Returns to General, Technical and Vocational Education in Developing Countries:recent evidence from Suriname

Abstract

We employ a new data set from Suriname to estimate private and social returns to technical, vocational and two tracks of general education (mathematics and language). Return estimates are based on gender-specific wage equations, corrected for sample selection bias and adjusted for unemployment. We find that, for both genders, returns to either general track exceed returns to technical or vocational education. Female returns to the language track exceed those to the mathematics track from the social and private perspective, while for males, both social and private returns in the mathematics track exceed those in the language track.