UPDATING RATES OF RETURN TO EDUCATION - ZIMBABWE IN THE LATE 1980S

This article presents social and private rates of return to four levels of education - primary, lower and upper secondary and higher education - in Zimbabwe in the late 1980s. The results of this research clearly indicate that rates of return to education in Zimbabwe do not conform to the common ROR patterns that have been widely observed in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world. The principal explanation for this is that labour market conditions for school leavers and university graduates in Zimbabwe in the late 1980s were very different from the conditions that typically prevailed in African countries during the 1960s and 1970s when the majority of education rates of return studies were undertaken.