IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/csa/wpaper/2014-10.html

The effect of schooling on worker productivity: evidence from a South African industry panel

Author

Listed:
  • Rulof P. Burger
  • Francis J. Teal

Abstract

Schooling is typically found to be highly correlated with individual earnings in African countries. However, African firm or sector level studies have failed to identify a similarly strong effect for average worker schooling levels on productivity. This has been interpreted as evidence that schooling does not increase productivity levels, but may also indicate that the schooling effect cannot be identified when using a schooling measure with limited variation. Using a novel South African industry-level dataset that spans a longer period than typical firm-level panels, this paper identifies a large and significant schooling effect. This result is highly robust across different estimators that allow for correlated industry effects, measurement error, heterogeneous production technologies and cross-sectional dependence.

Suggested Citation

  • Rulof P. Burger & Francis J. Teal, 2014. "The effect of schooling on worker productivity: evidence from a South African industry panel," CSAE Working Paper Series 2014-10, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    • Handle: RePEc:csa:wpaper:2014-10
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:86966acd-0698-4014-ad42-6b14cccd8e82
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Sophie Witter & Maja Jakobsen, 2017. "Choices for spending government revenue: New African oil, gas, and mining economies," WIDER Working Paper Series 150, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Estefanía Custodio & Sofía Jiménez & María Priscila Ramos & Martina Sartori & Emanuele Ferrari, 2025. "Diet quality rather than caloric intake associated with labour wages in Kenya," Food Security: The Science, Sociology and Economics of Food Production and Access to Food, Springer;The International Society for Plant Pathology, vol. 17(2), pages 345-361, April.
    3. Sophie Witter & Maja Jakobsen, 2017. "Choices for spending government revenue: New African oil, gas, and mining economies," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2017-150, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    4. Favour O. Olarewaju & Oluwafadekemi S. Areo & Adeyemi A. Ogundipe & Toun Y. Ogunbiyi & Abiola J. Asaleye, 2020. "Capital and Labour Productivity: A Comparative Study of Nigeria and South Africa," Asian Economic and Financial Review, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 10(12), pages 1384-1395, December.
    5. Marisa Fintel & Asmus Zoch & Servaas Berg, 2017. "The Dynamics of Child Poverty in South Africa Between 2008 and 2012," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 10(4), pages 945-969, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity
    • C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models

    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:csa:wpaper:2014-10. 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: Julia Coffey (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.