The Positional Value of Education in the Americas : Dynamics of Inequality in Labor Market Returns under Educational Expansion, 2000-2019

The article examines how the labour market value of education has changed in the context of the expansion of higher education. However, one drawback is to understand how it generates differences between high and low skilled labour markets, particularly in contexts of high inequality and informality. This could be linked to specific mechanisms by which employers value educational credentials as signalled skills. Using the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), we analyse trends over two decades in 12 (Ibero) American countries. Our results confirm the previous results for the claim that education in the Americas has become increasingly positional, compared with the absolute model of education. However, we find that the relative gains in wages for workers with higher levels of education, as the pool of higher education graduates expand over time, decreased in high skilled occupations, while relative gains show a stable trend or slightly increased for lower-skilled occupations. This trend is present in both absolute and positional models of education. These findings are consistent with processes of displacement of low skilled workers due to increasing competition for highly educated workers for low-skilled jobs