Vocational Education, Per Capita Income, and Employment in the US

Abstract

This paper examines the effects of vocational education on per capita income and employment in the U.S. A panel dataset on the number of graduates from community colleges as a proxy for vocational education for fifty states and Washington D.C. during 2002-2010 is used. The method of three stage least squares was employed. The results show that vocational education appears to affect changes in per capita income and employment positively. Nest, we compare and contrast vocational education with university education by using data on the number of four-year college graduates. The results show that the vocational education increases per capita income and employment more than university education in the short run but less than the latter in the long run.