Impact of education on inequality across the unconditional wage distribution in Cameroon

ABSTRACT

This paper evaluates the impact of education on inequality using the recentered influence function regression and standard inequality measures. Results indicate that between 2005 and 2010, the returns to education declined from the 10th to the 50th percentiles, but increased at the upper tail of the distribution. Inequality is lower in the counterfactual education-equalising distribution, revealing the inequality increasing effect of education in the actual distribution. This implies that educational expansion widens inequality relative to educational equalisation. As such, policies that target disadvantaged groups in terms of educational attainment should be a key focus for policy interventions than educational expansion.

KEYWORDS:

• Cameroon
• educational equalisation
• inequality
• wages
• unconditional quantile regression

JEL CODES:

• D31
• D60
• D63
• I24

Acknowledgements

A maiden version of the paper was published by UNU-WIDER under the project Inequality – Measurement, Trends, Impacts, and Policies. We gratefully acknowledge UNU-WIDER for funding the participation of Francis Menjo Baye at the WIDER Conference on Inequality – Measurement, Trends, Impacts, and Policies, held in Helsinki, 5–6 September 2014.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that supported the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author or the Cameroon National Institute of Statistics. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.

Notes

1 Educational equalisation or educational smoothening entails improving educational outcomes by targeting the disadvantaged groups, meanwhile educational expansion is perceived as broad-based improvement of educational outcomes without targeting any group.

2 US$1 is about XAF614 as of January 9, 2023.