Female education and full-time employment in Guinea: an ambiguous relationship

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the direct and indirect effects of female education on full-time labour market employment using Guinean demographic and health surveys. It addresses potential endogeneity of female education, unobserved heterogeneity and sample selectivity concerns using the control function model and a non-self-cluster identification strategy. Results show that female education has a diminishing direct effect on full-time employment, with the inverted-U-shaped relationship portraying that women with seven-plus years of schooling are less likely to be regularly employed than their counterparts with less years of schooling. Interacting female education and its square with the corresponding reduced form residuals increase the probability of full-time labour market employment – an indication that female education and unobserved correlates are complementary. Thus, highly educated Guinea women do not increase their full-time market engagements – a pointer of the importance they may be attributing to home-produced goods and services that push them to perhaps prefer flexi-work arrangements such as occasional or seasonal market engagements.

KEYWORDS:

• Female education
• labour market employment
• control function modelling
• Guinea

Autobiographical sketch

Baye, Epo and Ndenzako are researchers interested in labour and welfare economics. Baye and Epo also lecture in the University of Yaoundé II.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Francis Menjo Baye

Francis Menjo Baye is a Professor of Development Economics and has published extensively on welfare and labour issues.

Boniface Ngah Epo

Boniface Ngah Epo (PhD) is an Associate Professor of Economics.

Jean Ndenzako

Jean Ndenzako is a Principal Technical Specialist on Employment at the ILO-Dakar Office.