Abstract:
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The objectives of this study are to analyze factors affecting labor force participation and monthly wage of employees, as well as compare changes in the returns to education by field of study of employees in Thailand from 2009 to 2018. Data used in this study is pooled cross-sectional data in the labor force survey from the National Statistical Office (NSO) from 2009 to 2018, 10 years in total. The sample was 15 - 60 years old employees with the sample size of 3,225,178 persons. The data is estimated using Heckman’s two-step method. The results of study show that characteristics associated with a higher labor force participation include being a married male with higher age and education degrees. In contrast, employees with a higher number of children and family income had a lower rate of labor force participation. For the factors affecting monthly income, a married male with higher education, field and experience working but increasing in work experience at decreasing rate.For the returns to education, the returns of primary school when compared with no primary school was reduced in the period 2009 - 2018. The returns of vocational and higher vocational certificate when compared with high school was constant and the returns of higher degrees remained high. When considering each field of study, the results show that, the return to higher education had steadily increased in almost all fields of study. The exceptions are the vocational certificate in the field of education and teacher training and the field of medicine and health that had the highest return difference in the first period but trends to decline, and the field of law had the highest return difference and trends to increase continuously.
Keywords: Returns to Education, Field of Study, Wage, Labor Force Participation, Employee
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