Teacher Wages in South Africa: How Attractive is the Teaching Profession?
Stellenbosch Working Paper Series No. WP08/2014Publication date: 2014
Author(s):
This paper investigates the state of teacher pay in the South African labour market by comparing the remuneration received by teachers with that received by their non-teaching counterparts. It makes use of wage data from the Labour Force Surveys spanning 2000 to 2007, and 2010. This enables us to investigate the impact of the Occupation Specific Dispensation introduced in 2008 on the age-wage profile of the teaching profession. Remuneration is compared across educational attainment levels, years of experience and across age groups. A Lemieux Decomposition is used to determine what the distribution of teacher wages would look like if teachers were remunerated according to the same structure as non-teachers. It is found that the teaching profession is relatively unattractive to individuals at the top end of the skills distribution in the South African labour market, the result of which may be lower quality candidates entering the teaching profession.
JEL Classification:I2, J31
Keywords:education; wage differentials by occupation, wage level and structure
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26 January 2024Domestically, the theme of the week centred around monetary policy and inflation, with the SA Reserve Bank (SARB) making its first repo rate decision of the year on Thursday. Furthermore, Stats SA released both consumer and producer price inflation data for December. Globally, monetary policy was also important, with the European Central Bank (ECB),...
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BER Weekly
26 January 2024Domestically, the theme of the week centred around monetary policy and inflation, with the SA Reserve Bank (SARB) making its first repo rate decision of the year on Thursday. Furthermore, Stats SA released both consumer and producer price inflation data for December. Globally, monetary policy was also important, with the European Central Bank (ECB),...
Read the full issue