Educational expansion and returns on credentials

In this article an empirical analysis is conducted in order to detect the relationship between returns on credentials from secondary and higher education and the proliferation rate of these credentials. Almost 10 000 Dutch male respondents from a number of surveys are classified into labour-market cohorts, and are used for the estimation of the effect of their credentials on their occupational level. Findings from regression analyses reveal that additional returns are related to the rate of proliferation in a curvilinear pattern. Total returns, which depend on these additional returns, are decreasing for those who entered the labour-market after 1955.