Human capital inequality in Turkey, 1950-2020
Abstract
The paper examines human capital inequality in Turkey over the last seventy
years, both at provincial level and across genders. Average years of schooling
has increased from just above one year to nine years over time and education
inequality has declined significantly and monotonically. However, when one
considers Mincerian human capital measures, the trend is not as clear. While
under the decreasing returns to education assumption within-province inequal-
ity follows an inverted U-shape pattern, the inequality shows no tendency to
decline if one assumes increasing returns. Although there is a convergence in in-
equality at a much lower level if one were to use average years of education, the
convergence in Mincerian measure of human capital inequality occurs at much
higher level. The gender gap, on the other hand, increases earlier and starts
declining after 1980s at the national level, yet, there are significant regional
variations and within-province inequality increases in gender differences.
Keywords
References
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