Working Paper Series: Special Edition of 2016 to 2018 Interns

Table 2: Average Years of Schooling in Labour Force, Select Countries and Years

Year of Estimate

Average Years of Schooling

Average Years of Schooling – SVG

Country Barbados

1970 1970 1978 1980 1981 1982

8.9 6.9 6.9 6.6 8.2 6.8

5.3 5.3 5.7 5.9 6.0 6.0

Belize

Jamaica

Trinidad & Tobago

Cuba

Guyana

Source: Psacharopoulos and Arriagada (1986b) and Author’s Calculations

= ∑ Quality of Labour – The measure of the “quality” of labour is intended to adjust for the change in education attainment of the labour force. ‘As firms and other employers substitute among of hours worked by hiring relatively high skilled and highly compensated workers, labour quality increases. Consistent with Loening (2005) and Moore (2006), the measure of labour quality takes the following weighted average of labour with the respective education levels: (7) ℎ " M HI% H ∙ ( 7 N,6 ) 7 6 where H is the relative wages in 2014 taken from the 2015 National Labour Force Survey conducted by the Statistical Department of St Vincent and the Grenadines. 5 H is the portion of the labour force with education level j (primary, secondary, tertiary) and the subscript t represents time. Quality of Capital – In studies of this nature, it is normal to make adjustments to account for variations in the quality of capital over the period of study. However, to be able to adjust for quality there is a requirement that capital is disaggregated by categories such as buildings, machinery, etc. Disaggregated Gross fixed capital formation data is to the level of construction and investment in machinery and other investment, for the period 1977-2014, was obtained from the v. Quality Adjusted Capital and Labour Time-series described above do not account for changes in what is referred to as the “quality” of labour and capital. These are described and calculated in turn below:

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