Fluctuations in the wage gap between vocational and general secondary education: lessons from Portugal

A new paper published ONLINE FIRST freely accessible finds for Portugal’s wage gap between vocational and general secondary education no support for either the human capital prediction of crossing wage profiles or the hypothesis that general graduates increasingly outperform vocational graduates in late career.

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Hugo Reis

Fluctuations in the wage gap between vocational and general secondary education: Lessons from Portugal

by Joop Hartog, Pedro Raposo & Hugo Reis

Published ONLINE FIRST 2021: Journal of Population Economics
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GLO Fellow Hugo Reis

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Author Abstract: We document and analyse the wage gap between vocational and general secondary education in Portugal between 1994 and 2013. As Portuguese workers have been educated in different school systems, we have to distinguish between birth cohorts. Analysing the wage gaps within cohorts, we find no support for either the human capital prediction of crossing wage profiles or the hypothesis that general graduates increasingly outperform vocational graduates in late career. We discover that the lifecycle wage profiles have shifted over time. We link the pattern of shifting cohort profiles to changes in the school system and in the structure of labour demand. We conclude that assessing the relative value of vocational education requires assessing how the vocational curriculum responds to changes in economic structure and technology. We show that the decline in assortative matching between workers and firms has benefited vocationally educated workers.

Number of submissions, 2010-2020
EiC Report 2020


Journal of Population Economics
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