Education, skills, and labor market outcomes: evidence from Ghana

Abstract

This paper investigates the education-earnings relationship in Ghana, drawing on the Ghana Living Standards Survey for 1998-99. The analysis has three main goals: to examine the labor market returns to education amongst wage-employed, self-employed and agricultural workers; to examine the labor market returns to literacy and numeracy skills for these categories of workers; and to analyze the pattern of returns to education along the earnings distribution. We also investigate the shape of the education-earnings relationship. The analysis is done separately by gender and age group, and attempts to address the usual biases when estimating returns to education.