IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/sjecst/v160y2024i1d10.1186_s41937-023-00118-7.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

What wages do people expect for vocational and academic education backgrounds in Switzerland?

Author

Listed:
  • Maria Alejandra Cattaneo

    (Swiss Coordination Centre for Research in Education)

Abstract

Correctly anticipating the earnings for different education profiles is pivotal in making informed education decisions. In this paper, leveraging unique survey data, we study the wage expectations for academic and vocational education backgrounds in Switzerland. Personal reference points matter in forming these wage expectations as we find significant heterogeneity in their distributions by gender, age, socioeconomic status, region of residence, and migration background. Asymmetries exist between beliefs for academic and vocational backgrounds since relative differences in wage expectations also vary by respondents’ characteristics. These heterogeneities are vital for education policy because our analyses show that the wage expectations are associated with preferences for specific educational tracks for the own (hypothetical) child. If education decisions are ill-informed, this possibly leads to educational mismatches and related adverse effects later in life.

Suggested Citation

  • Maria Alejandra Cattaneo, 2024. "What wages do people expect for vocational and academic education backgrounds in Switzerland?," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, Springer;Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, vol. 160(1), pages 1-16, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:sjecst:v:160:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1186_s41937-023-00118-7
    DOI: 10.1186/s41937-023-00118-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1186/s41937-023-00118-7
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1186/s41937-023-00118-7?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Wage expectations; Beliefs; Educational preferences; Reference points;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I20 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - General
    • D84 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Expectations; Speculations
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:sjecst:v:160:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1186_s41937-023-00118-7. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.