This paper uses the variation in the share of foreign direct investment jobs among provinces in
Vietnam from 1999 to 2009 to examine the impact of increasing FDI jobs on school attendance
in a low-income country. FDI jobs in Vietnam are more skill-intensive, on average, than nonFDI
jobs within a given industry. I find evidence that an increase in the share of FDI jobs in a
province leads to a decline in school attendance and an increase in the likelihood that a young
adult works in a foreign sector job. These impacts are concentrated among young adults, ages 15
to 17, who are at the legal employment age but have not yet completed higher secondary
schooling. These results are robust to controlling for changes in manufacturing jobs and
education compositions within each province, and consistent within subgroups by gender,
minority status, and spatial origin. These effects are driven by the FDI jobs requiring 9 years of
education, which raises the opportunity cost of schooling for students at the key dropout margin
of 15 to 17. Supplementary results suggest that exposure to FDI jobs also increases the likelihood
that a cohort completes at least 9 years of schooling