Twice as Hard to Get Half as Far? Differences in Sheepskin Effects Between Afro-Colombian and Non-Afro-Colombian Women

ABSTRACT

This article explores Belman and Heywood’s sheepskin effect hypothesis using a modified Mincerian wage equation to test the sheepskin effect of returns on education in Colombia. This analysis is based on the 2014 Living Standards Survey from the National Department of Statistics. It includes variables that capture the possession of different levels of qualifications. A test for whether Afro-Colombian women obtain larger returns for signals of high productivity (e.g., a university degree) and lower returns for signals of low productivity (e.g., a secondary school diploma), compared to the non-Afro-Colombian women in the sample, found differential sheepskin effects. Afro-Colombian women in this sample received lower returns for low productivity signals (high school diplomas) than their counterparts do. In contrast, returns on higher levels of education (graduate studies) are higher for Afro-Colombian women than for the other analyzed group. Hence, the results suggest that Afro-Colombian women, as the saying goes, need to work twice as hard to get half as far. They need to rush to achieve higher levels of education, amidst severe hardship, to overcome the existing differences in the returns on education.

Notes

¹ The sheepskin effect theory was developed within the framework of screening theory; however, Belman and Heywood’s (1991) analysis seems to be framed by signaling theory. Both theories share the argument that education does not necessarily increase productivity, but it credentials individuals as more productive (screening theory) or provides high productivity signals to firms (signaling theory).

² The survey asks for self-identification using the following ethnic categories: Black, Afrocolombian, Indigenous, Rrom, Raizales, and Palenqueros.

³ We selected this age range because there are reasons to believe that at 25-year-old women have already completed their investment in human capital, and 65-year-old women are, usually, no longer in the labor market.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Blanca Zuluaga

Blanca Zuluaga is an Associate Professor at Universidad Icesi, Cali, Colombia. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. Her research interests are poverty, ethnic inequalities, education, development, economic and social policies, labor markets, and welfare economics. She is the director of the Ph.D. in Business Economics at Universidad Icesi.

Marianella Ortiz

Marianella Ortiz is researcher at the Colombian Institute for Educational Assessment and Evaluation (ICFES). She is an Afro-Colombian who holds a master’s degree in Economics from Universidad Icesi. Her research interests are poverty, inequality, development, and social policy.

Aurora Vergara-Figueroa

Aurora Vergara-Figueroa is an Associate Professor and the director of the Afrodiasporic Studies Center (Centro de Estudios Afrodiaspóricos) at Icesi University. She is an Afro-Colombian who holds a Ph.D. from the Sociology Department of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the author of Afrodescendant Resistance to Deracination in Colombia: Massacre at Bellavista-Bojayá-Chocó: https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783319597607.