Impacts of professional education in the Brazilian labor market

Abstract

This paper aims to estimate the impacts of vocational training programs on the performance of individuals in the labor market. The literature points out that the benefits are usually limited, but it is emphasized that there is significant variation between the effects within the economy. For Brazil, there is not enough work done exploring the heterogeneity of the impacts between different economic activities. Using PME microdata this paper builds a Difference in Differences model with propensity score matching to infer impacts of vocational training on income, employability, and formalization. The results show that the informal employees of the industrial sector, commerce and domestic services are the ones who benefit most from these programs.