Vocational training for female job returners: Effects on employment, earnings and job quality

This paper studies how training vouchers increase the employment prospects of women with interrupted employment histories. Using the population of female job returners who receive a training voucher to participate in training programs and a randomly selected control group from German administrative data, I analyze the effectiveness of training on various labor market outcomes. The results suggest that receiving a training voucher translates into substantial gains in employment and earnings and increases job quality and stability. Analyzing the heterogeneity effects reveals that the effectiveness of training increases with the provided human capital. Several robustness checks support a causal interpretation of the results.