A recent literature argues that the labour market returns to vocational education vary over the life cycle. Graduates with an occupation-specific educational degree have a smooth transition into the labour market but experience difficulties later in their career when their specific skills become obsolete. This life course penalty to vocational education is expected to be particularly strong in periods of rapid technological change. Existing literature has mostly studied this topic from the perspective of age effects but focused less on cohort and period effects. Moreover, it is unclear to what extent lower returns to vocational education in the late career vary across time periods. Using Labour Force Survey data for the Netherlands (1996–2012) we find that having a more occupation-specific educational degree increases the likelihood of being employed in early life and lowers the average job status. This initial advantage of a higher employment probability declines with age, and the disadvantage in job status increases as workers grow older. We find that these life-cycle effects have not, or only marginally, changed over time.

中文翻译：

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全生命周期和跨时间的普通和职业教育对劳动力市场的影响：考虑年龄、时期和队列效应

最近的一篇文献认为，职业教育的劳动力市场回报在整个生命周期中是不同的。拥有特定职业教育学位的毕业生可以顺利过渡到劳动力市场，但当他们的特定技能变得过时时，他们在职业生涯后期会遇到困难。在技​​术快速变化的时期，职业教育的这种终身损失预计将特别严重。现有文献大多从年龄效应的角度研究这一主题，但较少关注队列和时期效应。此外，尚不清楚职业教育后期职业教育的低回报在多大程度上随时间段而异。使用荷兰劳动力调查数据（1996-2012 年），我们发现拥有更多职业教育学位会增加早期就业的可能性并降低平均工作状态。较高就​​业概率的这种初始优势随着年龄的增长而下降，而随着工人年龄的增长，工作状态的劣势也会增加。我们发现这些生命周期的影响并没有，或者只是轻微地随着时间的推移而改变。