IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jafrec/v1y1992i2p192-205.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is the Rate of Return on Primary Schooling Really 26 Per Cent?

Author

Listed:
  • Knight, J B
  • Sabot, R H
  • Hovey, D C

Abstract

It is argued that the conventional wisdom which accords priority to investment at the primary level of education in developing countries may be based on methodologically flawed estimates. The problem arises on account of the "filtering down" of educated entrants to the labour market into lesser jobs as education is expanded. The (conventionally measured) average rate of return is compared with estimates of the marginal rate of return to the entering cohort. An illustration for Kenya shows that the rate of return on primary schooling is highly sensitive to this distinction, whereas that on secondary schooling is not: the hierarchy of returns is reversed. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the jury is still out. Copyright 1992 by Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Knight, J B & Sabot, R H & Hovey, D C, 1992. "Is the Rate of Return on Primary Schooling Really 26 Per Cent?," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 1(2), pages 192-205, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jafrec:v:1:y:1992:i:2:p:192-205
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Peter Glick & François Roubaud, 2004. "Export Processing Zone Expansion in an African Country: What are the Labor Market and Gender Impacts?," Working Papers DT/2004/15, DIAL (Développement, Institutions et Mondialisation), revised Dec 2004.
    2. Uwaifo Oyelere, Ruth, 2010. "Africa's education enigma? The Nigerian story," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(1), pages 128-139, January.
    3. Asadullah, Mohammad Niaz, 2006. "Pay differences between teachers and other occupations: Some empirical evidence from Bangladesh," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(6), pages 1044-1065, December.
    4. Uwaifo, Ruth, 2006. "Africa's Education Enigma? The Nigerian story," 2006 Annual meeting, July 23-26, Long Beach, CA 21254, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    5. Mwangi S. Kimenyi & Germano Mwabu & Damiano Kulundu Manda, 2006. "Human Capital Externalities and Private Returns to Education in Kenya," Eastern Economic Journal, Eastern Economic Association, vol. 32(3), pages 493-513, Summer.
    6. Fields, Gary S., 2011. "Labor market analysis for developing countries," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(S1), pages 16-22.
    7. Bennell, Paul, 1996. "Rates of return to education: Does the conventional pattern prevail in sub-Saharan Africa?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 183-199, January.
    8. Stefano Pagiola, 1996. "Price policy and returns to soil conservation in semi-arid Kenya," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 8(3), pages 225-271, October.

    More about this item

    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:oup:jafrec:v:1:y:1992:i:2:p:192-205. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/csaoxuk.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.