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Does Doing an Apprenticeship Pay Off? Evidence from Ghana

Author

Listed:
  • Courtney Monk
  • Justin Sandefur
  • Francis Teal

Abstract

In Ghana there is a highly developed apprenticeship system where young men and women undertake sector-specific private training, which yields skills used primarily in the informal sector. In this paper we use a 2006 urban based household survey with detailed questions on the background, training and earnings of workers in both wage and self-employment to ask whether apprenticeship pays off. We show that apprenticeship is by far the most important institution providing training and is undertaken primarily by those with junior high school or lower levels of education. The summary statistics indicate that those who have done an apprenticeship earn much less than those who have not. This suggests that endogenous selection into the apprenticeship system is important, and we take several measures to address this issue. We find a significant amount of heterogeneity in the returns to apprenticeship across education. Our most conservative estimates imply that for currently employed people, who did apprenticeships but have no formal education, the training increases their earnings by 50%. However this declines as education levels rise. We argue that our results are consistent with those who enter apprenticeship with no education having higher ability than those who enter with more education.

Suggested Citation

  • Courtney Monk & Justin Sandefur & Francis Teal, 2008. "Does Doing an Apprenticeship Pay Off? Evidence from Ghana," CSAE Working Paper Series 2008-08, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
  • Handle: RePEc:csa:wpaper:2008-08
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Zimmermann, Klaus F. & Biavaschi, Costanza & Eichhorst, Werner & Giulietti, Corrado & Kendzia, Michael J. & Muravyev, Alexander & Pieters, Janneke & Rodríguez-Planas, Núria & Schmidl, Ricarda, 2013. "Youth Unemployment and Vocational Training," Foundations and Trends(R) in Microeconomics, now publishers, vol. 9(1–2), pages 1-157, December.
    2. Cho, Yoon Y. & Kalomba, Davie & Mobarak, Ahmed Mushfiq & Orozco, Victor, 2013. "Gender Differences in the Effects of Vocational Training: Constraints on Women and Drop-Out Behavior," IZA Discussion Papers 7408, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Neil Rankin & Gareth Roberts & Volker Schöer, 2014. "The Success of Learnerships?: Lessons from South Africa's Training and Education Programme," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2014-068, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    4. Rita Almeida & Marta Faria, 2014. "The wage returns to on-the-job training: evidence from matched employer-employee data," IZA Journal of Labor & Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 3(1), pages 1-33, December.
    5. Francis Teal, 2016. "Are apprenticeships beneficial in sub-Saharan Africa?," IZA World of Labor, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), pages 268-268, June.
    6. Cho, Yoonyoung. & Kalomba, Davie. & Mobarak, Ahmed Mushfiq. & Orozco, Víctor., 2015. "Differences in the effects of vocational training on men and women : constraints on women and drop-out behaviour," ILO Working Papers 994874103402676, International Labour Organization.
    7. Semih Tumen, 2015. "Skill Acquisition in the Informal Economy and Schooling Decisions: Evidence from Emerging Economies," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 29(3), pages 270-290, September.
    8. Francis Teal & Nicholas Nsowah-Nuamah and Moses Awoonor-Williams, 2010. "Jobs, Skills and Incomes in Ghana: How was poverty halved?," Economics Series Working Papers CSAE WPS/2010-01, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    9. Langthaler, Margarita, 2013. "Die entwicklungspolitischen Wirkungen von Bildung: Rezente Forschungsergebnisse und ihre Implikationen für die Entwicklungszusammenarbeit," Policy Notes 04/2013, Austrian Foundation for Development Research (ÖFSE).
    10. Szirmai A. & Gebreeyesus M. & Guadagno F. & Verspagen B., 2013. "Promoting productive employment in Sub‐Saharan Africa : a review of the literature," MERIT Working Papers 2013-062, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    11. Avenyo, Elvis Korku, 2021. "Learning and Product Innovation Performance in Informal Enterprises: Evidence from Urban Ghana," MPRA Paper 108839, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 05 May 2021.
    12. Eichhorst, Werner & Rodríguez-Planas, Núria & Schmidl, Ricarda & Zimmermann, Klaus F., 2012. "A Roadmap to Vocational Education and Training Systems Around the World," IZA Discussion Papers 7110, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Rita Almeida & Reyes Aterido, 2015. "Investing in formal on-the-job training: are SMEs lagging much behind?," IZA Journal of Labor & Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 4(1), pages 1-23, December.
    14. Rachid Elkachradi & Rim Aitbouziane, 2023. "Strengthening the resilience of the Moroccan labour market in the face of crises: towards the design of appropriate structural transformations," Post-Print hal-04250127, HAL.
    15. Rankin, Neil & Roberts, Gareth & Schöer, Volker, 2014. "The success of learnerships? Lessons from South Africa's training and education programme," WIDER Working Paper Series 068, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Apprenticeship; Africa; Training; Treatment; Control function;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity

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