Is TVET more likely to lead to employment than general education? Evidence from Bangladesh

This paper examines whether pursuing Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) in Bangladesh leads to improved labour market outcomes compared to general education. Drawing on nationally representative data from the 2016 Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES), it employs logit models, ordinary least squares (OLS), and propensity score matching (PSM) to analyse employment status and hourly earnings across education streams, disaggregated by gender and educational level (secondary, higher secondary, and tertiary). The findings indicate that TVET is associated with higher employment probabilities for women at the lower levels of education, while TVET-educated men at the secondary level are less likely to be employed than their general-educated peers. In terms of earnings, TVET yields significantly higher wages at the secondary and higher secondary levels, particularly for women—challenging the widespread perception of TVET as a lower-value pathway. A key contribution of this paper lies in identifying a critical gap in national survey design: the HIES dataset does not capture the education level at which TVET is pursued, complicating direct comparisons. To address this, the paper introduces an assumption-based framework and conducts robustness checks (PSM) to validate results. This is the first paper to provide gender-disaggregated empirical evidence on TVET outcomes in Bangladesh using nationally representative data, offering methodological and practical insights. It contributes to the literature by highlighting structural challenges in measuring vocational pathways and informs policy by revealing the uneven and gendered returns to TVET in a Global South context.