Vocational Training Provides Benefits to Families Beyond Short-term Increases in Income

The benefit of vocational technical training is generally measured by post-training earned income. However, in a new study, McCourt professor Adriana Kugler and co-authors Maurice Kugler, Juan E. Saavedra, and Luis Omar Herrera-Prada find that a focus on earnings may undervalue the wider benefits vocational training programs have for long-term employment and empowering communities to pursue greater education and income-earning opportunities.

In the study, Kugler and her co-authors examined the direct and spillover effects of a randomized vocational training program for disadvantaged youth implemented at scale in Colombia called Youth in Action (YIA). The researchers documented the trainees’ employment, earnings, and formal education outcomes over the course of eleven years reviewing how access to educational opportunities impacts family members and whether the training could lead trainees and trainees’ family members to pursue formal education opportunities.

“To date, there has been no formal exploration of the wider benefits that vocational training has on education and other family members and how it can help to lift up underserved communities,” Kugler explains. “I hope that this research will spark further insights and studies because the findings could help many countries improve policies aimed at increasing opportunities for social mobility.”

Below are three key findings from the research:

1. Trainees pursued further education opportunities. The evidence suggests that female and male trainees increased higher education enrollments after the training program by 28% and 25%, respectively. With fewer financial credit constraints, women pursued additional education opportunities after initial vocational training. The evidence also showed that men pursued further education after the initial training after seeing the value of the learned skills and potential for growth.
2. Family members of the trainees were more likely to pursue educational opportunities. As family members learned about new skills, the findings showed that secondary school completion rates increased among relatives of participants by 14%, which suggests that family members are more likely to also pursue educational opportunities.
3. The overall benefits well surpass the costs of the program when taking into account the educational opportunities and impacts on other family members.When the educational benefits of participants and their family members, or spillover benefits, are taken into account, the benefits outweigh the costs of the program substantially. By contrast, the benefits cover costs by a smaller margin when one only considers the earnings benefits to the trainees.

For more information, you can read the full report and findings here .