Education and the gender wage gap in South Africa.

M. Com. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 2015.A vast literature on the gender wage gap across different institutional structures and economies exists. Men typically earn more than women, with this gap being attributed to differences in productive characteristics, occupational choice and discrimination. However less research exists on how this gap differs by level of education. Using the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) Wave 1 2008, this study aims to analyse the prevailing gender wage gap by level of education in South Africa. Using quantile regression I estimate the size of the gender wage gap at different points of the wage distribution, by the worker’s level of education. Following the decomposition technique of Machado and Mata (2005) I then decompose the gender wage gap between men and women into different components. A key finding of this study is the presence of a glass ceiling for South Africa, which limits the ability of women’s wages at the top of the earnings distribution to rise to match the wages of men