Working Paper: NBER ID: w17504
Authors: Eric A. Hanushek; Ludger Woessmann; Lei Zhang
Abstract: 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.
Keywords: vocational education; general education; labor market outcomes; lifecycle
JEL Codes: I20; J24; J31; J64
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| General education (A22) | Improved employment probabilities (J68) |
| Age (J14) | Improved employment probabilities for general education (J24) |
| Vocational education (J24) | Higher employment rates in younger cohorts (J29) |
| Age (J14) | Diminishing advantage of vocational education (J24) |
| Country fixed effects (C23) | Elimination of overall country differences (O57) |
| Propensity score matching (C52) | Addressing selection bias (C83) |