Household Inequality And The Labor Market In South Africa
Abstract
There has been very little detailed exploration of the relationship between wage income and household inequality in South Africa despite the relevance of this issue for many contemporary growth and development policy debates. This article is directed at such an analysis. It uses a decomposition of household income inequality by income components to highlight the dominance of wage income in driving overall income inequality. This is followed by a detailed discussion of the distribution of the unemployed across different wage-earning household categories. Many of the unemployed are seen to depend on wage earners within their households, but a significant percentage of the unemployed, especially in rural areas, have no direct link to labor market earners. In such cases, the creation of employment is essential. The conclusion explores policy implications by linking our empirical findings to South African debates over the quality versus the quantity of employment. Copyright 2001 Western Economic Association International.Download Info
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Bibliographic Info
Article provided by Western Economic Association International in its journal Contemporary Economic Policy.
Volume (Year): 19 (2001)
Issue (Month): 1 (01)
Pages: 73-86
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Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Pauw, Kalie, 2005. "Quantifying the Economic Divide in South African Agriculture: An Income-Side Analysis," Working Paper Series 15630, PROVIDE Project.
- Daniela Casale & Colette Muller & Dorrit Posel, 2005. "‘Two Million Net New Jobs’: A Reconsideration of the Rise in Employment in South Africa, 1995-2003," Working Papers 05097, University of Cape Town, Development Policy Research Unit.
- Frederick C.v.N. Fourie, 2011. "The South African unemployment debate: three worlds, three discourses?," SALDRU Working Papers 63, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
- 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.
- Johannes Fedderke, 2012.
"The Cost of Rigidity: The Case of the South African Labor Market,"
Working Papers
290, Economic Research Southern Africa.
- Johannes Fedderke, 2012. "The Cost of Rigidity: The Case of the South African Labor Market," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 54(4), pages 809-842, December.
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