IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ris/adbewp/0148.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Quality of Jobs in the Philippines: Comparing Self-Employment with Wage Employment

Author

Listed:
  • Hasan, Rana

    (Asian Development Bank)

  • Jandoc, Karl Robert L.

    (Asian Development Bank)

Abstract

Analysis of labor force survey data from 1994 to 2007 reveals that the structure of the Philippines labor force has been changing in several important ways. One is the movement from self-employment, the most predominant form of employment, to wage employment across a wide range of production sectors. How does one evaluate this change in terms of workers’ earnings—arguably the most important element of job quality? Since labor force survey data do not provide information on earnings of the self-employed, we combine information on household incomes (disaggregated by source) from the Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES) with information on household members’ employment-related activities from the Labor Force Survey (LFS) to shed light on this question. We also examine broad trends in the structure of employment, wages, and earnings. Our findings suggest that the decline of self-employment is no bad thing. For the most part, the earnings and educational profiles of the self-employed are very similar to those of casual wage earners, and clearly dominated by those of permanent wage earners even when observable worker characteristics are controlled for. An implication is that the self-employed do not seem to be “capitalists in waiting” as noted in recent literature. As selfemployment gives way to wage employment, especially casual wage employment in the services sector, the key challenge for policy is tackling the slow growth of wages and earnings indicated by both LFS and FIES data

Suggested Citation

  • Hasan, Rana & Jandoc, Karl Robert L., 2009. "Quality of Jobs in the Philippines: Comparing Self-Employment with Wage Employment," ADB Economics Working Paper Series 148, Asian Development Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:ris:adbewp:0148
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.adb.org/publications/quality-jobs-philippines-comparing-self-employment-wage-employment
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. de Mel, Suresh & McKenzie, David & Woodruff, Christopher, 2008. "Who are the microenterprise owners ? Evidence from Sri Lanka on Tokman v. de Soto," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4635, The World Bank.
    2. Jesus Felipe & Rana Hasan (ed.), 2006. "Labor Markets in Asia," Palgrave Macmillan Books, Palgrave Macmillan, number 978-0-230-62738-3, October.
    3. Marco Caliendo & Sabine Kopeinig, 2008. "Some Practical Guidance For The Implementation Of Propensity Score Matching," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(1), pages 31-72, February.
    4. Ferreira, Francisco H. G. & Paes de Barrios, Ricardo, 1999. "The slippery slope : explaining the increase in extreme poverty in urban Brazil, 1976-96," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2210, The World Bank.
    5. Ravallion, Martin & Chen, Shaohua, 2003. "Measuring pro-poor growth," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 78(1), pages 93-99, January.
    6. Elena Glinskaya & Michael Lokshin, 2007. "Wage differentials between the public and private sectors in India," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(3), pages 333-355.
    7. Arsenio Balisacan & Rosemarie Edillon, 2005. "Poverty Targeting in the Philippines," Chapters, in: John Weiss (ed.), Poverty Targeting in Asia, chapter 6, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    8. Fields, Gary S., 2007. "Labor market policy in developing countries : a selective review of the literature and needs for the future," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4362, The World Bank.
    9. Jesus Felipe & Leonardo Lanzona, 2006. "Unemployment, Labor Laws, and Economic Policies in the Philippines," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Jesus Felipe & Rana Hasan (ed.), Labor Markets in Asia, chapter 0, pages 367-502, Palgrave Macmillan.
    10. Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo, 2008. "What Is Middle Class about the Middle Classes around the World?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 22(2), pages 3-28, Spring.
    11. Maarten Goos & Alan Manning, 2007. "Lousy and Lovely Jobs: The Rising Polarization of Work in Britain," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(1), pages 118-133, February.
    12. Vandenberghe Vincent & Robin Stéphane, 2003. "Private, Private Government-Dependent and Public schools. An International Efficiency Analysis using Propensity Score Matching," Public Economics 0308002, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Maloney, William F., 2004. "Informality Revisited," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 32(7), pages 1159-1178, July.
    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. Wanida Ngienthi, 2013. "Offshoring Prompts High Quality Labour Markets," Pacific Economic Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(5), pages 628-643, December.
    2. Mina, Christian D. & Reyes, Celia M. & Gloria, Reneli Ann B. & Mercado, Sarah Joy P., 2015. "Review of Design and Implementation of the Agricultural Insurance Programs of the Philippine Crop Insurance Corporation," Discussion Papers DP 2015-07, Philippine Institute for Development Studies.

    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. Boggio, Luciano, 2009. "Long-run effects of low-wage countries' growing competitiveness and exports of manufactures," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 38-49, March.
    2. Yusuf Soner Baskaya & Timur Hulagu, 2011. "Informal-Formal Worker Wage Gap in Turkey : Evidence From A Semi-Parametric Approach," Working Papers 1115, Research and Monetary Policy Department, Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey.
    3. Ferreira , Francisco H. G., 2010. "Distributions in motion: economic growth, inequality, and poverty dynamics," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5424, The World Bank.
    4. Anders Stenberg & Xavier Luna & Olle Westerlund, 2014. "Does Formal Education for Older Workers Increase Earnings? — Evidence Based on Rich Data and Long-term Follow-up," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 28(2), pages 163-189, June.
    5. Karabchuk, Tatiana, 2012. "Part-time and temporary workers in Russia: winners or losers?," Journal for Labour Market Research, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany], vol. 45(1), pages 23-39.
    6. Gudibande, Rohan Ravindra & Jacob, Arun, 2020. "Minimum wages for domestic workers: impact evaluation of the Indian experience," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    7. Melanie Khamis, 2012. "A Note On Informality In The Labour Market," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(7), pages 894-908, October.
    8. Frank‐Borge Wietzke, 2020. "Poverty, Inequality, and Fertility: The Contribution of Demographic Change to Global Poverty Reduction," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 46(1), pages 65-99, March.
    9. Shahen, Mostafa E. & Kotani, Koji & Kakinaka, Makoto & Managi, Shunsuke, 2020. "Wage and labor mobility between public, formal private and informal private sectors in a developing country," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 101-113.
    10. Bruhn, Miriam, 2013. "A tale of two species: Revisiting the effect of registration reform on informal business owners in Mexico," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 275-283.
    11. Gutiérrez-Romero, Roxana, 2021. "Inequality, persistence of the informal economy, and club convergence," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    12. Vagisha Gunasekara, 2015. "Unpacking the Middle: A Class-based Analysis of the Labour Market in Sri Lanka," Southern Voice Occasional Paper 22, Southern Voice.
    13. David A. Hurtado & Philipp Hessel & Mauricio Avendano, 2017. "The hidden costs of informal work: lack of social protection and subjective well-being in Colombia," International Journal of Public Health, Springer;Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), vol. 62(2), pages 187-196, March.
    14. Melanie Khamis, 2012. "Is Informal Sector Work an Alternative to Workfare Benefits? The Case of Pre-program Expansion and Economic Crisis," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(4), pages 579-593, November.
    15. Peter Edward & Andy Sumner, 2013. "Inequality from a global perspective: An alternative approach," Working Papers 302, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    16. 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.
    17. Rand, John & Torm, Nina, 2012. "The Benefits of Formalization: Evidence from Vietnamese Manufacturing SMEs," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(5), pages 983-998.
    18. Gasmi, Farid & Kouakou, Dorgyles & Sanni, Maruf, 2022. "The effect of firm informality on sustainable and responsible innovation in developing countries: Evidence from Nigeria," TSE Working Papers 22-1368, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    19. World Bank, 2016. "Tunisia Poverty Assessment 2015," World Bank Publications - Reports 24410, The World Bank Group.
    20. Joanna Tyrowicz & Stanisław Cichocki, 2011. "Employed unemployed? On shadow employment in transition," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 38(2), pages 259-281, May.

    More about this item

    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:ris:adbewp:0148. 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: Orlee Velarde (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eradbph.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.