Education Quality and Labour Market Outcomes in South Africa

In this paper we include measures of school quality in regressions determining the labour marketpremiums to education level. We use the matric exemption score and the pupil/teacher ratio of therespondents’ closest school during childhood as proxies for education quality. We find that theemployment and earnings premiums to education level are robust to the inclusion of these qualitymeasures. Moreover, there is a significant direct relationship between our quality measures and earnings,controlling for education level. Increasing the matric exemption score by 10 percentage points increasesearnings, on average, by 8% and decreasing the pupil/teacher ratio by one learner is associated with a 1%increase in earnings. No significant relationship is found between the school quality measures andemployment.This Working Paper relates to the 2013 OECD Economic Survey of South Africa,www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/listofeconomicsurveysofsouthafrica.htm.      