General Versus Vocational High Schools and Labor Market Outcomes in Turkey

Economic Research Forum Working Paper No. 9905

32 Pages Posted: 26 Mar 2001

See all articles by Aysit Tansel

Aysit Tansel

Middle East Technical University (METU) - Department of Economics; IZA Institute of Labor Economics; Economic Research Forum (ERF)

Date Written: September 1998

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to provide evidence on the extent of wage differential between general and vocational high school graduates who do not go on to higher education. School selection is modeled with a three way multinominal logit model. Selectivity corrected wage equations are estimated for general and vocational high school graduates. Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition of the wage differential is performed. Analysis is carried out for men and women separately. Individual level data from 1994 household Expenditure Survey conducted by the State Institute of Statistics are used in the analysis. The main finding is that when controlled for observed characteristics and sample selection, for men, the wages of the vocational high school graduates are larger than that of the general high school graduates. It was not possible to make a comparison for women due to poor wage equation estimates for the vocational high school graduate women. Second, lower unemployment rates are observed among vocational high school graduates than among general high school graduates. Third, for men private returns to vocational high schooling are higher than to general high schooling. Thus, labor market outcomes in terms of private rates of return to schooling, unemployment rates and wages favor vocational high schools than general high schools.

Keywords: General versus vocational high schools, labor market, Gender, Turkey

JEL Classification: J16, J31, J38

Suggested Citation

Tansel, Aysit, General Versus Vocational High Schools and Labor Market Outcomes in Turkey (September 1998). Economic Research Forum Working Paper No. 9905, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=263276 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.263276

Aysit Tansel (Contact Author)

Middle East Technical University (METU) - Department of Economics ( email )

Inonu Bulvari
Ankara 06800
Turkey
90 312 210 2073 (Phone)
90 312 210 7964 (Fax)

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

Economic Research Forum (ERF) ( email )

21 Al-Sad Al-Aaly St.
(P.O. Box: 12311)
Dokki, Cairo
Egypt

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