Abstract:
The study investigated: 1) the effect of infrastructural inequality on academic
performance in Ghana; 2) the effect of education inequality on labour returns in
Ghana; 3) the effect of gender inequality on labour returns in Ghana and; 4) the
moderating role of culture in the relationship between gender inequality and
labour returns. Firstly, based on Education Statistics (2018), ANOVA was used
to estimate whether district-level academic performance differs at various
distributions of infrastructure. The study further assessed the relationship
between infrastructure inequality measured by “Infrastructure Quintiles” and
academic performance using the Dynamic General Methods of Moments
technique. It found that difference in district-level academic performance in
Ghana is conditioned on infrastructure inequality. Secondly, based on a
generated education Gini, a Heckman estimation technique and quantile
regression, the study assessed the effect of education inequality on labour
returns using the last two rounds of the Ghana Living Standard Surveys (GLSS
6 and 7). It was observed that education inequality and earnings were negatively
related. It suggests that education inequality reduces wages by 6.25%. Lastly,
using GLSS 6 and 7, the study examined whether discriminations, sticky floors
and glass ceiling exist in the labour market of Ghana, from the perspective of
gender differences, while considering the moderating role of culture. The results
showed a mean wage of 8.1 and 7.6 for males and females respectively,
representing about 6 percent wage differential. The results support the existence
of wage discrimination against women across all wage distributions and the
assertion that individualism moderates wage discrimination. There is evidence
of the presence of sticky floors and glass ceiling in the labour market of Ghana.
It is recommended that the government of Ghana pursue policies aimed at
bridging the education infrastructure gap and accelerating equity in male-female
education towards improved academic performance, fair wage returns and
sustainable development.
