The mean returns to various forms of human capital have been extensively investigated in the labor economics literature, especially the returns to formal education and work-related training. Only recently has the attention been shifted to exploring the degree to which education might be associated with more complex changes in the conditional wage distribution.
Several studies estimate the returns to education across the conditional wage distribution using quantile regression (QR) techniques. Studies use the cross-sectional data from a variety of different data sources covering 15 European countries plus the USA. These studies found that returns to schooling increases over the wage distribution.
This paper aims to see if there is an upward sloping profile for training across the conditional wages distribution. Education and work-related training are complementary as numerous studies attest. The paper documents how observed training associations differ across the European Union countries. This study is carried upon the private sector men in ten European Union countries.
Results of the paper showed the following:
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for the majority of countries, associations between training and wages are similar across the conditional wage distribution
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the association between post-secondary education and wages is increasing across the wages distribution
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education is associated with increased dispersion of the conditional wage distribution
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there may be different forces at work in the relationship between training and wages
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Britain and Denmark are amongst the countries with the lowest wage associations
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