What wages do people expect for vocational and academic education backgrounds in Switzerland?

Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics

Table 1 Description of variables and basic summary of the data

	Mean	Std.Dev
Main outcome variables
Wage expected at age 30 with academic education	7602.5	2380.7
Wage expected at age 30 with vocational education	5308.9	1435.0
Relative wage difference expected at age 30	0.463	0.462
Wage expected at age 50 with academic education	10,817.0	4016.2
Wage expected at age 50 with vocational education	6715.1	1839.6
Relative wage difference expected at age 50	0.646	0.608
Demographic and socioeconomic background
Female (yes/no)	0.492
Age
18–29	0.214
30–39	0.135
40–49	0.277
50 +	0.374
Educational background
Obligatory	0.046
Vocational	0.690
Academic	0.264
Monthly household income
Less than 6000	0.246
6001–10,000	0.334
More than 10,000	0.263
Missing	0.157
Parent (yes/no)	0.595
Migration background (yes/no)	0.272
Region of living
German	0.721
French	0.238
Italian	0.041
Number of observations	9163

Source: Survey of Public Opinion on Education 2019–2020
The table reports mean values (standard deviations) of the variables shown. Main outcomes are respondents’ expectations of the wage for persons with an academic or a vocational education background at age 30 or 50. Relative wage differences are calculated as the ratio of the wage expected for persons with an academic over the wage expected for persons with a vocational education background (minus 1). Respondents’ educational background is based on the highest education achieved or current education attended. Respondents’ household income is surveyed in categorical form as shown