PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Eric A. Hanushek
AU  - Guido Schwerdt
AU  - Ludger Woessmann
AU  - Lei Zhang
TI  - General Education, Vocational Education, and Labor-Market Outcomes over the Life-Cycle
AID  - 10.3368/jhr.52.1.0415-7074R
DP  - 2016 Mar 08
TA  - Journal of Human Resources
4099  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2016/03/04/jhr.52.1.0415-7074R.short
4100  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2016/03/04/jhr.52.1.0415-7074R.full
AB  - Policy proposals promoting vocational education focus on the school-to-work transition. But with technological change, gains in youth employment may be offset by less adaptability and diminished employment later in life. To test for this trade-off, we employ a difference-indifferences approach that compares employment rates across different ages for people with general and vocational education. Using micro data for 11 countries from IALS, we find strong and robust support for such a trade-off, especially in countries emphasizing apprenticeship programs. German Microcensus data and Austrian administrative data confirm the results for within-occupational-group analysis and for exogenous variation from plant closures, respectively.