Earnings of Sri Lankans an economics analysis

Abstract

The study is an econometric analysis of the Labour Force Survey data as obtained in 1992. The survey was conducted in 12 monthly rounds in the island other than in the Northern and the Eastern provinces. Several publications were released by Department of Census and Statistics, however no special analysis of data were carried out. The knowledge on Labour Economics gained through the MA programme in Labour Studies inspired me to analyse the data with multiple objectives. While one of the objectives is to fulfil the basic requirement of a research study and prepare a thesis for the MA programme, another very important objective was to use the opportunity to evaluate the data in detail and find the gaps and weaknesses in the survey programme with a view of improving the programme. A model based on the Mincer's Earnings Function has been formulate and tested using the 1992 survey data. The model basically took Earnings of employees as the dependant variable, while many variables including demographic variables were taken as dependent variables.