# Introduction

A major theme In the economics of education literature over the past quarter of a century has been the empirical examination of the efficacy of vocational education. mainly In developing countries. Initiated by Foster's classic study of vocational schooling in Ghana In the years following independence (Foster 1965), this literature, now comprising dozens of empirical studies, has been fairly unanimous in recording a negative verdict on vocational secondary education in cost-benefit terms, particularly in relation to more traditionally academic forms of secondary schooling. Summaries of this literature are given in Zymelman (1976), Metcalf (1985), Psacharopoulos (1987) and Tilak (1988).

More recently, a number of evaluation studies have challenged the established orthodoxy in adducing findings far more supportive of vocational schooling. Set in the US, Israel and Hong Kong these studies have departed from traditonal approaches by focussing on the relation between vocational field of study and subsequent occupaticn. They report significant eamings advantages for vocational school completers working in related fields compared both to those who do not work in related fields and also to academic school completers. Fredland and Little (1980) contrasted the eamings of "users' and "non-users^ of vocational education in the actual job of a sample of males from the National Longitudinal Survey In the US. Rumberger and Daymont (1984) matched vocational education credits in school with current fields of work. Neuman and Ziderman (1991) examined the earnings effects of vocational school completers in "matched" and "non-matched" occupations in a sample of prime age males in Israel. Chung (1990) compared the eamings of vocational school "users" to those of "non-users" and academic school graduates in a subsample of males of the Hong Kong population census.

Thus all these studies report results that are far more favorable to vocational schooling than is the main thrust of the traditional evaluation literature. In this paper, a parallel methodology is applied to Brazilian data. The results reported in this paper are in broad conformity with those of the new wave of studies, in showing eamings advantages to vocational school completers who are employed In *matched" occupations.

# 1. Trends In Vocatlonal Schooling

Based on an analysis of UNESCO enrollment data, Benavot (1983) examined the vocational enrollment ratio (the proportion of secondary school pupils enrolled in vocational schools) over time. He found a general shift away from vocational schooling in relative terms since the mid-1950, a finding consistent with the negative results for vocational schooling from evaluation studies. We report below a reexamination of these trends for the period 1960-1984, based on unweighted vocational enrollment ratios for 65 countries'.

' This discussion is drawn from Middleton, Ziderman and Adams (1992). To compute the average unweighted vocational enrollment ratio for a region or a country group by income level, a simple average of individual vocational enrollment ratios is taken for the countries of interest; thus the experience of each country, regardless of size, is accorded equal weight in the overall enrollment ratio average.