IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ldr/wpaper/105.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Changes in education, employment and earnings in South Africa – A cohort analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Nicola Branson

    (SALDRU, School of Economics, University of Cape Town)

  • Cally Ardington

    (SALDRU, School of Economics, University of Cape TownAuthor-Email:)

  • David Lam

    (University of Michigan)

  • Murray Leibbrandt

    (SALDRU, School of Economics, University of Cape Town)

Abstract

Rapid increases in educational attainment and the massification of secondary education in South Africa resulted in substantial differences in the supply and quality of educated workers across generations. This paper describes changes in the distribution of education across birth cohorts and how these relate to changes in the probability of employment, the distribution of earnings and the earnings premiums to complete secondary and tertiary education. Tracking cohorts over time allows us to disentangle generational and life-cycle components of these changes. Younger cohorts are shown to have increasingly faced worse labour market conditions than their predecessors, although this may be changing for cohorts born after 1980. Furthermore, the relative reward to complete secondary and tertiary education has remained positive, and increased for tertiary educated cohorts born since the 1960s. Increases in earnings inequality among those with complete secondary education suggests increased variance in education quality during the period when completed secondary education expanded rapidly.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicola Branson & Cally Ardington & David Lam & Murray Leibbrandt, 2013. "Changes in education, employment and earnings in South Africa – A cohort analysis," SALDRU Working Papers 105, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    • Handle: RePEc:ldr:wpaper:105
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.opensaldru.uct.ac.za/bitstream/handle/11090/621/2013_105.pdf?sequence=1
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Haroon Bhorat, 2004. "Labour Market Challenges In The Post‐Apartheid South Africa," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 72(5), pages 940-977, December.
    2. 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.
    3. Nicholas Spaull, 2012. "Poverty & Privilege: Primary School Inequality in South Africa," Working Papers 13/2012, Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics.
    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. Liaqat Ali & Muhammad Kamran Naqi Khan & Habib Ahmad, 2020. "Education of the Head and Financial Vulnerability of Households: Evidence from a Household’s Survey Data in Pakistan," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 147(2), pages 439-463, January.
    2. Duncan Pieterse, 2015. "Childhood Maltreatment and Educational Outcomes: Evidence from South Africa," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(7), pages 876-894, July.
    3. Rulof Burger & Servaas Berg & Dieter Fintel, 2015. "The Unintended Consequences of Education Policies on South African Participation and Unemployment," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 83(1), pages 74-100, March.
    4. Emily Frame & Ariane de Lannoy & Murray Leibbrandt, 2016. "Measuring multidimensional poverty among youth in South Africa at the sub-national level," SALDRU Working Papers 169, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    5. TJ Friderichs & F. M. Correa, 2022. "Measuring human capital in South Africa across socioeconomic subgroups using a latent-variable approach," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 164(3), pages 1161-1185, December.

    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. Daniel Ştefan Armeanu & Georgeta Vintilă & Ştefan Cristian Gherghina, 2017. "Empirical Study towards the Drivers of Sustainable Economic Growth in EU-28 Countries," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(1), pages 1-22, December.
    2. Grossmann, Volker, 2008. "Risky human capital investment, income distribution, and macroeconomic dynamics," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 19-42, March.
    3. Shweta Bahl & Ajay Sharma, 2021. "Education–Occupation Mismatch and Dispersion in Returns to Education: Evidence from India," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 153(1), pages 251-298, January.
    4. Haddou, Samira, 2024. "Determinants of CDS in core and peripheral European countries: A comparative study during crisis and calm periods," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    5. Emanuela di Gropello, 2006. "Meeting the Challenges of Secondary Education in Latin America and East Asia : Improving Efficiency and Resource Mobilization," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 7173.
    6. Gabrielle Wills, 2016. "Principal leadership changes in South Africa: Investigating their consequences for school performance," Working Papers 01/2016, Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics.
    7. Francisco Queiró, 2022. "Entrepreneurial Human Capital and Firm Dynamics," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 89(4), pages 2061-2100.
    8. Barry R. Chiswick & Paul W. Miller, 2018. "Do native-born bilinguals in the US earn more?," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 16(3), pages 563-583, September.
    9. Nicola Branson & Julia Garlick & David Lam & Murray Leibbrandt, 2012. "Education and Inequality: The South African Case," SALDRU Working Papers 75, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    10. Gruber, Lloyd & Kosack, Stephen, 2014. "The tertiary tilt: education and inequality in the developing world," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 54202, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    11. Luiz A. Esteves & Pedro S. Martins, 2008. "Is firm performance driven by fairness or tournaments? Evidence from Brazilian matched data," Working Papers 16, Queen Mary, University of London, School of Business and Management, Centre for Globalisation Research.
    12. Nicola Branson & Clare Hofmeyr & David Lam, 2014. "Progress through school and the determinants of school dropout in South Africa," Development Southern Africa, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(1), pages 106-126, January.
    13. Muhammad Sabir & Zehra Aftab, 2007. "Dynamism in the Gender Wage Gap: Evidence from Pakistan," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 46(4), pages 865-882.
    14. Marco Biagetti & Sergio Scicchitano, 2011. "Education and wage inequality in Europe," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 31(3), pages 2620-2628.
    15. Diego Battistón & Carolina García-Domench & Leonardo Gasparini, 2014. "Could an Increase in Education Raise Income Inequality? Evidence for Latin America," Latin American Journal of Economics-formerly Cuadernos de Economía, Instituto de Economía. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile., vol. 51(1), pages 1-39, May.
    16. Tanya O’Garra & Susana Mourato, 2007. "Public Preferences for Hydrogen Buses: Comparing Interval Data, OLS and Quantile Regression Approaches," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 36(4), pages 389-411, April.
    17. Maria Manuel Campos & Hugo Reis, 2018. "Returns to schooling in the Portuguese economy: a reassessment," Public Sector Economics, Institute of Public Finance, vol. 42(2), pages 215-242.
    18. Chenhong Peng & Paul Siu Fai Yip & Yik Wa Law, 2019. "Intergenerational Earnings Mobility and Returns to Education in Hong Kong: A Developed Society with High Economic Inequality," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 143(1), pages 133-156, May.
    19. Green, Francis & Henseke, Golo, 2021. "Europe's evolving graduate labour markets: supply, demand, underemployment and pay," Journal for Labour Market Research, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany], vol. 55, pages 1-2.
    20. 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.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Educational attainment; Earnings; Employment; South Africa; Cohort analysis;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I25 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Economic Development
    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity

    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:ldr:wpaper:105. 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: Alison Siljeur (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sauctza.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.