IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ldr/wpaper/135.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Wages and wage inequality in South Africa 1994-2011: The evidence from household survey data

Author

Listed:
  • Martin Wittenberg

    (DataFirst, University of Cape Town)

Abstract

We analyse the long-term trends in wages in South Africa, using the data from the October Household Surveys, Labour Force Surveys and Quarterly Labour Force Surveys. We show that outliers and missing data need to be taken into consideration when working with these data. Our results show that overall mean real earnings among employees has risen over this period. Median real earnings, by contrast, have lagged. We show that the top end of the earnings distribution has moved away from the median, while there seems to have been a relative compression of the distribution right at the bottom.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Wittenberg, 2014. "Wages and wage inequality in South Africa 1994-2011: The evidence from household survey data," SALDRU Working Papers 135, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    • Handle: RePEc:ldr:wpaper:135
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://opensaldru.uct.ac.za/bitstream/handle/11090/767/2014_135_Saldruwp.pdf?sequence=1
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. T. Paul Schultz & Germano Mwabu, 1998. "Labor Unions and the Distribution of Wages and Employment in South Africa," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 51(4), pages 680-703, July.
    2. Andrew Kerr & Martin Wittenberg, 2015. "Sampling methodology and fieldwork changes in the October Household Surveys and Labour Force Surveys," Development Southern Africa, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(5), pages 603-612, September.
    3. Kristin F. Butcher & Cecilia Elena Rouse, 2001. "Wage Effects of Unions and Industrial Councils in South Africa," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 54(2), pages 349-374, January.
    4. Reza C. Daniels, 2012. "Questionnaire Design and Response Propensities for Employee Income Micro Data," SALDRU Working Papers 89, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    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. Andrew Kerr, 2017. "Tax(i)ing the Poor? Commuting Costs in South African Cities," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 85(3), pages 321-340, September.
    2. Rulof Burger & Rachel Jafta & Dieter von Fintel, 2016. "Affirmative action policies and the evolution of post-apartheid South Africa's racial wage gap," WIDER Working Paper Series 066, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    3. Channing Arndt, 2018. "New Data, New Approaches and New Evidence: A Policy Synthesis," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 86(S1), pages 167-178, January.
    4. Channing Arndt, 2018. "New Data, New Approaches and New Evidence: A Policy Synthesis," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 86(S1), pages 167-178, January.
    5. Rulof Burger & Rachel Jafta & Dieter von Fintel, 2016. "Affirmative action policies and the evolution of post-apartheid South Africa's racial wage gap," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2016-66, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    6. Erten, Bilge & Leight, Jessica & Tregenna, Fiona, 2019. "Trade liberalization and local labor market adjustment in South Africa," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 448-467.

    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. Martin Wittenberg, 2017. "Wages and Wage Inequality in South Africa 1994–2011: Part 1 – Wage Measurement and Trends," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 85(2), pages 279-297, June.
    2. Haroon Bhorat & Sumayya Goga & Carlene Van Der Westhuizen, 2012. "Institutional Wage Effects: Revisiting Union And Bargaining Council Wage Premia In South Africa," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 80(3), pages 400-414, September.
    3. Freeman, Richard B., 2010. "Labor Regulations, Unions, and Social Protection in Developing Countries," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Dani Rodrik & Mark Rosenzweig (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 4657-4702, Elsevier.
    4. R C Daniels & S Rospabe, 2005. "Estimating an Earnings Function From Coarsened Data by an Interval Censored Regression Procedure," Studies in Economics and Econometrics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(1), pages 29-46, April.
    5. Azam, Jean-Paul & Rospabe, Sandrine, 2007. "Trade unions vs. statistical discrimination: Theory and application to post-apartheid South Africa," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(1), pages 417-444, September.
    6. Miracle Ntuli & Prudence Kwenda, 2013. "Labour Unions and Wage Inequality Among African Men in South Africa," Working Papers 13159, University of Cape Town, Development Policy Research Unit.
    7. Kingdon, Geeta & Knight, John, 2006. "The measurement of unemployment when unemployment is high," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 291-315, June.
    8. Abhijit Banerjee & Sebastian Galiani & Jim Levinsohn & Zoë McLaren & Ingrid Woolard, 2008. "Why has unemployment risen in the New South Africa?1," The Economics of Transition, The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, vol. 16(4), pages 715-740, October.
    9. Teal, Francis, 2011. "The price of labour and understanding the causes of poverty," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(S1), pages 7-15.
    10. Héctor Gutiérrez Rufrancos, 2019. "Are There Gains to Joining a Union? Evidence from Mexico," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 57(3), pages 676-712, September.
    11. Paula Armstrong & Janca Steenkamp, 2008. "South African Trade Unions: an Overview for 1995 to 2005," Working Papers 10/2008, Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics.
    12. Susan Hayter & Bradley Weinberg, 2011. "Mind the Gap: Collective Bargaining and Wage Inequality," Chapters, in: Susan Hayter (ed.), The Role of Collective Bargaining in the Global Economy, chapter 6, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    13. Kerr, Andrew & Wittenberg, Martin, 2021. "Union wage premia and wage inequality in South Africa," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 255-271.
    14. repec:ilo:ilowps:484770 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Brändle, Tobias, 2024. "Unions and Collective Bargaining: The Influence on Wages, Employment and Firm Survival," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1457, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    16. Susan Hayter, 2015. "Unions and collective bargaining," Chapters, in: Janine Berg (ed.), Labour Markets, Institutions and Inequality, chapter 4, pages 95-122, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    17. Sandrine Rospabéa, 2002. "How Did Labour Market Racial Discrimination Evolve After The End Of Apartheid?," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 70(1), pages 185-217, March.
    18. Wittenberg, Martin., 2014. "Analysis of employment, real wage, and productivity trends in South Africa since 1994," ILO Working Papers 994847703402676, International Labour Organization.
    19. Andrew Kerr & Martin Wittenberg, 2019. "Earnings and employment microdata in South Africa," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2019-47, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    20. Haroon Bhorat & Karmen Naidoo & Morné Oosthuizen & Kavisha Pillay, 2015. "Demographic, employment, and wage trends in South Africa," WIDER Working Paper Series 141, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    21. Jellal, Mohamed, 2009. "Unionized Labor Market and Regulation of Monopoly," MPRA Paper 17279, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    South Africa; Inequality; Earnings; Data Quality; Multiple Imputation;
    All these keywords.

    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:ldr:wpaper:135. 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: Alison Siljeur (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sauctza.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.