Working Paper
Impact of Education on Inequality Across the Wage Distribution Profile in Cameroon, 2005-10

This paper evaluates the impact of education on measured inequality across the wage distribution using pooled records from the 2005 and 2010 Cameroon labour force surveys, wage equations and standard inequality measures. Returns to education increased monotonically. Yet incremental returns were registered on average and up to the 25th percentile making the full returns to education for the period 2005-10 largest for the 5th and 10th percentiles. Inequality decreased from the lower to upper percentiles in the counterfactual distributions—thus revealing the inequality-increasing effect of education in the actual distribution and a snowballing effect when moving up the wage distribution.