The Determination of Individual Hourly Earnings in Urban Kenya

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors which account for differences among individuals in hourly earnings in the major urban center in Kenya. There are two principal reasons for conducting such an investigation. First, there is an emerging consensus among economists that the general level of wages in the modern sector of the "typical" less developed country is too high to permit the efficient allocation of resources. Second, questions concerning the distribution of income are interesting in any society, and they are especially interesting in societies in which per capita income is very low.