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Duration of Pre‐university Education and Labour Market Outcomes: Evidence from a Quasi‐experiment in Ghana
Author(s) -
Boahen Emmanuel Adu,
Opoku Kwadwo,
Schotte Simone
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of international development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.533
H-Index - 66
eISSN - 1099-1328
pISSN - 0954-1748
DOI - 10.1002/jid.3519
Subject(s) - duration (music) , economics , education economics , higher education , natural experiment , labour economics , demographic economics , quality (philosophy) , political science , economic growth , education policy , medicine , art , literature , pathology , philosophy , epistemology
This paper provides new evidence on the effect of shortening the duration of pre‐university education on long‐term labour market outcomes in Ghana, expl`oiting the education reform of 1987 as a natural experiment. Our results indicate that the drastic cut in the duration of pre‐tertiary education from 17 to 12 years improved the labour market success of treated cohorts. However, this is driven by a ‘quantity’ effect: the shorter course duration reduced the direct and indirect costs of acquiring post‐primary education and allowed more students to enrol, which provided access to better job opportunities. On aggregate, this has dominated the negative effect on education ‘quality’. © 2020 UNU‐WIDER. Journal of International Development published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.