New variables for vocational secondary schooling: Patterns around the world from 1950-2010
Alison Cathles
#2016-002
Projections in Europe and the United States suggest job vacancies will
soon be concentrated in positions that require vocational training. This
has spurred policy discussions about how vocational education can
optimally complement or substitute for general education and highlighted
the need to understand more precisely how the mix of skills in a
workforce impacts economic growth. Macroeconomic growth literature has
traditionally incorporated measures for human capital based on the
length of time spent in educational institutions. The need to measure
the skills acquired through different kinds of education has been
appreciated. Specifically, the insights that might be obtained by
comparing the macroeconomic growth of countries with different amounts
of vocational education has been apparent, but the long-time series of
internationally comparable data required has not been readily available.
This paper fills this need by presenting consistent data on Vocational
Secondary Schooling at five-year intervals from 1950-2010 for 129
countries. These data are constructed on the basis of existing UNESCO
enrolment data and measures of secondary schooling from Barro and Lee.
This paper describes both the methods used to construct the
internationally comparable vocational secondary education variables and
regional trends over the past 60 years. Separating education by type,
vocational and general, is a first step toward better linking the
educational purpose, at least in terms of workplace skill development,
with economic results. The data are fully presented in the Annexes in
tables (available here), so that they can be used by others to
empirically investigate questions related to vocational education and
economic growth.
Keywords: Vocational Education, Education and Economic Development,
Human Capital, Skills
JEL Classification: I25, J24, 010