IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp6534.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Determinants of Earnings Inequalities: Panel Data Evidence from South Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Kerr, Andrew

    (University of Cape Town)

  • Teal, Francis J.

    (University of Oxford)

Abstract

In this paper we analyse the relative importance of individual ability and labour market institutions, including public sector wage setting and trade unions, in determining earnings differences across different types of employment. To do this we use the KwaZulu-Natal Income Dynamics Study data from South Africa, which show extremely large average earnings differentials across different types of employment. Our results suggest that human capital and individual ability explain much of the earnings differentials within the private sector, including the union premium, but cannot explain the large premiums for public sector workers. We show that a public sector premium exists only for those moving into the public sector. The paper addresses the challenges of non-random attrition and measurement error bias that panel data bring. Our results show that emphasising a simple binary dichotomy between the formal and informal sector can be unhelpful in attempting to explore how the labour market functions.

Suggested Citation

  • Kerr, Andrew & Teal, Francis J., 2012. "The Determinants of Earnings Inequalities: Panel Data Evidence from South Africa," IZA Discussion Papers 6534, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6534
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp6534.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Griliches, Zvi & Hausman, Jerry A., 1986. "Errors in variables in panel data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 93-118, February.
    2. John M. Abowd & Francis Kramarz & David N. Margolis, 1999. "High Wage Workers and High Wage Firms," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 67(2), pages 251-334, March.
    3. Fernando Botelho & Vladimir Ponczek, 2011. "Segmentation in the Brazilian Labor Market," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(2), pages 437-463.
    4. James J. Heckman, 2001. "Micro Data, Heterogeneity, and the Evaluation of Public Policy: Nobel Lecture," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(4), pages 673-748, August.
    5. Eliane El Badaoui & Eric Strobl & Frank Walsh, 2008. "Is There an Informal Employment Wage Penalty? Evidence from South Africa," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 56(3), pages 683-710, April.
    6. Psacharopoulos, George, 1994. "Returns to investment in education: A global update," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 22(9), pages 1325-1343, September.
    7. Haroon Bhorat & Carlene van der Westhuizen & Sumayya Goga, 2009. "Analysing Wage Formation in the South African Labour Market: The Role of Bargaining Councils," Working Papers 09135, University of Cape Town, Development Policy Research Unit.
    8. A. D. Roy, 1951. "Some Thoughts On The Distribution Of Earnings," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 3(2), pages 135-146.
    9. Harris, John R & Todaro, Michael P, 1970. "Migration, Unemployment & Development: A Two-Sector Analysis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 60(1), pages 126-142, March.
    10. Bennell, Paul, 1996. "Rates of return to education: Does the conventional pattern prevail in sub-Saharan Africa?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 183-199, January.
    11. Günther, Isabel & Launov, Andrey, 2012. "Informal employment in developing countries," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(1), pages 88-98.
    12. Cameron,A. Colin & Trivedi,Pravin K., 2005. "Microeconometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521848053, September.
    13. Julian May & Jorge Aguero & Michael Carter & Ian Timæus, 2007. "The KwaZulu-Natal Income Dynamics Study (KIDS) third wave: methods, first findings and an agenda for future research," Development Southern Africa, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(5), pages 629-648.
    14. Moll, Peter, 1996. "Compulsory Centralization of Collective Bargaining in South Africa," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(2), pages 326-329, May.
    15. Kingdon, Geeta Gandhi & Knight, John, 2004. "Unemployment in South Africa: The Nature of the Beast," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 391-408, March.
    16. Falco, Paolo & Kerr, Andrew & Rankin, Neil & Sandefur, Justin & Teal, Francis, 2011. "The returns to formality and informality in urban Africa," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(S1), pages 23-31.
    17. James Heintz & Dorrit Posel, 2008. "Revisiting Informal Employment And Segmentation In The South African Labour Market," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 76(1), pages 26-44, March.
    18. Heckman, James J & Sedlacek, Guilherme, 1985. "Heterogeneity, Aggregation, and Market Wage Functions: An Empirical Model of Self-selection in the Labor Market," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 93(6), pages 1077-1125, December.
    19. Fields, Gary S., 1975. "Rural-urban migration, urban unemployment and underemployment, and job-search activity in LDCs," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 2(2), pages 165-187, June.
    20. James J. Heckman & V. Joseph Hotz, 1986. "An Investigation of the Labor Market Earnings of Panamanian Males Evaluating the Sources of Inequality," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 21(4), pages 507-542.
    21. Pratap, Sangeeta & Quintin, Erwan, 2006. "Are labor markets segmented in developing countries? A semiparametric approach," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(7), pages 1817-1841, October.
    22. Maloney, William F, 1999. "Does Informality Imply Segmentation in Urban Labor Markets? Evidence from Sectoral Transitions in Mexico," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 13(2), pages 275-302, May.
    23. Paul Cichello & Gary Fields & Murray Leibbrandt, 2003. "Earnings and Employment Dynamics for Africans in Post-apartheid South Africa: A Panel Study of KwaZulu-Natal," Working Papers 03077, University of Cape Town, Development Policy Research Unit.
    24. Jeremy R. Magruder, 2012. "High Unemployment Yet Few Small Firms: The Role of Centralized Bargaining in South Africa," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 4(3), pages 138-166, July.
    25. Malcolm Keswell & Laura Poswell, 2004. "Returns To Education In South Africa: A Retrospective Sensitivity Analysis Of The Available Evidence," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 72(4), pages 834-860, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mari Kangasniemi & Jukka Pirttilä, 2013. "Trade unions in the south and co-operation between unions in the South and in the North: A survey of the economics literature," Working Papers 285, Työn ja talouden tutkimus LABORE, The Labour Institute for Economic Research LABORE.
    2. repec:ldr:wpaper:92 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Hamoudi, Amar & Thomas, Duncan, 2014. "Endogenous coresidence and program incidence: South Africa's Old Age Pension," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 30-37.
    4. Amar Hamoudi & Duncan Thomas, 2014. "Endogenous Co-residence and Program Incidence: South Africa's Old Age Pension," NBER Working Papers 19929, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Andrew Kerr & Martin Wittenberg & Jairo Arrow, 2014. "Job Creation and Destruction in South Africa," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 82(1), pages 1-18, March.
    6. Magejo, Prudence & Benhura, Miracle, 2015. "A Detailed Decomposition Analysis of the Public-Private Sector Wage Gap in South Africa," IZA Discussion Papers 9271, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Serena Merrino, 2020. "Measuring labour earnings inequality in post-apartheid South Africa," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2020-32, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Aysit Tansel & Halil Ibrahim Keskin & Zeynel Abidin Ozdemir, 2020. "Is there an informal employment wage penalty in Egypt? Evidence from quantile regression on panel data," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 58(6), pages 2949-2979, June.
    2. Aysit Tansel & Halil Ibrahim Keskin & Zeynel Abidin Ozdemir, 2015. "Is There an Informal Employment Wage Penalty in Egypt?," Working Papers 976, Economic Research Forum, revised Dec 2015.
    3. Aysit Tansel & Halil Ibrahim Keskin & Zeynel Abidin Ozdemir, 2015. "Is There An Infırmal Employment Wage Penalty in Egypt?," ERC Working Papers 1508, ERC - Economic Research Center, Middle East Technical University, revised Sep 2015.
    4. Olivier Bargain & Prudence Kwenda, 2014. "The Informal Sector Wage Gap: New Evidence Using Quantile Estimations on Panel Data," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 63(1), pages 117-153.
    5. Bargain, Olivier & Etienne, Audrey & Melly, Blaise, 2021. "Informal pay gaps in good and bad times: Evidence from Russia," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(3), pages 693-714.
    6. Aysit Tansel & Elif Oznur Acar, 2016. "The Formal/Informal Employment Earnings Gap: Evidence from Turkey," Research on Economic Inequality, in: Inequality after the 20th Century: Papers from the Sixth ECINEQ Meeting, volume 24, pages 121-154, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    7. Eliane El Badaoui & Riccardo Magnani, 2020. "Tax Policies and Informality in South Africa," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(3), pages 267-301, April.
    8. Paula Herrera-Id�rraga & Enrique L�pez-Bazo & Elisabet Motell�n, 2015. "Double Penalty in Returns to Education: Informality and Educational Mismatch in the Colombian Labour Market," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(12), pages 1683-1701, December.
    9. Radchenko, Natalia, 2014. "Heterogeneity in Informal Salaried Employment: Evidence from the Egyptian Labor Market Survey," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 169-188.
    10. Eliane Badaoui & Olivier Bargain & Prudence Kwenda & Eric Strobl & Frank Walsh, 2024. "Informality, self‐employment and heterogeneous managerial ability: A model for developing countries," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 36(2), pages 1293-1323, March.
    11. Christine ABLAZA & Mark WESTERN & Wojtek TOMASZEWSKI, 2021. "Good jobs and bad jobs for Indonesia's informal workers," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 160(1), pages 143-168, March.
    12. Olivier Bargain & Prudence Kwenda, 2009. "The Informal Sector Wage Gap: New Evidence Using Quantile Regressions on Panel Data," CEDI Discussion Paper Series 09-06, Centre for Economic Development and Institutions(CEDI), Brunel University.
    13. Aysit Tansel & Elif Oznur Acar, 2016. "The Formal/Informal Employment Earnings Gap: Evidence from Turkey," Research on Economic Inequality,in: Inequality after the 20th Century: Papers from the Sixth ECINEQ Meeting, volume 24, pages 121-154 Emerald Publishing Ltd.
    14. John P. Haisken-DeNew & Maren M. Michaelsen, 2011. "Migration Magnet: The Role of Work Experience in Rural-Urban Wage Diff erentials in Mexico," Ruhr Economic Papers 0263, Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universität Dortmund, Universität Duisburg-Essen.
    15. Rayees Ahmad Sheikh & Sarthak Gaurav & Trupti Mishra, 2021. "Race among equals? An inquiry into the segmentation of Indian labor market," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(4), pages 2180-2206, November.
    16. Jacek Liwiński, 2022. "Informal employment and wages in Poland," International Journal of Manpower, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 44(6), pages 1196-1220, January.
    17. Hanan Nazier & Racha Ramadan, 2015. "Informality and Poverty: A Causality Dilemma with Application to Egypt," Advances in Management and Applied Economics, SCIENPRESS Ltd, vol. 5(4), pages 1-4.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    earnings; public sector; trade unions; formality; South Africa;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J51 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - Trade Unions: Objectives, Structure, and Effects
    • J45 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Public Sector Labor Markets
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:iza:izadps:dp6534. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    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.