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Policy proposals promoting vocational education focus on the school-to-work transition. But with technological change, gains in youth employment may be offset by less adaptability and diminished employment later in life. To test for this tradeoff, we employ a difference-in-differences approach that compares employment rates across different ages for people with general and vocational education. Using microdata for 11 countries from IALS, we find strong and robust support for such a tradeoff, especially in countries emphasizing apprenticeship programs. German Microcensus data and Austrian administrative data confirm the results for within-occupational-group analysis and for exogenous variation from plant closures, respectively.

The authors propose a restructuring of the \"food as health\" paradigm to \"food as well-being.\" This requires shifting from an emphasis on restraint and restrictions to a more positive, holistic understanding of the role of food in overall well-being. The authors propose the concept of food well-being (FWB), defined as a positive psychological, physical, emotional, and social relationship with food at both individual and societal levels. The authors define and explain the five primary domains of FWB: food socialization, food literacy, food marketing, food availability, and food policy. The FWB framework employs a richer definition of food and highlights the need for research that bridges other disciplines and paradigms outside and within marketing. Further research should develop and refine the understanding of each domain with the ultimate goal of moving the field toward this embodiment of food as well-being.

Earlier research showed that obtaining a vocational instead of a general qualification has contrasting effects on employment and earnings over the life course. Relying on two international datasets (ESJS and PIAAC) and focussing on upper-secondary and post-secondary non-tertiary qualifications, we find similar contrasting effects in terms of educational and skill mismatches. While vocationally educated individuals are less likely to face mismatches at the start of their careers, this advantage gradually fades over time. This pattern is not only found for overall mismatches, but also for mismatches in terms of several more detailed types of skills. We also find more favourable effects in terms of avoided mismatches for vocational programmes that combine a specific focus with workplace learning, while programmes that combine a less-specific focus with workplace learning seem to be less effective.

Educational systems with a high level of tracking and vocational orientation have been shown to improve the allocation of school-leavers in the labor market. However, tracked educational systems are also known to increase inequality of educational opportunity. This presumed trade-off between equality and labor market preparation is clearly rooted in two different perspectives on the origin of differentiation in educational systems, dating back to the nineteenth century. Tracking was seen both as a way to prepare students for an industrializing labor market and as a way for the elite to formalize social distances in the educational system. We empirically study the trade-off with newly developed country-level indicators for tracking and vocational orientation. Our country-level regressions largely support the existence of the trade-off between labor market allocation and equality of opportunity.

We evaluate returns to General Educational Development (GED) certification for high school dropouts using state administrative data. We apply a fuzzy regression discontinuity method to account for test takers retaking the test. For women we find that GED certification has no statistically significant effect on either employment or earnings. For men we find a significant increase in earnings in the second year after taking the test but no impact in subsequent years. GED certification increases postsecondary school enrollment by 4–8 percentage points. Our results differ from regression discontinuity approaches that fail to account for test retaking.

Using European Union Labour Force Survey data from 1998 to 2004, this research explores how the decrease in the positional value of education associated with educational expansion has affected occupational returns to education in Spain. The positional value of education is measured by taking the percentage of labour market entrants with at least the same level of education as the respondent for every year of entry into the labour market since 1959. We control for the effects of the economic cycle, of economic sectors, and of the different educational reforms that have affected nine successive cohorts of labour market entrants. Our analysis reveals, first, that a higher percentage of entrants with at least the same credential as the respondent is associated with lower occupational prestige; second, we find that this loss of occupational prestige is higher for general than for technical education, supporting the hypothesis that technical fields of education transmit a clearer signal of workers' skills to employers. The exception is health and welfare fields in higher education. The possibility that educational or occupational segregation by gender explains the relative occupational loss in this particular field is not supported by our findings.

This paper analyzes the long-term economic determinants of the demographic transition using a large panel of countries since 1870. A simple theoretical framework accounts for the possibly nonmonotonic variations of fertility in the course of economic development. As predicted by unified growth theory, I find that primary schooling, rather than income or health-related variables, is the most robust determinant of the fertility transition. As regards the health transition, both education and income are significant determinants of mortality rates, but education alone accounts for the bulk of their time variation over the twentieth century. Thus, education can be viewed as the main long-term determinant of the demographic transition.

Two common hypotheses regarding the relative benefits of vocational versus general education are (1) that vocational skills enhance relative short-term earnings and (2) that general skills enhance relative long-term earnings. Empirical evidence for these hypotheses has remained limited. Based on Swedish registry data of individuals in short (2-year) upper secondary school programs, this study provides a first exploration of individuals’ earnings across nearly complete careers. The descriptive earnings patterns indicate support for both hypotheses 1 and 2. The support holds when grade point average and family fixed effects are controlled for and also when enrollment in further education and fertility decisions are taken into account.

One of the key factors influencing agricultural development and farm performance is access to finance. There are several factors that influence access to finance, including financial management capacity, which is linked to financial literacy. The paper analyzes the factors which determine farmers’ financial management behavior, in the case of Kosovo, based on a structured farm survey focusing on the vineyard sector. The findings suggest that half of the interviewed farmers did not keep records regarding costs and incomes. The likelihood to keep financial records is linked to several household and farm attributes. Market-oriented farmers who had contracts were more likely to keep financial records than those who did not. Policymakers through public advisory services as well as financial institutions should address the need to improve financial literacy among farmers.

This paper examines the relative benefits of general education and vocational training during Romania's transition to a market economy. We examine a 1973 educational reform that shifted a large proportion of students from vocational training to general education. Using census and household survey data, we analyze the effect of this policy with a regression discontinuity design. We find that men affected by the policy are significantly less likely to work in manual or craft-related occupations but have similar levels of labor market participation and earnings compared to their counterparts unaffected by the policy. We conclude that differences in labor market returns between graduates of vocational and general schools are largely driven by selection.