921 research outputs found
Sort by
Peer Networks and Tobacco Consumption in South Africa
No full textThis paper deepens the empirical analysis of peer networks by considering their effects on both smoking participation and smoking intensity in South Africa, a country where majority initiate smoking at adolescent age. Peer networks are key in determining the smoking behaviour of youths, but the magnitude of the effects is still debated, questioned and inconclusive. I used a control function approach, a two‐stage least square and the fixed effect method to address the potential endogeneity of peer network. The results suggest positive and significant peer effects on smoking participation and smoking intensity. While the network effects are consistently positive and significant, the magnitude of the estimates varies across methodological approaches with the instrument variable estimates generally lower. Including older adults in the peer reference group increases the peer effect estimates. Finally, using clusters as an alternative measure of network size in wave one, I show that peer effects are independent on network size but rather on network quality. Relative to the results of this paper, previous literature has documented larger peer effects on the decision to smoke. The findings suggest that policies (excise tax) that directly affect the decision to smoke and the smoking intensity of the peer reference group are likely to affect own smoking behaviour
The impact of the no-fee school policy on enrolment and school performance: Evidence from NIDS Waves 1-3
No full textPost-apartheid education funding is designed to redress past inequalities in funding and, in doing so, work towards providing all learners with high quality education (Schools Act, 1996). In August 2006, new National Norms and Standards for Funding were established and the rollout of a no-fee program initiated. The program abolishes compulsory school fees in schools in the least socioeconomically advantaged sections of society. From 2007, the Minister of Education began declaring certain public ordinary schools to be no-fee schools, with additional schools added each year, such that by 2011 over 80% of all public schools were declared no-fee schools. The rollout coincides with the first three waves of the National Income Dynamics Study. We geo-link each respondent's location in 2007 to administrative school data and combine differences in distance to a no-fee high school in 2007 with differences across cohorts that result from the timing of the program rollout. We find no discernable impact of the program on enrolment at 16, 17, 18 or 19 or on educational attainment and completion of secondary school by age 20.The authors acknowledge financial support from the Programme to Support Pro-Poor Policy Development
II (PSPPD II), a partnership between the Presidency, Republic of South Africa and the European Union. The contents of this paper are the sole responsibility of the authors and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the Presidency, Republic of South Africa and the European Union
F(r)ee Higher Education: A School of Economics engagement
No full textIn October 2016, students’ request for free higher education again dominated South Africa’s political and public agenda. In an attempt to facilitate and contribute to the much-needed conversations on the topic, students and staff of University of Cape Town’s (UCT) School of Economics initiated a series of seminars on F(r)ee Reform (www.facebook.com/FreeReform) and the accessibility of higher education.
This document is a result of the initiative and aims to present some of the topics that were discussed during the seminar series including information on the legal context to education in South Africa, government’s current approach to funding higher education and the response of students in the engagement to this approach, as well as a discussion of an alternative funding model for higher education
Washing with Hope: Evidence from a hand-washing pilot study among children in South Africa
No full textThis paper reports the results of a randomised-control pilot study in which children in treatment households received a bi-monthly delivery of HOPE SOAP© , a colourful, translucent bar of soap with a toy embedded in its centre. In contrast, children in control households received a colourful, translucent bar or soap with the toy alongside it. Whilst many of our findings lack statistical power, the pilot certainly suggests that HOPE SOAP© has positive effects on child handwashing behaviour. At endline, HOPE SOAP© children are directly observed as being more likely to wash their hands unprompted prior to eating a snack. They are also more likely to wash their hands after using the toilet, are significantly more likely to use soap to wash their hands as opposed to just rinsing with water, and enjoy significantly better health outcomes.JEL classification: I1; I12; I150Funding: This work was supported by the The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) Incubation Fund.
Acknowledgements: We are grateful to Rachel Glennerster and seminar participants at the University of Cape Town for valuable comments on previous version of this manuscript and to Laura Costica and Emmanuel Bakirdjian for valuable suggestions on the research design. We gratefully acknowledge funding provided by the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) Incubation Fund
Entrepreneurship, institutions and skills in low-income countries
No full textThis paper develops a model of costly firm creation in an economy with weak institutions, costly business environment as well as skill gaps where one of the equilibrium outcomes is a low-productivity trap. The paper tests the implications of the model using a cross-sectional dataset including about 100 countries. Both theoretical and empirical results suggest that to move the economy into a productive equilibrium, complementarity matters: reforms to improve the business environment tend to be more effective in creating productive firms when accompanied by narrowing skill gaps. Similarly, more conducive business regulations amplify the positive impact on firm creation of better education and reduced skill mismatches. To escape a low-productivity trap, policymakers should thus create a pro-business framework and a well-functioning education system.The authors are especially thankful to Robert Fairlie for helpful comments on an earlier draft presented at the . the 2015 IZA – Kaufmann Foundation Workshop on Entrepreneurship Research (Washington DC). They also thank Emerta Asaminew and Andreas Wörgötter for discussions and Zorobabel Bicaba for help with cross-country regression.
This paper is substantially expanded and revised version of the IZA Discussion Paper 7553 and the AfDB Working Paper No. 116.
The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of their institutions of affiliation
Urban Poverty and Inequality in Kenya
No full textThis paper explores urban poverty and inequality in Kenya. We use the 2009 Kenyan population census data and estimate multidimensional poverty and inequality measures in the capital city and other secondary cities and towns. The results of our analysis show that poverty levels vary considerably across the different hierarchies of cities and towns in the country. The incidence of multidimensional poverty is relatively lower in the capital city, Nairobi (27%), and its satellite towns such as Ruiru (22%) and Thika (27%), while the figure is relatively higher in other large secondary cities such as Mombasa (44%) and Kisumu (46%). However, we also find large disparities in poverty levels within these cities/towns. For instance, location level poverty estimates in Nairobi range from more than 60% in Korogocho and Laini saba locations to less than 5% in Kileleshwa and Kilimani. Consistent with this, location-based horizontal inequality estimates are the highest in Nairobi, followed by Thika town. We also find gender gaps in poverty levels in all urban centers. In particular, individuals living in female-headed households are on average poorer than those who live in male-headed households. Our results suggest that comparing living standards across different urban centers based on average poverty estimates masks significant within-urban-center inequalities. Understanding these spatial inequalities in multidimensional poverty is crucial to honing the targeting of anti-poverty policy.This work forms part of the Governing Food Systems to Alleviate Poverty in Secondary Cities in Africa project, funded under the ESRC-DFID Joint Fund for Poverty Alleviation Research (Poverty in urban spaces theme). The support of the Economic and Social Research Council (UK) and the UK Department for International Development is gratefully acknowledged (grant number is ES/L008610/1).
Muna Shifa also acknowledges the National Research Foundation (NRF) for supporting her post-doctoral research. Murray Leibbrandt acknowledges the Research Chairs Initiative of the South African National Research Foundation and the South African Department of Science and Technology for funding his work as the Research Chair in Poverty and Inequality
Measuring Inequality by Asset Indices: A General Approach with Application to South Africa
No full textAsset indices are widely used, particularly in the analysis of Demographic and Health Surveys, where they have been routinely constructed as “wealth indices.” Such indices have been externally validated in a number of contexts. Nevertheless, we show that they often fail an internal validity test, that is, ranking individuals with “rural” assets below individuals with no assets at all. We consider from first principles what sort of indexes might make sense, given the predominantly dummy variable nature of asset schedules. We show that there is, in fact, a way to construct an asset index which does not violate some basic principles and which also has the virtue that it can be used to construct “asset inequality” measures. However, there is a need to pay careful attention to the components of the index. We show this with South African data.We have benefited from useful comments from David Lam and seminar participants at the University of Michigan, as well as from audience members at the UNU–WIDER conference on Inequality—Measurement, trends, impacts, and policies, Helsinki, September 2014. We would also like to thank Conchita D'Ambrosio and two anonymous referees for feedback which improved the paper markedly. Of course, we remain responsible for all remaining errors
Profiling multidimensional poverty and inequality in Kenya and Zambia at sub-national levels (updated, version 2)
No full textPersistent spatial disparities in poverty remain prevalent in most developing and transition economies. However, spatial analyses of poverty in poor countries are generally limited to rural-urban or provincial breakdowns. In addition, despite the fact that poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon, existing sub-national level poverty analyses mainly use money metric indicators of individual welfare. In this study, we use census data to estimate multidimensional poverty at lower levels of geographic disaggregation in Zambia and Kenya. Our results show that, in general, the extent of multidimensional poverty is significantly higher in rural areas than urban areas in both countries. However, although deprivation levels in access to basic services are relatively lower in large urban centres such as Nairobi and Mombasa in the case of Kenya, and Lusaka, Livingstone, and Ndola in Zambia, these urban centres are also areas where deprivation levels have increased significantly over time. These findings suggest that the extent of provision of basic services in urban centres do not match to the extent required to accommodate the rapid urban growth that has occurred over the last few decades in both countries. Furthermore, there are large differences in poverty within urban areas and even within cities. For instance, constituency level estimates show that within Nairobi city, the incidence of poverty varies from 20% in Westland constituency to 41% in Langata constituency. In the case of Zambia, within Lusaka city, the incidence of poverty ranges widely, from 17% in Kabwata constituency to 53-55% in Chawama and Kanyama constituencies. An examination of inequality, measured either with the Gini coefficient for income and asset-index and the variance for multiple deprivation levels, reveals important variations in intra-regional inequities across regions. This inequality picture cuts across the poverty status of regions. These results highlight the importance of sufficient level of geographic disaggregation in poverty analysis in order to identify disadvantaged areas within rural and urban regions of a country.This work forms part of the Governing Food Systems to Alleviate Poverty in Secondary Cities in Africa project (branded as Consuming Urban Poverty), funded under the ESRC-DFID Joint Fund for Poverty Alleviation Research (Poverty in urban spaces theme). The support of the Economic and Social Research Council (UK) and the UK Department for International Development is gratefully acknowledged (grant number is ES/L008610/1). This report will also be distributed as a Consuming Urban Poverty Project working paper. https://consumingurbanpoverty.wordpress.com/working-papers/
Muna Shifa also acknowledges the Governing Food Systems to Alleviate Poverty in Secondary Cities project and the National Research Foundation (NRF) for supporting her post-doctoral research. Murray Leibbrandt acknowledges the Research Chairs Initiative of the South African National Research Foundation and the South African Department of Science and Technology for funding his work as the Research Chair in Poverty and Inequality
Patterns of persistence: Intergenerational mobility and education in South Africa (updated, version 3)
No full textHow should the correlation between the earnings of parents and children in South Africa be calculated in the presence of high unemployment, and what is the role of education in determining this relationship? We use the first four waves of the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) for 2008 to 2014/15, and the 1993 Project for Statistics on Living Standards and Development (PSLSD) to investigate the shape of the association between parental and child earnings across the earnings distribution, and find that the correlation is strongest at the ends of the distribution. We correct for possible biases that arise from co-resident parent-child pairs, and from selection into labour market participation in South Africa’s high-unemployment society. We find that correcting for selection into employment increases the intergenerational elasticity of earnings by approximately 10 per cent. We unpack the role of education in determining the association of intergenerational earnings and find that the impact is strongest at the bottom of the earnings distribution, and that education accounts for approximately 40 per cent of the total intergenerational earnings elasticity.Arden Finn: [email protected], Doctoral student and researcher at the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
Murray Leibbrandt: [email protected], Professor of economics and director of SALDRU at the University of Cape Town.
Vimal Ranchhod: [email protected], Associate professor in SALDRU at the University of Cape Town.
Acknowledgements:
All authors acknowledge financial support from the Programme to Support Pro-poor Policy Development
in the Department of Planning Monitoring and Evaluation. Arden Finn acknowledges the National
Research Foundation for financial support for his doctoral work through the Chair in Poverty and
Inequality Research. Murray Leibbrandt acknowledges the Research Chairs Initiative of the Department of
Science and Technology and National Research Foundation for funding his work as the Chair in Poverty
and Inequality Research. Vimal Ranchhod acknowledges support from the Research Chairs Initiative of the
Department of Science and Technology and the National Research Foundation
Public sector wages and employment in South Africa
No full textThis paper examines the wage structure and size of the public sector over the post-apartheid period. It does so both descriptively, examining the mean and median earnings in the public sector in the post-Apartheid period and the estimates of total public sector employment and wage bill using household survey data from the post-Apartheid Labour Market Series (PALMS). Trends in earnings and employment from the household survey data are also compared with the macro aggregates published by the South African Reserve Bank (SARB). The earnings premium for public sector workers is estimated using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) Mincerian wage regressions and quantile regression techniques. This paper also investigates the effects of earnings imputation in the Quarterly Labour Force surveys on the estimates of the public sector earnings premium.The financial assistance of the Research Project on Employment, Income Distribution and Inclusive Growth (REDI3x3) is acknowledged. Findings, opinions and conclusions are those of the author and are not to be attributed to said research Project, its affiliated institutions or its sponsors.
This research report was first published in October 2017 as Working Paper 42 of the Research Project on Employment, Income Distribution and Inclusive Growth (REDI3x3), funded by the South African National Treasury and based at SALDRU, University of Cape Town: www.redi3x3.or