Abstract:
South Africa has one of the highest levels of income inequality in the world (Leibbrandt et al., 2018). Education, both in how it is distributed in the population and in how it is rewarded in the labour market, plays an important role in explaining the distribution of income, particularly income from labour market earnings, and hence inequality (Lam et al., 2015). Since the end of apartheid, South Africa has seen rapid improvements in average years of education, accompanied by declining racial differences and educational inequality. Yet, this has not translated into declining earnings inequality as might have been expected. A closer look at the data reveals that the aggregate picture of decreasing educational inequality hides persistent racial inequalities in post-school education attainment, which together with large and increasing premiums to these high value qualifications, have been inequality inducing. Siyaphambili motivates that increasing overall levels of post-school education attainment, particularly by decreasing between-population group attainment gaps, could contribute towards reducing income inequality.
