large shift of returns from tertiary to primary schooling in countries at all income levels.