In this paper, we study the extent and nature of informality in Colombia by using the new chapter on informality in the Encuesta Continua de Hogares (ECH) from August 2006 to December 2006, which includes new questions deepening the information on coverage of social protection benefits, labor market trajectories, and motivations for sector of employment. The availability of these new data allows us to measure informality in several ways and understand the differences and implications of using various definitions. We show that social security contributions is a reasonable measure of informality as it is a good indicator that the individual has the entire package of benefits associated with formal employment. We then use this definition of informality to characterize informal workers in various dimensions that include socio-demographic characteristics, characteristics of the firm and job satisfaction measures. The main objective is to understand what types of individuals belong to formal and informal sectors, study the incentives and motivations of workers for belonging to one or other segment of the labor market, and analyze the consequences of not being covered by the regulatory framework. In doing this, we hope to gain some understanding about how different policy interventions could influence individuals’ occupation choices and workers’ well-being. In this paper, we study the extent and nature of informality in Colombia by using the new chapter on informality in the Encuesta Continua de Hogares (ECH) from August 2006 to December 2006, which includes new questions deepening the information on coverage of social protection benefits, labor market trajectories, and motivations for sector of employment. The availability of these new data allows us to measure informality in several ways and understand the differences and implications of using various definitions. We show that social security contributions is a reasonable measure of informality as it is a good indicator that the individual has the entire package of benefits associated with formal employment. We then use this definition of informality to characterize informal workers in various dimensions that include socio-demographic characteristics, characteristics of the firm and job satisfaction measures. The main objective is to understand what types of individuals belong to formal and informal sectors, study the incentives and motivations of workers for belonging to one or other segment of the labor market, and analyze the consequences of not being covered by the regulatory framework. In doing this, we hope to gain some understanding about how different policy interventions could influence individuals’ occupation choices and workers’ well-being.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Rebeca Montoya).
Related research
Keywords:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: