Browsing by Author "Branson, Nicola"

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    Analysing the role of language in the context of education, employment and income in South Africa
    (2020) Kahn,Amy; Leibbrandt, Murray; Branson, Nicola
    Although most of the South African population speak an African language as their home language, English remains the lingua franca and continues to dominate economic and political life. This thesis explores the role of language in the context of the labour market, the schooling system and survey data collection primarily using data from the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) survey. Firstly, I assess the impact of English proficiency among African home language speakers on employment probabilities and wages. After accounting for endogeneity and measurement error in the employment and wage models, I estimate that being proficient in English is associated with a 23-25 percentage point increase in the probability of employment, and a wage premium of 33 percent. These results contribute to the limited research on this topic in South Africa. Secondly, I explore the extent to which English and Afrikaans dominate as the Languages of Learning and Teaching (LoL T's) in the foundation phase of schools where a share of the learners speak an African language as their home language. Despite overwhelming evidence that mother-tongue instruction in the early years of schooling is superior pedagogically, parental preferences towards it remain low and I find that most schools in urban areas still choose to teach in English or Afrikaans. Mother-tongue instruction tends to occur in rural areas, or poorer urban communities, and where learners within a school come from relatively similar language backgrounds. Thus, when devising implementation plans to assist schools in adopting mother-tongue instruction, there may be a need for different strategies across different areas and schools. Finally, l investigate the role of language in determining the quality of the data that are used to investigate the phenomena in the first two sections. Through a multilevel analysis of the NIDS survey data, I find that when the interviewer and respondent are from the same language group, the respondent is more likely to participate in the survey. This is an important methodological finding as it implies that matching interviewers and respondents according to language may have a positive impact on survey response and hence the representativity of the data.
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    Changes in education, employment and earnings in South Africa: A cohort analysis
    (2015-05-28) Branson, Nicola; Ardington, Cally; Lam, David; Leibbrandt, Murray
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    Credit constraints and the racial gap in post-secondary education in South Africa
    (Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, 2015-05-28) Lam, David; Ardington, Cally; Branson, Nicola; Leibbrandt, Murray
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    Education and inequality: The South African case
    (Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, 2015-05-28) Branson, Nicola; Garlick, Julia; Lam, David; Leibbrandt, Murray
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    Educational expenditure in South Africa: Evidence from the National Income Dynamics Study
    (2015-05-28) Branson, Nicola; Kekana, Dineo; Lam, David
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    Health outcomes for children born to teen mothers in Cape Town, South Africa
    (Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, ) Branson, Nicola; Ardington, Cally; Leibbrandt, Murray
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    More financial aid is not the best way to close the racial gap in tertiary education
    (Econ3x3.org, 2015-05-28) Lam, David; Ardington, Cally; Branson, Nicola; Leibbrandt, Murray
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    Post-school education in an unequal society
    (2023) Whitelaw, Emma; Branson, Nicola; Leibbrandt Murray
    In South Africa, a country afflicted by conditions of poverty, inequality, and unemployment, a post-school education can be key to fostering upward mobility. However, many of the country's socioeconomic inequalities are replicated within the post-school education system itself. This means that, inter alia, inequalities in student access and success plague the sector despite strides made by the government to redress the educational and economic discrimination of the apartheid regime. In the substantive chapters of this dissertation, I explore inequalities in access, academic achievement, and graduate realities; considering each as an obstacle to equitable participation and success in post-school education, and thereafter. The first substantive chapter concerns access for the 'missing middle'; a group who do not qualify for financial aid but for whom university education is unaffordable. I operationalise the concepts of mobility, vulnerability, and economic stability to differentiate the socioeconomic circumstances of households in South Africa, and locate them within the context of the current post-school funding policy. Results contribute information to an important current policy priority; the development of a sustainable, comprehensive, and progressive financial aid scheme. The second substantive contribution concerns achievement, particularly as it relates to changes in university students' academic performance in 2020 and 2021. Achievement gaps between students funded by the National Student Financial Aid Scheme [NSFAS] and those not funded by NSFAS existed before the COVID-19 pandemic, and the extent to which these were exacerbated by institution closures speaks to issues of participation and success. In my third contribution, I analyse the extent to which financially supporting family and extended family networks is associated with the completion of post-school education. If graduates' realities differ once post-schooling is completed, this can hamper the extent to which post-school education can promote individual upward mobility. A connecting contribution of these chapters is to provide empirical evidence, through rigorous economic analysis, that builds an understanding of inequalities in access, achievement, and graduate realities. This evidence can be inserted into dialogues that shape policies, which ultimately have the potential to disrupt socioeconomic inequalities. Although concerning different stages of post-schooling, all chapters contribute to quantifying features of post-school education that have not previously been explored in-depth
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    Progress through school and the determinants of school dropout in South Africa
    Branson, Nicola; Hofmeyr, Clare; Lam, David
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    Progress through school and the determinants of school dropout in South Africa
    (Development Southern Africa, 2015-05-28) Branson, Nicola; Hofmeyr, Clare; Lam, David
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    Re-weighting South African national Household survey data to create a consistent series over time: A cross entropy estimation approach
    (Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, 2015-05-28) Branson, Nicola; Wittenberg, Martin
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    Re-weighting the OHS and LFS national household survey data to create a consistent series over time: A cross entropy estimation approach
    (Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, 2015-05-28) Branson, Nicola
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    Revisiting the ‘crisis’ in teen births: What is the impact of teen births on young mothers and their children?
    (Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, 2015-05-28) Menendez, Alicia; Branson, Nicola; Lam, David; Ardington, Cally; Leibbrandt, Murray
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    Reweighting South African national household survey data to create a consistent series over time: A cross-entropy approach
    (South African Journal of Economics, 2015-05-28) Branson, Nicola; Wittenberg, Martin
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    The matric certificate is still valuable in the labour market
    (Econ3x3.org, 2015-05-28) Hofmeyr, Clare; Branson, Nicola; Leibbrandt, Murray; Ardington, Cally; Lam, David
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    The measurement of employment status in South Africa using cohort analysis, 1994-2004
    (2007) Branson, Nicola; Wittenberg, Martin
    We analyse trends in employment, unemployment and labour force participation by simple graphical techniques, using all the October Household Surveys and the September Labour Force Surveys. We show that African male employment in 1995 seems high, when compared to all the other surveys. Furthermore much of the increase in African female labour force participation is concentrated in the period 1998 to 2000, which suggests that measurement and sampling changes may be partially responsible for the trend. We track cohorts of individuals over the eleven years for which we have data. We show that young people are leaving school earlier, while being better educated than their elders. They are not, however, being absorbed into employment at a faster rate. This has led to a spike in youth unemployment.
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    The South African labour market 1995-2004: A cohort analysis
    (Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, 2015-05-28) Branson, Nicola
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    Trends in teenage childbearing and schooling outcomes for children born to teens in South Africa
    (2015-05-28) Branson, Nicola; Ardington, Cally; Leibbrandt, Murray
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    Using Census, Institutional and Geospatial Data to Estimate the Socio-Economic Profile of Post-School Students by Institutional Type
    (2022) Culligan, Samantha; Branson, Nicola; Leibbrandt, Murray
    The socio-economic profile of students who are participating in post-school education; and the distribution of their socio-economic characteristics between universities and colleges, between institutions of a similar type, and within particular institutions is not well understood. Part of the reason for this is because potential data sets that could be used to answer this fall short on dimensions needed to fully explore the extent of socio-economic differences amongst student bodies by institutional type. I, therefore, generate a data set that draws on institutional, census, and geospatial information to estimate the socio-economic background of students' home postal code. Using this data set, I compare the mean statistic and generalised entropy index of a range of individual and household socio-economic postal code indicators for student bodies by institutional type to descriptively analyse their socio-economic profile. I show student bodies at traditional universities and Unisa appear socio-economically similar and display higher socio-economic circumstances than that of student bodies at comprehensive universities, universities of technology and TVET colleges who appear socio-economically similar. Between 2008 and 2019, the mean socio-economic profile declined for all student bodies, whereas there was no uniform trend for whether socio-economic heterogeneity was increasing or decreasing over time by university type. Lastly, my findings suggest there is more evidence for horizontal stratification between particular universities (regardless of their institutional type) rather than between university types, or between universities and TVET colleges.