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

Arbeitspapier

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 birth cohorts. Analysing the wage gaps within cohorts, we find no support for the human capital prediction of crossing wage profiles and no support either for 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 to assess 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 benefitted vocationally educated workers.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: GLO Discussion Paper ; No. 769

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials ; Returns to Education
• Subject: returns to education ; vocational wage gap ; worker-firm allocation

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Hartog, Joop ; Raposo, Pedro S. ; Reis, Hugo
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Global Labor Organization (GLO)
• (where): Essen
• (when): 2021

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/228830
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET