Preparing Women of Substance? Education, Training, and Labor Market Outcomes for Women in Pakistan

This paper investigates the economic (i.e., labor market) outcomes of “training” for individuals in Pakistan. The labor market benefits of general education have been relatively well explored in the literature and specifically in Pakistan. They point to the benefits of education accruing both from education or skills that promote a person’s entry into more lucrative occupations and from raising earnings within any given occupation. This research delves into another angle by investigating the role, if any, of acquired “training“—technical, vocational, apprenticeship, or on-the-job—and its impact through both channels ofeffect on economic wellbeing. This is done using data from a unique, purpose-designed survey of more than 1,000 households in Pakistan, collected in 2007. Multinomial logit estimates of occupational attainment show how training determines occupational choice. In addition, we estimate the returns to schooling and to training separately for men and women. The results show that, while training significantlyimproves women’s chances of entering self-employment and wage work (as well as the more “lucrative” occupations), only wage-working women benefit from improved earnings through the training they have acquired. On the other hand, men who have acquired skills this way benefit through an improved probability of being self-employed and earning higher returns within that occupation.