IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jafrec/v28y2019i5p558-581..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Unintended Labor Supply Effects of Cash Transfer Programs: New Evidence from South Africa’s Pension

Author

Listed:
  • Martin Abel

Abstract

Using South Africa’s first nationally representative panel data set, I find that the presence of pension recipients in the household reduces the probability of employment of both previously employed and unemployed prime-aged adults. Exploiting institutional features of the disability grant to isolate the pension’s income effect suggests that the effects operate through the income mechanism. By contrast, there is no evidence that pensioners enable household members to work by providing childcare as concluded by previous studies.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Abel, 2019. "Unintended Labor Supply Effects of Cash Transfer Programs: New Evidence from South Africa’s Pension," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 28(5), pages 558-581.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jafrec:v:28:y:2019:i:5:p:558-581.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jae/ejz009
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Vidhya Unnikrishnan & Kunal Sen, 2020. "Old-age pensions and female labour supply in India," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2020-90, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Robert D. Osei & Monica Lambon‐Quayefio, 2021. "Cash transfers and the supply of labor by poor households: Evidence from the livelihood empowerment against poverty program in Ghana," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(3), pages 1293-1304, August.
    3. Timothy Köhler & Haroon Bhorat & Robert Hill, 2023. "The effect of wage subsidies on job retention in a developing country: Evidence from South Africa," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2023-114, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    4. Ihsaan BASSIER & Joshua BUDLENDER, 2024. "Methods for Credible Evaluation of Programme Stimulus Effects in South Africa," Working Paper 53315978-8164-44f9-8141-5, Agence française de développement.
    5. Manea, Roxana Elena & Piraino, Patrizio & Viarengo, Martina, 2023. "Crime, inequality and subsidized housing: Evidence from South Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 168(C).
    6. Nguyen, Cuong Viet & Tarp, Finn, 2023. "Cash Transfers and Labor Supply: New Evidence on Impacts and Mechanisms," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1243, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    7. Ihsaan Bassier & Joshua Budlender, 2024. "Stimulus effects of a large public employment programme," Working Paper a09be470-a23f-4594-b51a-f, Agence française de développement.
    8. Bassier, Ihsaan & Budlender, Joshua & Zizzamia, Rocco & Leibbrandt, Murray & Ranchhod, Vimal, 2021. "Locked down and locked out: Repurposing social assistance as emergency relief to informal workers," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    9. Awaworyi Churchill, Sefa & Iqbal, Nasir & Nawaz, Saima & Yew, Siew Ling, 2021. "Unconditional cash transfers, child labour and education: theory and evidence," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 186(C), pages 437-457.
    10. Haroon Bhorat & Timothy Köhler & David de Villiers, 2023. "Can Cash Transfers to the Unemployed Support Economic Activity? Evidence from South Africa," Working Papers 202301, University of Cape Town, Development Policy Research Unit.
    11. Unnikrishnan, Vidhya & Imai, Katsushi S., 2020. "Does the old-age pension scheme improve household welfare? Evidence from India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    12. Kacker, Kanishka, 2019. "Social transfers and labor supply: Long run rvidence from South Africa," MPRA Paper 99044, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Zizzamia, Rocco, 2020. "Is employment a panacea for poverty? A mixed-methods investigation of employment decisions in South Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).

    More about this item

    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:oup:jafrec:v:28:y:2019:i:5:p:558-581.. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/csaoxuk.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.