1. John Devereux CUNY Luis Locay University of Miami
Comparing the Quality of Education in Pre and Post Revolutionary Cuba Using U.S. Labor Market Outcomes
John Devereux
CUNY
Luis Locay
University of Miami

2. General Procedures
Schoellman (2010) (“Education Quality and Development Accounting”) uses the US earnings of immigrants who obtained their education abroad to estimate returns to schooling (in a common labor market) by country. The differences in returns to schooling provides a relative measure of the quality of schooling by country.
We apply a similar procedure to Cuban immigrants to the US to compare the the returns to schooling obtained before and after the Revolution.
We use the censuses of 1980, 1990 and 2000 to estimate separate earnings functions for each census year.

3. The Sample Cuban born men. 25 – 65 years of age at the time of census.
Worked at least 40 weeks in the year prior to the census year.
Average weekly earnings in year prior to the census year had to be greater than the equivalent of $100 in 1979 (for the 1980 census).
Only men who spoke English well, very well, or exclusively were included.
Returns to schooling were estimated separately for the entire sample, and for subsamples restricted to those whose entire education took place exclusively in the US, exclusively in Cuba prior to 1962, or exclusively in Cuba after 1962.

4. Time and Location of Schooling Total Schooling
Sample
Variables
Census Year
English Proficiency
Time and Location of Schooling
Total Schooling
Schooling in Cuba Up to 1962
Schooling in Cuba After 1962
1980
Well & very well
Exclusively in one country and time period.
0.019*
0.021*
0.003
Very well only
0.033*
0.020*
-0.017
In more than one country or time periods.
0.027*
-0.009***
0.043*
0.018*
-0.009
1990
0.064*
0.016*
-0.012**
0.082*
0.011**
-0.017**
-0.017*
0.099*
0.012*
-0.016*
2000
0.094*
-0.033*
0.111*
-0.035*
0.103*
-0.029*
0.106*
-0.031*
-0.020*
* Significant at 1% level.
** Significant at 5% level.
*** Significant at 10% level.

5. Closing Thoughts
If education adapts to changing labor market requirements, then pre Cuban education is fundamentally different from the other two alternatives.
A better approach would be to compare the return to pre-1962 Cuban education with that of pre-1962 American education, and the return to post-1962 Cuban education with that of post-1962 American education.
Nonlinearity in the return to education. Since pre-1962 Cuban education never “follows” the other two, it is more likely that it contains relatively more earlier years of schooling.