Overall income inequality in South Africa is very high, and inequality generated in the labour market is a key driver of inequality.In this paper, I use the Post-Apartheid Labour Market Series, the General Household Surveys, and administrative tax...
We use long-spanning individual longitudinal data to examine the long-term labour market outcomes of low-tier informal workers. We investigate their characteristics, calculate the extent of switching, and identify the characteristics of those who...
This paper identifies the socioeconomic drivers of earnings inequality in Peru in the period 2004–18. Using the ENAHO household surveys and data on routine task content of occupations, we apply inequality decomposition methods to the real earnings...
South Africa has the highest rate of measured inequality in the world. Often thought to be a legacy of the apartheid system, inequality in South Africa has stubbornly persisted. South Africa’s position as highest inequality country in the world has...
We synthesize the findings from several recent papers on South Africa’s very high income inequality. These papers use new datasets—including income tax data—and new empirical methods to investigate the drivers of household income and individual...
Traditionally, analysts of the South African labour market have used household survey data to describe earnings and employment in the post-Apartheid period. More recently, administrative data from the South African Revenue Service has been made...
Concerns about widening income inequality within countries continue to gain prominence in public debate worldwide. In the last decade, attention to the concentration of income at the very top of the distribution (top 1%) has increased. This...
Part of Journal Special Issue Horizontal Inequality: Persistence and Change
Welcoming 60,000 Southeast Asian refugees in the 1979–80 period has become a celebrated part of Canada’s history, but the eventual integration of these refugees into Canadian society has received insufficient attention. This study provides a...
With the second largest indigenous population by percentage in Latin America, Guatemala is an important case for understanding horizontal inequality and indigenous politics. This paper presents new analysis of survey data, allowing for consideration...
This paper aims at providing new evidence over the effect of conventional monetary policy shocks on wage inequality through the earnings heterogeneity channel under the inflation-targeting regime implemented in South Africa since 2000.The empirical...
Part of Journal Special Issue Involuntary Migration, Inequality, and Integration
The informal sector has long been viewed as a locus of the disadvantaged, unskilled, and inexperienced workers in under-developed and developing economies. Workers in the informal sector, however, can learn skills and gain experience that could help...
This paper presents findings from two rounds (2020 and 2021) of a study on the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on informal workers in 11 cities across five regions of the world (Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and North America). The study...
Part of Book The Job Ladder
This technical note describes the compilation of a 2019 Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for South Africa. SAMs are economy-wide databases that are used together with analytical techniques to strengthen evidence-based policy analysis. This SAM is based...
Part of Book COVID-19 and the Informal Economy
Developed countries have experienced a polarization in earnings and in employment, namely stronger growth in the earnings and jobs for the most and least skilled workers at the expense of those in the middle. This pattern has been attributed to...
The economic literature has shown that exogenous transitory shocks affect education by changing the opportunity cost of children. We argue that this is only part of the explanation. When permanent, shocks may change contracts and the organization of...
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