Daniel Kamhöfer

The Effects of University Education on Female Outcomes

In a series of papers, Daniel Kamhöfer has exploited variation in the opening and expansion of universities in Germany between the 1960s and 1980s to learn about the effects of university education on wages, health, cognitive skills, fertility preferences, and female labor market participation. Marginal treatment effects indicate that individuals with a lower desire for education benefit less – and some not at all – than individuals with a higher desire. Compared to women without a university education, women with a university education are more likely to work for pay, earn higher wages even after accounting for this selection into employment, and have fewer children.

In more recent work, Mr. Kamhöfer empirically investigates how the formation of children's socio-emotional skills can be enhanced by a large-scale, easy-to-implement learning intervention, and whether sensitive periods during certain stages of childhood intensify this process.

Mr. Kamhöfer is an economist interested in applied microeconomics, especially education, labor, and health. In his work, he uses a large spectrum of quantitative methods (randomized controlled trials, quasi-experiments, machine learning elements) to understand how cognitive and socio-emotional abilities shape individuals’ economic and non-tangible prosperity and how educational policy can influence this process to promote personal well-being and reduce social inequalities. He is especially interested in the potential of educational interventions to leverage skill formation in order to mitigate economic inequality and social disadvantage.

Daniel Kamhöfer was a postdoc at the University of Düsseldorf and received his PhD from the University of Duisburg-Essen in 2018. As of January 2024, he is a Professor of Quantitative Methods in Economics at the University of Kaiserslautern-Landau. He completed his PhD in Economics at the University of Duisburg-Essen in 2018 and gained work experience at the University of Konstanz und Paderborn University in Germany as well as through research stays at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, London, Lund University, the University of Sydney, and Monash University, Melbourne. Since October 2019 he has been an IZA Research Affiliate.