A Reassessment of Technical Education in Mexico

The period spanning from the second half of the 1980s until the late 1990s is important for the Mexican economy, as it encompasses a major structural change from a protected, publicsector driven economy to a globally integrated, private-sector led one. For all its merits, this change seems to have produced an increasingly unequal distribution of the fruits of economic growth. The World Bank Report "Earnings Inequality after Mexico's Economic and Educational Reforms" (2000) showed that the most plausible hypothesis for the worsening in earnings inequality in Mexico is the increased rate of skill-biased technological change brought about by trade liberalization. This World Bank Report also found that Mexico is experiencing increasing returns to higher education, and that the skill composition of employment in manufacturing and other export sectors has moved toward demanding a higher proportion of skilled workers, particularly in industries that are most open to international competition.