Measuring human capital in South Africa across socioeconomic subgroups using a latent-variable approach

Friderichs Tj () and F. M. Correa
Additional contact information
Friderichs Tj: Rhodes University
F. M. Correa: Rhodes University

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2022, vol. 164, issue 3, No 7, 1185 pages

Abstract: Abstract Human capital is a complex concept to measure given it is an unobserved latent construct. Education is a fundamental dimension of human capital and thus an education-based approach is the one most widely used. However, the international literature recommends a latent-variable approach to measuring human capital. This study thus aims to measure human capital in South Africa, a country experiencing extreme earnings and education inequalities, using a latent-variable approach and the National Income Dynamic Study (NIDS) dataset. The findings are that parental education is associated with the largest amount of variance in (latent) human capital, while the health indicator captures the least variance. Furthermore, the (latent) human capital variable provides a valuable measure to profile the distribution of human capital by socioeconomic subgroups.

Keywords: Latent-variable; Human capital; Education; Inequality; JEL codes; I24; J24; P36 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11205-022-02973-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:soinre:v:164:y:2022:i:3:d:10.1007_s11205-022-02973-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11135

DOI: 10.1007/s11205-022-02973-y

Access Statistics for this article

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement is currently edited by Filomena Maggino

More articles in Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().