Education expansion and decline in tertiary premium in Brazil: 1995-2013

摘要

Using Brazil National Household Survey 1995-2013 data, this paper examines how the education expansion in Brazil impacted the tertiary premium through the interaction of relative supply and relative demand. The identification of the impact of relative demand on education premium provides an empirical testing of the Heckscher-Ohlin model in the context of Brazil. The results suggest that the change in relative supply had converged the education premium thus converged the wage income distribution. The results also show that there was no decrease in relative demand for skilled workers in Brazil in the past two decades, which is inconsistent with what the Heckscher-Ohlin model predicts.