Can Vocational Education Improve Schooling and Labour Outcomes? Evidence from a Large Expansion

João Ferreira and Pedro Martins

No 16474, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We evaluate the education and labour impact of vocational education and training (VET). Identification draws on different IVs from the large-scale, staggered introduction of VET courses in public schools in Portugal from 2005. We also exploit the large gender differences in VET, with many courses selected almost only by either boys or girls. Drawing on rich student-school matched panel data, we find that VET increased upper-secondary graduation rates dramatically: our LATE estimates typically exceed 50 percentage points. These effects are even stronger for low-achieving students and welfare recipients. Moreover, we find evidence of regional youth employment growth following VET expansions. VET graduates also benefit from higher wages and other positive outcomes over several years, compared to both academic-track and lower-secondary graduates.

Keywords: educational attainment; vocational education; matched student-teacher-school data; VET wage differentials (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 I26 I28 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 76 pages
Date: 2023-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-eur, nep-lma and nep-ure
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp16474.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Can vocational education improve schooling and labour outcomes? Evidence from a large expansion (2023)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16474

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().