We used the _Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra Domiciliar_ database – PNAD – (National Household Sample Survey) published by _Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística_ – IBGE - (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) annually in Brazil. The PNAD collects socioeconomic data on individuals in a sample of households in Brazil. In addition to the collection of permanent variables (work characteristics, education, income, and housing), the PNAD periodically conducts additional research to include other topics such as healthcare characteristics and characteristics of other education types (technical-vocational education, for example). The PNAD is a sample survey but is representative of Brazil. In 2007, the PNAD conducted a supplementary survey that sought to verify the technical-vocational education of the Brazilian population. Hence, we can examine the portion of the population who attends or has attended any technical-vocational course, as well as the course type and other features. A significant portion (23.8%) of the Brazilian population<sup>6</sup> was attending or had already attended technical-vocational education in 2007.

We consider three types of technical-vocational education that we can observe in the data: i) technical education at the upper secondary level; ii) technical educational at the tertiary level; and iii) short term training courses. Technical education courses at the upper secondary level (which will be called TEC for the remainder of the paper) can be attended by students who are pursuing or have completed a general education course and are further divided into subsequent, concurrent and integrated courses. Subsequent courses are technical courses that require the completion of general upper secondary education for attendance. Concurrent courses are technical courses that take place during the same period in which the individual pursues general upper secondary education, but they usually take place at different schools. Integrated courses include general upper secondary education and technical education courses in the same curriculum and at the same school.<sup>7</sup> Short term training courses refers to a short technical course that aims to prepare the student to carry out a professional activity without a specific concern for regular education. Thus, short term training courses do not require a minimum educational level, can be provided by any institution, and include a wide variety of courses. Short term training courses are also called Initial and Continuing Education courses (for the remainder of the article, we will refer to such courses as FIC [ _Formação Inicial e Continuada_ ]).

In sum, in the empirical work we consider 5 different groups:<sup>8</sup> 1) Individuals who have completed a general TEC course (including all types of TEC courses); 2) individuals who have

> 6 Population age 14 or older.

> 7 See Almeida, Amaral and Felicio (forthcoming) for more detail on the structure of technical-vocational education in Brazil.

> 8 The PNAD considers only the most important technical-vocational course that the person has completed, so there is a possibility of data sub-measurement because we have no information whether the person pursued only one or more than one technical-vocational course.

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