Rates of return to investments in formal and technical/vocational education in Singapore

There is an absence of empirical evidence on returns to education in Singapore for nearly 30 years, mainly because of lack of publicly available data. The present study attempts to fill this gap by exploring the relationship between education and earnings in Singapore and to link the results of the study to research evidence from 30 years ago, as well as relate the results to those in the international literature. Recent Labor Force Survey data are used to obtain evidence and update older estimates of the private returns to investment in formal and technical/vocational education from different levels and types of schooling in Singapore. Some of the results confirm earlier patterns from other country studies, while other results make Singapore a world outlier, with very high private returns to schooling (comparable with estimates from lower-middle income countries) in relation to Singapore's advanced stage of development and per-capita income.

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There is an absence of empirical evidence on returns to education in Singapore for nearly 30 years, mainly because of lack of publicly available data. The present study attempts to fill this gap by exploring the relationship between education and earnings in Singapore and to link the results of the study to research evidence from 30 years ago, as well as relate the results to those in the international literature. Recent Labor Force Survey data are used to obtain evidence and update older estimates of the private returns to investment in formal and technical/vocational education from ...  [+] Show more