Recent Investments in Human Capital and its Effect on the Chances of Escaping from Low-Paid Jobs: The Spanish Case

Maite Blázquez Cuesta and Jose Ramos ()
Additional contact information
Jose Ramos: Universidad Europea de Madrid

No 2008/03, Working Papers in Economic Theory from Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain), Department of Economic Analysis (Economic Theory and Economic History)

Abstract: General education and training are major forces determining earnings. According to the human capital model, wage differentials among individuals over the life-cycle are largely the result of different patterns of investment in human capital. This paper is intended to analyze the effects of recent investments in human capital – general education, vocational/training or language courses - on workers’ relative earnings and on the probability of making an upwards transition in the earnings distribution. The analysis is done for Spain, using the European Community Household Panel (1995-2001). Our results reveal that having been recently in education or training (mainly vocational/training courses) significantly increases the probability of escaping from low pay to better paid jobs, while decreases the risk of falling into low-wage employment. Furthermore, this positive effect is significantly higher among those workers with a third level of general education completed. A separate analysis for females also reveals these positive returns of recent investments in human capital relative earnings, although in this case they appear to be none statistically significant.

Keywords: Education; on-the-job training; low pay; bivariate probit (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C33 J24 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2008-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-eec, nep-hrm and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.uam.es/departamentos/economicas/analecon/especifica/mimeo/wp20083.pdf
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.uam.es/departamentos/economicas/analecon/especifica/mimeo/wp20083.pdf [307 Moved Temporarily]--> https://www.uam.es/departamentos/economicas/analecon/especifica/mimeo/wp20083.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.uam.es/Economicas/AnalisisEconomicoTeoriaHistoria/1234888140248.htm/especifica/mimeo/wp20083.pdf)

Related works:
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:uam:wpaper:200803

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers in Economic Theory from Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain), Department of Economic Analysis (Economic Theory and Economic History) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Andrés Maroto-Sánchez ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).