@timkohler.bsky.social
Development microeconomist. Senior Research Officer @dpru-uct.bsky.social, UCT 🇿🇦 • Consultant, World Bank • Research Associate, RESEP, Stellenbosch University • 2025 Visiting Scholar @unu-wider.bsky.social 🇫🇮 • PhD, UCT https://timothykohler.github.io
A really fantastic few days in Maputo 🇲🇿 for the IGM Annual Conference & Policy Symposium, hosted by @unu-wider.bsky.social. A wonderful city with many challenges but no shortage of super welcoming people. I hope to return soon!
Join us at UCT for our 2-day December Workshop co-hosted with ERSA, discussing frontier research in applied economics for developing countries!
2 keynotes: Taryn Dinkelman & Joseph Kaboski.
12 presenters from 7 international & 4 local universities, & PhD student panels.
Great to be in Sydney🇦🇺 for the first time for the 2025 @sioecon.bsky.social Conference hosted by UNSW. Turns out koalas are indeed real (and adorable!), and apparently sleep even more than academics after conference dinners.
🆕 The gender pay gap in South Africa: Firms, formality and churn
Today on VoxDev, Ihsaan Bassier (@uniofsurrey.bsky.social) & @leilagautham.bsky.social (@universityofleeds.bsky.social) discuss the dynamics of the gender pay gap in South Africa: voxdev.org/topic/labour...
HAROON BHORAT (@haroonbhorat.bsky.social, our colleague at @dpru-uct.bsky.social): Getting the numbers right on the informal economy
www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/2...
Very grateful to be in Senegal 🇸🇳 for the first time this week for @j-pal.bsky.social’s Summer School on advanced randomised evaluation design. Many thanks to J-PAL, CESAG, @afd-france.bsky.social, and others for hosting me!
A fantastic and timely summer school, thanks very much @rodrigooliveira.bsky.social and the @unu-wider.bsky.social team for organising!
Now up: the 9th in my annual series of efforts to put together data on development journals: rankings, number of papers submitted (over 12,000 last year across 12 journals), number published (937), acceptance rates, time to review, open access stats, and more... blogs.worldbank.org/en/impacteva...
Thank you for being such a fantastic Chair, Rachel. And so great to finally meet in person!
Grateful to be attending the 2025 @unu-wider.bsky.social Development Conference here in Helsinki, which explicitly focuses on the role of social protection in driving growth and equality. Only Day 1 and I’ve learnt so much from everyone’s impressive work already!
Great to be a part of this work. Excited to see how it evolves!
It’s been a really great two months so far, very grateful to be here! Thanks very much to the welcoming folks at @unu-wider.bsky.social for having me.
How have the returns to education evolved during the post-Apartheid era in South Africa?🇿🇦
Read about it in a new short Econ3x3 blog I’ve put together below, summarizing a 2024 RESEP paper also below.
www.econ3x3.org/article/how-...
Full paper for those interested: resep.sun.ac.za/wp-content/u...
Presented some work at the University of Turku🇫🇮 today. Grateful for the opportunity to share some ideas & learn from such a welcoming & kind group of researchers - an impressive bunch doing great work. Thanks to @jerniemin.bsky.social @asfandyk.bsky.social @selcencakir.bsky.social for organising!
Really kind of you to share, @leightjessica.bsky.social! I've long admired your efforts to help promote young scholars. Thank you very much!
Today's cool young researcher #econtwitter #econsky is @TimothyKohler @timkohler.bsky.social @DPRU_UCT who works on topics related to labor + development
Very grateful to be in beautiful Maastricht🇳🇱 today to present some work at @unumerit.bsky.social. Thanks for having me!
If you’re interested in attending in-person or online: go.unu.edu/9zq7Q
Very excited and grateful to be in beautiful Helsinki 🇫🇮 for the next few months as a Visiting Scholar at @unu-wider.bsky.social. If you’re around and would be keen to connect, please get in touch!
Hi Bluesky! We're a research unit at University of Cape Town, addressing challenges facing children in South Africa through research, advocacy & education. We explore tensions between policy, practice & lived realities, to promote design & implementation of laws & services enabling kids to thrive 🌱
Hello, Bluesky #EconSky! We're the Southern Africa Labour & Development Research Unit (SALDRU) at UCT, dedicated to challenging inequalities through policy-relevant academic research. We are one of the leading Labour & Development #Economics units on the continent. Explore our work: saldru.uct.ac.za
🔊Postdoc Research Fellowship at DataFirst!
Analyze large-scale African foundational learning data, conduct original research, & shape education policy.
Apply now!
➡️https://www.datafirst.uct.ac.za/articles/2025-02-04-postdoctoral-research-fellowship-opportunity
Excited to be joining @unu-wider.bsky.social in Helsinki 🇫🇮 as a Visiting Scholar for 3 months starting in April! While there, my work will focus on social protection policy & labor market inequality in lower-income countries, with a particular focus on South Africa. Very much looking forward to it!
#Econsky
Thanks for reading. This work is ongoing, so any feedback is of course welcomed!
A large amount of between-race wage inequality, which has ⬇️ over time, remains due to differences in education levels. However, differential returns to education across race groups are playing an increasingly important role.
5/n
⬆️ in both (i) educational attainment & (ii) returns to education have driven real wages ⬆️. While, on average, the former is dominant, the latter has ⬆️ in importance over time. At the bottom of the wage distribution, where wages have ⬆️ the most, the latter is dominant.
4/n
While previously being relatively constant across the wage distribution, the returns to education have ⬆️ at the bottom and ⬇️ at the top, placing downward pressure on wage inequality which has decreased but, nevertheless, remains extremely high.
3/n
Following international trends, the returns structure has shifted to favour tertiary education. The returns to tertiary education have at least doubled in size, while those of lower levels have shrunk. The consequence: an increasingly convex education-earnings relationship.
2/n
Despite a substantial ⬆️ in educational attainment (by 25% on average), the average return to education has also ⬆️ (by 8-12% on average), implying that the increased demand for higher-educated workers has outpaced the increased supply.
1/n
How has the return to education evolved in post-Apartheid SA?🇿🇦
Happy to share a new working paper where I use reliable earnings data not publicly available to provide a more precise analysis than previously possible.
🔗: tinyurl.com/educ-returns...
5 key findings below!