IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lec/leecon/03-1.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Is Education More Benficial to the Less Able? Eocnometric Evidence from Ethiopia

Author

Listed:
  • Sourafel Girma
  • Abbi Kedir

Abstract

The paper investigates whether returns to schooling in Ethiopia vary according to the ability of individuals. To do so it adopts an instrumental variables quantile regression framework that allows for both endogeneity of schooling resulting from unmeasured ability, and possible heterogeneity in the impact of schooling. The empirical estimates indicate that education contributes more to the earnings of the less able individuals, consistent with the notion that education and ability are substitutes. By contrast, the relatively low (but still economically significant) returns to education at the higher end of the conditional earnings distribution suggest the importance of inherent ability or personal connections in securing high paying jobs.

Suggested Citation

  • Sourafel Girma & Abbi Kedir, 2003. "Is Education More Benficial to the Less Able? Eocnometric Evidence from Ethiopia," Discussion Papers in Economics 03/1, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester.
    • Handle: RePEc:lec:leecon:03/1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.le.ac.uk/economics/research/RePEc/lec/leecon/econ03-1.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Omar Arias & Walter Sosa-Escudero & Kevin F. Hallock, 2001. "Individual heterogeneity in the returns to schooling: instrumental variables quantile regression using twins data," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 26(1), pages 7-40.
    2. Card, David, 1999. "The causal effect of education on earnings," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 30, pages 1801-1863, Elsevier.
    3. Roger Koenker & Kevin F. Hallock, 2001. "Quantile Regression," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(4), pages 143-156, Fall.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Aysit Tansel & Fatma Bircan Bodur, 2012. "Wage Inequality and Returns to Education in Turkey: A Quantile Regression Analysis," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(1), pages 107-121, February.
    2. Chris Sakellariou, 2005. "Heterogeneity in the Returns to Education and Experience: Evidence from a High and a Low Income S.E. Asian Country," Economic Growth Centre Working Paper Series 0501, Nanyang Technological University, School of Social Sciences, Economic Growth Centre.
    3. Harry Anthony Patrinos & Chris Sakellariou, 2006. "Economic volatility and returns to education in Venezuela: 1992-2002," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(17), pages 1991-2005.
    4. Patrinos, Harry Anthony & Ridao-Cano, Cris & Sakellariou, Chris, 2006. "Estimating the returns to education : accounting for heterogeneity in ability," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4040, The World Bank.
    5. World Bank, 2007. "Ethiopia : Urban Labor Markets, Challenges and Prospects, Volume 1. Synthesis Report," World Bank Publications - Reports 8011, The World Bank Group.
    6. Chris Sakellariou, 2005. "Profitability of Vocational vs. Formal Education for Men and Women in Singapore Using Quantile Regressions," Economic Growth Centre Working Paper Series 0502, Nanyang Technological University, School of Social Sciences, Economic Growth Centre.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Omar Arias & Gustavo Yamada & Luis Tejerina, 2004. "Education, family background and racial earnings inequality in Brazil," International Journal of Manpower, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 25(3/4), pages 355-374, April.
    2. Yakusheva, Olga, 2010. "Return to college education revisited: Is relevance relevant?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 29(6), pages 1125-1142, December.
    3. Wiji Arulampalam & Alison Booth & Mark Bryan, 2010. "Are there asymmetries in the effects of training on the conditional male wage distribution?," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 23(1), pages 251-272, January.
    4. Balestra, Simone & Backes-Gellner, Uschi, 2017. "Heterogeneous returns to education over the wage distribution: Who profits the most?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 89-105.
    5. Angel de la Fuente & Antonio Ciccone, 2003. "Human capital in a global and knowledge-based economy," UFAE and IAE Working Papers 562.03, Unitat de Fonaments de l'Anàlisi Econòmica (UAB) and Institut d'Anàlisi Econòmica (CSIC).
    6. Sourafel Girma & Abbi Kedir, 2005. "Heterogeneity in returns to schooling: Econometric evidence from Ethiopia," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(8), pages 1405-1416.
    7. Cinthya G. Caamal Olvera, 2017. "Decreasing returns to schooling in Mexico," Estudios Económicos, El Colegio de México, Centro de Estudios Económicos, vol. 32(1), pages 27-63.
    8. Kevin Denny & Vincent O'sullivan, 2007. "Can education compensate for low ability? Evidence from British data," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(9), pages 657-660.
    9. Michael Chletsos & Stelios Roupakias, 2020. "Education and wage inequality before and during the fiscal crisis: A quantile regression analysis for Greece 2006–2016," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(4), pages 1333-1364, November.
    10. Corrado Andini, 2010. "A dynamic Mincer equation with an application to Portuguese data," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(16), pages 2091-2098.
    11. Arabsheibani, Reza & Staneva, Anita, 2012. "Returns to Education in Russia: Where There Is Risky Sexual Behaviour There Is Also an Instrument," IZA Discussion Papers 6726, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Kevin Denny & Vincent O'Sullivan, 2004. "Can education compensate for low ability? Evidence from British data (version 3.0)," Open Access publications 10197/170, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    13. Daeheon Choi & Chune Young Chung & Ha Truong, 2019. "Return on Education in Two Major Vietnamese Cities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(18), pages 1-30, September.
    14. Green, David A. & Craig Riddell, W., 2003. "Literacy and earnings: an investigation of the interaction of cognitive and unobserved skills in earnings generation," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 165-184, April.
    15. repec:ucn:wpaper:10197/170 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Kevin Denny & Vincent O'Sullivan, 2004. "Can education compensate for low ability? Evidence from British data (version 3.1)," Working Papers 200420, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    17. Martins, Pedro S. & Pereira, Pedro T., 2004. "Does education reduce wage inequality? Quantile regression evidence from 16 countries," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 355-371, June.
    18. Takahiro Ito, 2009. "Education and Its Distributional Impacts on Living Standards," Global COE Hi-Stat Discussion Paper Series gd09-080, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    19. Patrinos, Harry Anthony & Ridao-Cano, Cris & Sakellariou, Chris, 2006. "Estimating the returns to education : accounting for heterogeneity in ability," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4040, The World Bank.
    20. Kevin Denny & Vincent O'Sullivan, 2004. "Can education compensate for low ability? Evidence from British data (version 3.2)," Open Access publications 10197/943, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    21. Muller, Christophe, 2018. "Heterogeneity and nonconstant effect in two-stage quantile regression," Econometrics and Statistics, Elsevier, vol. 8(C), pages 3-12.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    returns to schooling; quantile regression;

    JEL classification:

    • I2 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education
    • J3 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:lec:leecon:03/1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Abbie Sleath (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deleiuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.