Trends and Linkages in Schooling and Work among Cambodian Youth : A Cohort Panel Analysis

Cambodia's education sector has faced and overcome a number of challenges in recent history. Several decades of political and social unrest caused by the Khmer Rouge regime of the 1970s and Vietnamese occupation in the 1980's dealt a severe blow to the education system and left it in a state of disintegration. Primary and secondary enrollment through to the 1980's fell, with school attendance dramatically lower for individuals who were teenagers in 1975 compared to previous or subsequent cohorts (de Walque, 2004). There were improvements by the following decade: The Paris Agreements and beginnings of UN sponsored elections ushered in a renewed focus on building and reconstructing schools and increasing the national budget allocation toward education, which reached 15.7 percent in 2001 (GAD/C 2002). Recent generations of youth enjoy greater access to schooling than previous ones; 49 percent of youth finish their education at a level higher than their father and 63 percent finish at a level higher than their mother (ILO, 2013). Net primary enrollments increased from 84 percent in 1992 to 96.4 percent in 2012, and net secondary enrollments from 16.6 percent in 2000 to 35 percent in 2012 (Tandon and Fukao, 2015). The labor market in Cambodia also went through a transformation in part due tostrong economic growth for the last two decades: salaried employment rose one-third in this period from 23 percent in 2004 to 30 percent in 2011 (ILO, 2013). As of 2015, Cambodia has attained the lower-middle-income status, with gross national income (GNI) per capita reaching USD 1,070. Section one presents the data, a general overview of the cohort panel approach, and initial visual evidence on and discussion of cross-cohort patterns. Section two presents methods and results from our empirical exercise disentangling cohort versus age and time effects. Here we are able to get a more accurate insight into our first objective. Section three uses a regression analysis framework to present evidence on the relationship between early cohort experiences and labor adult labor market outcomes, our second objective. Section four concludes