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The transmission of longevity across generations: The case of the settler Cape Colony
No full textEvidence on long-term multigenerational dynamics is often inadequate as large datasets with multiple generations remain very uncommon. We posit that genealogical records can offer a valuable alternative. Rather than exploring the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic status, we rely on birth and death dates of eighteenth and nineteenth century settlers in South Africa’s Cape Colony to estimate the intergenerational transmission of longevity. We find that there is a positive and significant association between parents’ and offspring’s life duration, as well as between siblings. Although these correlations persist over time, the coefficients are relatively small. While the effect of grandparents’ longevity on that of grandchildren is insignificant, the cousin correlations suggest that inequality in longevity might persist across more than two generations. We suggest that family and environmental factors shared by cousins, beyond grandparental longevity, can explain these results.JEL Classification: J62, N3
The dynamics of poverty in the first three waves of NIDS
No full textWe use the first three waves of data from the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) to analyse poverty dynamics in South Africa between 2008 and 2012. Restricting ourselves to the sub-sample of balanced panel respondents, we find that poverty exit rates increased with time, though a substantial proportion of the population was trapped in severe poverty, defined as having income of less than half of the poverty line. The importance of demographic events in the household as drivers of poverty transitions are highlighted in a univariate and multivariate setting. Finally we look at the joint distributions of multidimensional poverty and income poverty in order to ascertain the extent to which they complement or offset one another.Arden Finn, Doctoral student and researcher at the Southern Africa Labour and Development Unit, University of Cape Town.
Murray Leibbrandt, Professor in the School of Economics at the University of Cape Town and the Director of SALDRU. Holder of the DSD/NRF National Research Chair of Poverty
and Inequality Research. Principal Investigator on the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS),
and Pro Vice-Chancellor of Poverty and Inequality at UCT
Unemployment and Household formation
No full textIn comparison to other continents, Africa has received little scholarly attention with regard to household composition. Household composition is endogenous to a variety of welfare issues and little is understood about the determinants of this composition. Understanding the household composition and formation decision may improve our understanding of how the unemployed gain access to resources and how household composition could provide a safety net to the unemployed. However, increasingly, more work is surfacing around the topic in South Africa
Social programs and transfers: Are we learning?
No full textDocuments the historical context for the current cash transfer programs in South Africa, examines evidence concerning the aggregate impact of these cash transfers on poverty levels, and argues for a stronger focus on active labor market policies to complement the extensive system of cash transfers. There are two separate aspects of social security: the insurance concept (social insurance) and the redistribution concept (social assistance). In some respects, South Africa is an exceptional case for a developing country in the extent of its social assistance provision, with cash transfers going to more than a quarter of the population. It is a middle-income country with almost no public debt, so the cash transfer programs are financed from tax revenue rather than donor funding or borrowing. The immediate objective of cash transfer programs is to alleviate hardship among vulnerable groups, and reduction in poverty over the postapartheid period has been strongly associated with the expansion of social grants
Educational inheritance and the distribution of occupations: Evidence from South Africa
No full textWe analyze the role of educational opportunity in shaping inequality in the distribution of occupations in the long run. We use the timing of political events in the history of the struggle to end Apartheid to devise an identification strategy that permits a causal interpretation of the role of educational opportunity. We find evidence that educational opportunity has a strong conditioning effect on the distribution of occupations in steady state. In particular, African female children who inherit the same level of educational opportunity as their parents are 6 percentage points more likely to be in the bottom of the occupation distribution than if they were exposed to better educational opportunities. An alternative identification strategy based on matching on the probability of educational persistence suggests that this figure is approximately 10 percent for younger cohorts of African female children
Prosocial spending and well-Being: Cross-cultural evidence for a psychological universal
No full textThis research provides the first support for a possible psychological universal: Human beings around the world derive emotional benefits from using their financial resources to help others (prosocial spending). In Study 1, survey data from 136 countries were examined and showed that prosocial spending is associated with greater happiness around the world, in poor and rich countries alike. To test for causality, in Studies 2a and 2b, we used experimental methodology, demonstrating that recalling a past instance of prosocial spending has a causal impact on happiness across countries that differ greatly in terms of wealth (Canada, Uganda, and India). Finally, in Study 3, participants in Canada and South Africa randomly assigned to buy items for charity reported higher levels of positive affect than participants assigned to buy the same items for themselves, even when this prosocial spending did not provide an opportunity to build or strengthen social ties. Our findings suggest that the reward experienced from helping others may be deeply ingrained in human nature, emerging in diverse cultural and economic contexts
Military expenditure and economic growth: A survey
No full textUntil recently, a long-standing, impressively large, and growing literature on the effects of military expenditure on economic growth appeared to have failed to result in a scholarly consensus. But the availability of 20 more years of data since the thawing of the cold war has helped researchers to make progress in identifying any relation of military expenditure with economic factors. The literature is complex and difficult to summarize, with studies differing in their theoretical approach, in the empirical methods used, in the coverage of countries and time periods employed, and in their quality and statistical significance. This article extends and updates an earlier survey, now covering almost 170 studies. It finds that more recent studies provide stronger evidence of a negative effect of military expenditure on economic growth
Job creation and destruction in South Africa
No full textAnalysts of the South African labour market have predominantly used household surveys to analyse the labour market. It has been more di fficult to explore labour demand from the firm side, as a result of limited data from relatively small cross sectional firm surveys, mainly funded by the World Bank. We use the Quarterly Employment Survey conducted by Statistics South Africa that allows us to explore how South African enterprises create and destroy jobs, shedding light on many of the policy questions that are relevant in a high unemployment society like South Africa. We find job creation and destruction rates are similar to those found in OECD countries. There is little evidence that labour legislation creates rigidities that prevent firms from hiring or fi ring workers. We also find that larger firms are better net creators of jobs than small firms and that net job creation rates are negative in manufacturing, consistent with work using household surveys. Our research has important policy implications - particularly for the National Planning Commission's suggestion that new jobs will come mainly from small and medium sized fi rms. Our research suggests this is not likely without changes to policy or legislation.
This is a joint SALDRU/DataFirst Working PaperWe thank Naume Malepe and Mandla Masemula of Statistics South Africa for their help in explaining the
QES data and sampling procedures. We are grateful for helpful comments from participants at the SALDRU
seminar, University of Cape Town, the Firms and Labour Markets conference, University of Oxford and the
Micro-econometric analysis of South African data conference, Durban. This research was made possible
by an exploratory grant awarded by the Private Enterprise Development in Low-Income Countries (PEDL)
research initiative. PEDL is a joint research initiative of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)
and the UK Department For International Development (DFID). It aims to develop a research programme
focusing on private-sector development in low-income countries
Sampling methodology and field work changes in the October Household Surveys and Labour Force Surveys
No full textThe 1999 October Household Survey was the first time that Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) introduced a master sample of Enumeration Areas (Stats SA, 2000a). There were several important changes in sampling and field worker practice that accompanied the introduction of the master sample of EAs, which have not been systematically documented , and which make comparability of the surveys undertaken before and after this time difficult. We document these changes in this research note and provide evidence that these changes were partly responsible for the odd trends in the total number of single person households estimated from the October Household Surveys (OHSs) and Labour Force Surveys (LFSs), noted in Wittenberg and Collinson (2007) and Pirouz (2005), as well as rapid increases in employment, in the late 1990s.This is a joint SALDRU/DataFirst working paper
Changes in education, employment and earnings in South Africa: A cohort analysis
No full textRapid increases in educational attainment and the massification of secondary education in South Africa resulted in substantial differences in the supply and quality of educated workers across generations. This paper describes changes in the distribution of education across birth cohorts and how these relate to changes in the probability of employment, the distribution of earnings and the earnings premiums to complete secondary and tertiary education. Tracking cohorts over time allows us to disentangle generational and life-cycle components of these changes. Younger cohorts are shown to have increasingly faced worse labour market conditions than their predecessors, although this may be changing for cohorts born after 1980. Furthermore, the relative reward to complete secondary and tertiary education has remained positive, and increased for tertiary educated cohorts born since the 1960s. Increases in earnings inequality among those with complete secondary education suggests increased variance in education quality during the period when completed secondary education expanded rapidly.Ardington, Branson, Lam and Leibbrandt acknowledge funding for this paper from the International
Development Research Centre (IDRC) Supporting Inclusive Growth Programme. Ardington, Branson
and Leibbrandt acknowledge support for this work from the National Research Foundation (NRF) and
Department of Science and Technology (DST) Human and Social Dynamics in Development Grand
Challenge. Leibbrandt acknowledges the Research Chairs Initiative of the NRF and DST for funding his
work