The Participation of Female Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union in Vocational Training Courses in Israel

Abstract

This paper deals with the occupational absorption of female immigrants from the former Soviet Union (now the CIS) into Israel’s labor market, and their participation in subsidized vocational training courses. About 43 percent of these immigrants had participated in such a course during their first five years in Israel.

A calibration of a dynamic choice model in which immigrants’ decision regarding their occupation in Israel is made simultaneously with the decision whether to undergo training shows that the model successfully generates the path of immigrants’ occupational absorption during the first five years after their arrival in the country. Assuming that training courses are freely available and that participation in a course is the immigrants’ own decision and not the result of selection of participants by the course administrators, the model successfully predicts the rate of participation in such courses during immigrants’ first two years in Israel.