General Education, Vocational Education, and Labor-Market Outcomes over the Life-Cycle / Eric A. Hanushek, Ludger Woessmann, Lei Zhang.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hanushek, Eric A.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Woessmann, Ludger.

Zhang, Lei.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w17504.

NBER working paper series no. w17504

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2011.

Summary:

Policy debates about the balance of vocational and general education programs focus on the school-to-work transition. But with rapid technological change, gains in youth employment from vocational education may be offset by less adaptability and thus diminished employment later in life. To test our main hypothesis that any relative labor-market advantage of vocational education decreases with age, we employ a difference-in-differences approach that compares employment rates across different ages for people with general and vocational education. Using micro data for 18 countries from the International Adult Literacy Survey, we find strong support for the existence of such a trade-off, which is most pronounced in countries emphasizing apprenticeship programs. Results are robust to accounting for ability patterns and to propensity-score matching.

Notes:

Print version record

October 2011.