Appendix C - Literature search strategy
C.1 Overview
The objective of the literature search was to identify the private returns to individuals from tertiary education in New Zealand and other OECD countries. As a proxy for ‘private returns' we used income.
The literature review was completed in two stages. Stage one was a series of searches aimed at locating material that met the literature search's objective.
Stage two involved developing the search further to look at what impact external factors have on the wage premium afforded to those with tertiary qualifications. The focus for stage two was still New Zealand and other OECD countries.
C.2 Keywords
Undertaking a literature search is an iterative process. Initially keywords are chosen based on the topic of the search. However, once searching has begun more appropriate keywords are often identified that return better hits.
C.3 Stage 1 keywords
For this search keywords could include but will not be limited to the following:
- Education
- Tertiary / vocational / post-secondary / higher education / academic / qualifications
- University / polytechnic
- Private returns / wages / salary / earnings / income
- Skilled / unskilled
- Premia / premium / benefits
C.4 Stage 2 External factors
- Industry structure
- Lower productivity
- Subject mismatch / under or over qualification
- Supply of tertiary graduates
- Emigration of tertiary education
- Company size
- Multi-factor productivity
- Innovation
C.5 Scope
Publications in English. Items could include journal articles, studies and reports.
C.6 Sources
- SSRN
- OECD
- Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA, Bonn, Germany)
- Econlit / Repec
- ERIC
- World Bank
- Google Scholar
- Te Puna
- ILO
- VOCED / NCVER
- Cedefop
- Other sources as required.
C.7 Exclusion criteria
We excluded from our results items that focused on post-secondary, non-tertiary education. Training benefits to the individual whether it was in-house or externally provided was excluded since it normally falls in this category.
C.8 Results overview
We found a broad body of literature on the private returns to individuals from tertiary education. Tertiary qualified men and women earned more than their less qualified peers did, private returns also differed by qualification type (eg, bachelor vs. doctorate) and subject studied (eg, humanities vs. science) and the income gap between tertiary educated and non-tertiary educated persisted over time.
Our results from stage two were somewhat muted. In order to broaden the scope for this stage we used skilled / non-skilled wage premia as a proxy for those with/ without tertiary qualifications. We found there was less material that drew a direct link between the influence (eg, innovation) and the skilled wage premia. For example, the flow-on effects of the influences we found to be two-way: employing people with tertiary qualifications (skilled) resulted in more innovation, and therefore the company became more innovative and recognised the value of tertiary qualifications (skills) and paid accordingly.
