TY - JOUR
T1 - Education, skills, and duration of unemployment in Ghana
AU - Yirenkyi, Ebenezer Gyan
AU - Debrah, Godwin
AU - Adanu, Kwami
AU - Atitsogbui, Edwin
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - The unmatched growth in available jobs, given the rising youth population, is a major concern for policymakers in sub-Saharan African countries (SSAs), particularly Ghana. The weakness in the link between education and the needed skill by the industry, has been labelled as the cause of rising unemployment and prolonged unemployment duration in Ghana. This paper presents new evidence on the effect of education and skill—language, computer and numeracy skills—on unemployment duration in Ghana using the Skill Towards Employment and Productivity (STEP) skill dataset collected by the World Bank in 2013. The study employs Cox’s Proportional Hazard Model to examine the effect of education, language, computer and numeracy skill on unemployment duration. We found that education reduces the duration of unemployment in general. However, the effect is higher for exiting salaried work compared to self-employed jobs. Proficiency in computer, English or Ewe reduces the duration of unemployment. In particular, we observe that individuals highly skilled in computer use are 34.4% more likely to exit unemployment compared to those without computer skills. Interestingly, the effect of computer skills is through channels other than formal education.
AB - The unmatched growth in available jobs, given the rising youth population, is a major concern for policymakers in sub-Saharan African countries (SSAs), particularly Ghana. The weakness in the link between education and the needed skill by the industry, has been labelled as the cause of rising unemployment and prolonged unemployment duration in Ghana. This paper presents new evidence on the effect of education and skill—language, computer and numeracy skills—on unemployment duration in Ghana using the Skill Towards Employment and Productivity (STEP) skill dataset collected by the World Bank in 2013. The study employs Cox’s Proportional Hazard Model to examine the effect of education, language, computer and numeracy skill on unemployment duration. We found that education reduces the duration of unemployment in general. However, the effect is higher for exiting salaried work compared to self-employed jobs. Proficiency in computer, English or Ewe reduces the duration of unemployment. In particular, we observe that individuals highly skilled in computer use are 34.4% more likely to exit unemployment compared to those without computer skills. Interestingly, the effect of computer skills is through channels other than formal education.
KW - Ghana
KW - education
KW - hazard ratio
KW - skill
KW - unemployment duration
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85171890171&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/23322039.2023.2258680
DO - 10.1080/23322039.2023.2258680
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85171890171
SN - 2332-2039
VL - 11
JO - Cogent Economics and Finance
JF - Cogent Economics and Finance
IS - 2
M1 - 2258680
ER -