Skills and Youth Unemployment: Cross-Country Evidence from Synthetic Panel Data

Abstract

"This paper estimates the effect of human capital on countries’ youth unemployment ratio, by using country average scores from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the unemployment ratio of the same birth cohort. The identification strategy is based on variations in skills within country-by-year and across PISA cohorts. We estimate that a one standard deviation increase in reading literacy decreases the unemployment ratio by 1.2 percentage points, which is accounted for by a significant increase in employment. We find some evidence that educational and labour market institutions play a role in the association between skills and unemployment." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

Cite article

Rodrigues, M. (2020): Skills and Youth Unemployment: Cross-Country Evidence from Synthetic Panel Data. In: Journal of Human Capital, Vol. 14, No. 2, p. 217-248. DOI:10.1086/708855