Measured Ability, Educational Attainment, and Earnings of Vocational Trainee-Graduates : Some Empirical Evidences

The basic aim of the paper is to clarify the empirical relationship among measured ability, educational attainment, exposure to vocational training and wage earnings among a specific group of the work force which are apply described as less-skilled, and hence, less-paid. The hypothesized causal directions among the prime explanatory variables with respect to (initial) daily wage earnings follow the a priority statements. However the degree of statistical significance varies widely but with consequently important implications. The results of the study re-emphasized the importance of educational attainment in the employer's hiring decision at the entry point of the labor market even after exposure to vocational training. The length of time between graduation from the vocational training program and evaluation shows a marked direct influence in daily wage earnings which suggest an enhancement of the quality of labor skill resulting into more graduates can search for an employer who is willing to pay a relatively high initial wage rate in a given labor market. Measured ability as well as the length of exposure to vocational training courses (in hours) has no statistical significance in the explanation of the variations in daily wage earning. Indeed, one may speculate that these variables have more explanatory (and predictive) capacity for explaining the variations in acquired skills rather than daily wage earnings. On the other hand, measured ability would have accounted significantly for more of the variance in wage earnings had an aggregate measure of the regressand was used as a measure of the theoretical construct (which would capture the cumulative differentials in wage increases due to varying productivity in a given time period) instead of earnings per unit time.