IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/deveco/v172y2025ics0304387824001433.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A policy for the jobless youth in South Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Ebrahim, Amina
  • Pirttilä, Jukka

Abstract

This paper uses survey and tax administrative data to analyse the effects of a sizeable employer-borne payroll tax credit for young, low-wage workers in South Africa. We find fairly limited impacts of the wage subsidy on the employment of young, low-wage workers relative to two comparison groups: slightly older, low-wage workers and slightly higher-paid, young workers. We find evidence of increases in low-wage youth entry into employment, but these are too small to affect overall employment. However, the female employment rate has increased, and unemployment among women has dropped because of the policy. We find evidence to suggest that the policy has led to a rise in earnings, particularly for men and those earning around the maximum subsidy value.

Suggested Citation

  • Ebrahim, Amina & Pirttilä, Jukka, 2025. "A policy for the jobless youth in South Africa," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 172(C).
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:deveco:v:172:y:2025:i:c:s0304387824001433
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2024.103394
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304387824001433
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2024.103394?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Employment; Youth; Wage subsidy; South Africa;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H25 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Business Taxes and Subsidies
    • H32 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Firm
    • J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand
    • H40 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - General
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:deveco:v:172:y:2025:i:c:s0304387824001433. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/devec .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.