Duration of Pre‐university Education and Labour Market Outcomes: Evidence from a Quasi‐experiment in Ghana

Emmanuel Adu Boahen (), Kwadwo Opoku and Simone Schotte

Journal of International Development, 2021, vol. 33, issue 1, 208-232

Abstract: This paper provides new evidence on the effect of shortening the duration of pre‐university education on long‐term labour market outcomes in Ghana, expl`oiting the education reform of 1987 as a natural experiment. Our results indicate that the drastic cut in the duration of pre‐tertiary education from 17 to 12 years improved the labour market success of treated cohorts. However, this is driven by a ‘quantity’ effect: the shorter course duration reduced the direct and indirect costs of acquiring post‐primary education and allowed more students to enrol, which provided access to better job opportunities. On aggregate, this has dominated the negative effect on education ‘quality’. © 2020 UNU‐WIDER. Journal of International Development published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/jid.3519

Related works:
Working Paper: Duration of pre-university education and labour market outcomes: Evidence from a quasi-experiment in Ghana (2020)
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:wly:jintdv:v:33:y:2021:i:1:p:208-232

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of International Development is currently edited by Paul Mosley and Hazel Johnson

More articles in Journal of International Development from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().