How important is education for getting ahead in South Africa?

dc.contributor.authorKeswell, Malcolm
dc.contributor.authorPoswell, Laura
dc.date.accessioned2016-06-28T17:39:50Z
dc.date.available2016-06-28T17:39:50Z
dc.date.issued2002
dc.date.updated2016-06-27T12:22:57Z
dc.description.abstractThe impact of education on the process of development relies crucially on what can be assumed about the way it is rewarded. Standard human capital theory assumes diminishing marginal returns to education. The purpose of this paper is to examine the empirical relevance of this assumption. We find that the standard approach to estimating this relation is not well supported by virtually all of the available evidence for South Africa. Indeed, the marginal rate of return to education is extremely high for tertiary levels of education and small (approaching zero) for lower levels of education. If human capital accumulation is an important determinant of wealth accumulation, this implies that educational reforms in the form of small policy interventions will not have any significant impact on the distribution of income and wealth, as long as key features of labour markets that govern the manner in which education is rewarded, remains unaltered.en_ZA
dc.identifier.apacitationKeswell, M., & Poswell, L. (2002). <i>How important is education for getting ahead in South Africa?</i> University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Humanities ,Centre for Social Science Research(CSSR). Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/11427/20157en_ZA
dc.identifier.chicagocitationKeswell, Malcolm, and Laura Poswell <i>How important is education for getting ahead in South Africa?.</i> University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Humanities ,Centre for Social Science Research(CSSR), 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/20157en_ZA
dc.identifier.citationKeswell, M., & Poswell, L. (2002). How important is education for getting ahead in South Africa?. Centre for Social Science Research, University of Cape Town.en_ZA
dc.identifier.ris TY - Working Paper AU - Keswell, Malcolm AU - Poswell, Laura AB - The impact of education on the process of development relies crucially on what can be assumed about the way it is rewarded. Standard human capital theory assumes diminishing marginal returns to education. The purpose of this paper is to examine the empirical relevance of this assumption. We find that the standard approach to estimating this relation is not well supported by virtually all of the available evidence for South Africa. Indeed, the marginal rate of return to education is extremely high for tertiary levels of education and small (approaching zero) for lower levels of education. If human capital accumulation is an important determinant of wealth accumulation, this implies that educational reforms in the form of small policy interventions will not have any significant impact on the distribution of income and wealth, as long as key features of labour markets that govern the manner in which education is rewarded, remains unaltered. DA - 2002 DB - OpenUCT DP - University of Cape Town LK - https://open.uct.ac.za PB - University of Cape Town PY - 2002 T1 - How important is education for getting ahead in South Africa? TI - How important is education for getting ahead in South Africa? UR - http://hdl.handle.net/11427/20157 ER - en_ZA
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/11427/20157
dc.identifier.vancouvercitationKeswell M, Poswell L. How important is education for getting ahead in South Africa?. 2002 [cited yyyy month dd]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/20157en_ZA
dc.languageengen_ZA
dc.publisher.departmentCentre for Social Science Research(CSSR)en_ZA
dc.publisher.facultyFaculty of Humanitiesen_ZA
dc.publisher.institutionUniversity of Cape Town
dc.rightsCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)*
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/en_ZA
dc.subject.othereducation
dc.titleHow important is education for getting ahead in South Africa?en_ZA
dc.typeWorking Paperen_ZA
uct.type.filetypeText
uct.type.filetypeImage
uct.type.publicationResearchen_ZA
uct.type.resourceResearch paperen_ZA
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