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Education Expansion and Decline in Tertiary Premium in Brazil: 1995-2013

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  • Yang Wang

    (Department of Economics, Tulane University)

Abstract

According to the Brazil Naional Household Survey 1995-2013 data, the decline in the relative wage of tertiary-educated workers coincides with an education expansion that shifted the relative supply and might also change the quality composition of the tertiary group. This paper tries to decompose the change in the tertiary premium in Brazil during the 1995-2013 period into the "price effect", which refers to the change in educational premium caused by the shifts in suppl and demand, and the "composition effect", which refers to whether there was any significant decline in the average quality of tertiary-educated workers of the recent cohorts and how the changes in cohort quality had impacted the relative wage of the tertiary group. The results demonstrate that the growth in the relative supply had a significant negative impact on the decline of tertiary premium. The results also show that the average quality of the tertiary-educated workers of the recent cohorts declined, which also accounts for a substantial proportion of the decline in the relative wage.

Suggested Citation

  • Yang Wang, 2015. "Education Expansion and Decline in Tertiary Premium in Brazil: 1995-2013," Working Papers 1525, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:tul:wpaper:1525
    as

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    File URL: http://repec.tulane.edu/RePEc/pdf/tul1525.pdf
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    earning inequality; education expansion; decline in tertiary premium; skill supply and demand; average cohort quality;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality
    • I26 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Returns to Education
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration

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