Labour market consequences of a high school diploma

Deni Mazrekaj, Kristof De Witte and Sarah Vansteenkiste

No 628571, Working Papers of Department of Work and Organisation Studies, Leuven from KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Department of Work and Organisation Studies, Leuven

Abstract: This article compares the labour market outcomes of high school dropouts to high school graduates who did not enroll into higher education, but immediately entered the labour market. Using parental educational background as an instrument on a rich administrative dataset in the Flemish Region of Belgium, we find no returns to a high school diploma on average. However, these results hide considerable heterogeneity by gender and educational track. While females and individuals in vocational education may benefit from a diploma, male graduates and students holding a general education diploma may even be worse off on the labour market than dropouts. We show that sectoral heterogeneity acts as an underlying mechanism in the returns to a high school diploma.

Keywords: Returns to Schooling; Heterogeneity; High School Diploma; School Dropout; Instrumental Variables (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29
Date: 2018-07-04
Note: paper number DPS 18.09
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Published in FEB Research Report Department of Economics

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https://lirias.kuleuven.be/retrieve/519949 Accepted version (application/pdf)
https://lirias.kuleuven.be/retrieve/512722 (application/pdf)

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Working Paper: Labour market consequences of a high school diploma (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ete:woswps:628571

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