The Long-term Labour Market Premiums Associated with a Terminal High School Diploma - ARCHIVED

This paper examines the long-term labour market premiums associated with a high school diploma. The focus is on the value of the qualification (the signaling effect), but the premiums associated with the number of years of schooling required to obtain the qualification (the human-capital effect) are also estimated. The labour market outcomes of individuals born in the mid-1960s are measured from their mid-20s to their mid-40s with longitudinal administrative data from the Longitudinal Worker File (LWF) that are linked to the 1991 Census of Population. Two groups are considered: terminal high school graduates (those who had obtained a high school diploma but had not acquired any postsecondary education by the 1991 Census) and individuals without a high school diploma (those who had no high school diploma, were not enrolled in high school, and had no postsecondary education at the time of the 1991 Census).