IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/sza/wpaper/wpapers213.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Teacher Wages in South Africa: How Attractive is the Teaching Profession?

Author

Listed:
  • Paula Armstrong

    (Department of Economics, University of Stellenbosch)

Abstract

This paper investigates the state of teacher pay in the South African labour market by comparing the remuneration received by teachers with that received by their non-teaching counterparts. It makes use of wage data from the Labour Force Surveys spanning 2000 to 2007, and 2010. This enables us to investigate the impact of the Occupation Specific Dispensation introduced in 2008 on the age-wage profile of the teaching profession. Remuneration is compared across educational attainment levels, years of experience and across age groups. A Lemieux Decomposition is used to determine what the distribution of teacher wages would look like if teachers were remunerated according to the same structure as non-teachers. It is found that the teaching profession is relatively unattractive to individuals at the top end of the skills distribution in the South African labour market, the result of which may be lower quality candidates entering the teaching profession.

Suggested Citation

  • Paula Armstrong, 2014. "Teacher Wages in South Africa: How Attractive is the Teaching Profession?," Working Papers 08/2014, Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:sza:wpaper:wpapers213
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ekon.sun.ac.za/wpapers/2014/wp082014/wp-08-2014.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2014
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thomas Lemieux, 2002. "Decomposing changes in wage distributions: a unified approach," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 35(4), pages 646-688, November.
    2. Emiliana Vegas, 2005. "Incentives to Improve Teaching : Lessons from Latin America," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 7265.
    3. Alejandra Mizala & Pilar Romaguera, 2004. "Teachers’ Salary Structure and Incentives in Chile," Documentos de Trabajo 193, Centro de Economía Aplicada, Universidad de Chile.
    4. Emiliana Vegas & Ilana Umansky, 2005. "Improving Teaching and Learning through Effective Incentives : What Can We Learn from Education Reforms in Latin America?," World Bank Publications - Reports 8694, The World Bank Group.
    5. Martin Gustafsson & Firoz Patel, 2009. "Managing the teacher pay system: What the local and international data are telling us," Working Papers 26/2009, 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. Gabrielle Wills, 2015. "A profile of the labour market for school principals in South Africa: Evidence to inform policy," Working Papers 12/2015, Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics.

    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. Alejandra Mizala & Hugo Ñopo, 2014. "Measuring the Relative Pay of Latin American School Teachers at the turn of the 20th Century," Working Papers 15, Peruvian Economic Association.
    2. World Bank, 2010. "Transforming Indonesia's Teaching Force : From Pre-service Training to Retirement - Producing and Maintaining a High-quality, Efficient, and Motivated Workforce," World Bank Publications - Reports 2853, The World Bank Group.
    3. World Bank, 2010. "Transforming Indonesia's Teaching Force : Executive Summary," World Bank Publications - Reports 2852, The World Bank Group.
    4. David Bravo & Bárbara Flores & Patricia Medrano, 2010. "¿Se premia la habilidad en el mercado laboral docente? ¿Cuánto impacta en el desempeño de los estudiantes?," Working Papers wp327, University of Chile, Department of Economics.
    5. Martin Gustafsson & Firoz Patel, 2009. "Managing the teacher pay system: What the local and international data are telling us," Working Papers 26/2009, Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics.
    6. Sawada, Yasuyuki & Aida, Takeshi & Griffen, Andrew S & Kozuka, Eiji & Noguchi, Haruko & Todo, Yasuyuki, 2016. "Election, Implementation, and Social Capital in SchoolBased Management: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment on the COGES Project in Burkina Faso," Working Papers 120, JICA Research Institute.
    7. Barbara Bruns & Javier Luque, 2014. "Great Teachers : How to Raise Student Learning in Latin America and the Caribbean--Overview," World Bank Publications - Reports 19507, The World Bank Group.
    8. Sawada, Yasuyuki & Ishii, Takaharu, 2012. "Do Community-Managed Schools Facilitate Social Capital Accumulation? Evidence from the COGES Project in Burkina Faso," Working Papers 42, JICA Research Institute.
    9. World Bank, 2012. "Cameroon - Governance and Management in the Education Sector," World Bank Publications - Reports 12262, The World Bank Group.
    10. Ben Kelcey & Zuchao Shen & Jessaca Spybrook, 2016. "Intraclass Correlation Coefficients for Designing Cluster-Randomized Trials in Sub-Saharan Africa Education," Evaluation Review, , vol. 40(6), pages 500-525, December.
    11. 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.
    12. Tschopp, Jeanne, 2015. "The Wage Response to Shocks: The Role of Inter-Occupational Labour Adjustment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 28-37.
    13. Stijn Broecke & Glenda Quintini & Marieke Vandeweyer, 2018. "Wage Inequality and Cognitive Skills: Reopening the Debate," NBER Chapters, in: Education, Skills, and Technical Change: Implications for Future US GDP Growth, pages 251-286, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Therry Lallemand & François Rycx, 2006. "Establishment Size and the Dipsersion of Wages: Evidence from european Countries," Applied Economics Quarterly (formerly: Konjunkturpolitik), Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, vol. 52(4), pages 309-336.
    15. Murray Leibbrandt & James Levinsohn & Justin McCrary, 2005. "Incomes in South Africa Since the Fall of Apartheid," NBER Working Papers 11384, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Chi, Wei & Li, Bo, 2007. "Glass Ceiling or Sticky Floor? Examining the Gender Pay Gap across the Wage Distribution in Urban China, 1987-2004," MPRA Paper 3544, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Gallego Francisco, 2013. "When Does Inter-School Competition Matter? Evidence from the Chilean “Voucher” System," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 13(2), pages 525-562, August.
    18. World Bank, 2012. "Human Capital for a Modern Society," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 27422.
    19. Rizov, Marian, 2005. "Human capital and the agrarian structure in transition: Micro evidence from Romania," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 26(1), pages 119-149.
    20. Michelle Riboud, 2015. "Inclusive Human Growth," Global Journal of Emerging Market Economies, Emerging Markets Forum, vol. 7(1), pages 28-64, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    education; wage differentials by occupation; wage level and structure;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I2 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials

    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:sza:wpaper:wpapers213. 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: Melt van Schoor (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/desunza.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.