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Education and labor market outcomes in South Africa: evidence from the National Income Dynamics Study

Includes bibliographical references

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Kimani, Esther Mumbi
Other Authors: Bhorat, Haroon
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: School of Economics 2016
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access_status_str Open Access
author Kimani, Esther Mumbi
author2 Bhorat, Haroon
author_browse Bhorat, Haroon
Kimani, Esther Mumbi
author_facet Bhorat, Haroon
Kimani, Esther Mumbi
author_sort Kimani, Esther Mumbi
collection Thesis
description Includes bibliographical references
format Thesis
id oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/17427
institution University of Cape Town (South Africa)
language eng
last_indexed 2026-06-10T12:43:31.039Z
license_str Not specified — see source repository
provenance_str_mv Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
publishDate 2016
publishDateRange 2016
publishDateSort 2016
publisher School of Economics
publisherStr School of Economics
record_format dspace
source_str UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
spelling oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/17427 Education and labor market outcomes in South Africa: evidence from the National Income Dynamics Study Kimani, Esther Mumbi Bhorat, Haroon Economics Education Labour Market Includes bibliographical references Existing literature is in agreement on the importance of education in the determination of labor market outcomes. Using data from South Africa's National Income Dynamics Study, this thesis explores this relationship. It does this firstly, by examining the effect of school quality measured by school inputs-pupil-teacher ratio and expenditure per pupil-on educational attainment in South Africa. Following a reduced form production function approach, a partial generalized ordered probit is applied in the analysis. The thesis finds that both pupil-teacher ratio and expenditure per pupil have strong and significant effects on educational attainment of African South Africans. The ratio is more important at lower schooling levels, indicating a 'lagged effect' on educational attainment. A small increase in expenditure has large effects. This suggests declining returns to fiscal investment in education. Alternatively, it could indicate inefficiency in the use of funds, or compensatory funding of poor schools. Secondly, we examine the extent to which wage differences shown among district councils in South Africa can be explained by the magnitude of external returns to education. We use an augmented Mincerian regression to investigate this, considering the effect of district council share of college graduates on workers' wages. The study employs District Council's annual average climate to instrument for the share of district council college graduates. The results show that a 1% increase in a District Council's share of college graduates raises workers' wages by 5-8%. There are also spillovers effects, with college graduates being the beneficiaries. Thirdly, we estimate unemployment duration by gender and by competing risk, that is, exits into employment or economic inactivity. We use the Kaplan-Meier estimator and the Cox proportion hazard model in these estimations. The results from both estimators show factors that influence unemployment differ by exits, and their effects vary by gender. The hazard rates show that transition rate into employment is higher for men than for women with similar characteristics. They show that age and race significantly influence employers' choice between educated men and women. However, this bias is less obvious at higher levels of education. 2016-03-03T14:45:40Z 2016-03-03T14:45:40Z 2015 Doctoral Thesis Doctoral PhD http://hdl.handle.net/11427/17427 eng application/pdf School of Economics Faculty of Commerce University of Cape Town
spellingShingle Economics
Education
Labour Market
Kimani, Esther Mumbi
Education and labor market outcomes in South Africa: evidence from the National Income Dynamics Study
thesis_degree_str Doctoral
title Education and labor market outcomes in South Africa: evidence from the National Income Dynamics Study
title_full Education and labor market outcomes in South Africa: evidence from the National Income Dynamics Study
title_fullStr Education and labor market outcomes in South Africa: evidence from the National Income Dynamics Study
title_full_unstemmed Education and labor market outcomes in South Africa: evidence from the National Income Dynamics Study
title_short Education and labor market outcomes in South Africa: evidence from the National Income Dynamics Study
title_sort education and labor market outcomes in south africa evidence from the national income dynamics study
topic Economics
Education
Labour Market
url http://hdl.handle.net/11427/17427
work_keys_str_mv AT kimaniesthermumbi educationandlabormarketoutcomesinsouthafricaevidencefromthenationalincomedynamicsstudy