921 research outputs found
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Unintended labour supply effects of cash transfer programmes: Evidence from South Africa's old age pension
No full textEmploying South Africa’s first nationally representative panel data set, I find that having old age pension recipients in the household adversely affects employment outcomes of prime-aged adults both by reducing the probability that the unemployed find work and by increasing the likelihood that the previously employed lose their job. These effects seems to operate through the income mechanism: an increase in pension resources increases the reservation wage and lowers labour force participation of prime-aged household members. By contrast I find evidence against the hypothesis that pensioners provide childcare which allows parents to work. Instead gaining a pensioner lowers the probability that mothers are employed. Adverse employment effects are found for salaried work and self-employment while the pension does not affect casual work. Impact estimates are larger in metropolitan areas which questions previous studies that find that pension resources finance labour migration. Results are robust to a series of novel robustness tests that exploit institutional features of the old age pension and disability grant.This paper greatly benefited from discussions with and comments from Cally Ardington, Willa Brown, Rulof Burger, Shawn Cole, Arden Finn, Rema Hanna, Clare Hofmeyr, Michael Kremer, Jose Pacas, Patrizio Piraino, Vimal Ranchod, Martha Rogers, Martin Rotemberg and participants of the Harvard University Development Seminar. All errors and omissions remain fully my responsibility
Fairness and Accountability: Testing Models of Social Norms in Unequal
No full textWe examine behavioural models involved in the provision of public goods when income inequality exists within groups. Our sample consists of individuals from urban and rural South African fishing communities. We find that behaviour observed in unequal groups does not accord with models of inequality aversion or egocentric altruism which require an equal distribution of final payoffs. On the other hand it is also not the case that individuals completely discount differences in initial allocations of wealth, as proposed by our absolute
reciprocity model. Instead our empirical results lends support to a reciprocal
model which requires that individuals contribute a proportional share of their
initial endowments. Accordingly individuals are only partly held responsible
for exogenous di®erences in initial wealth.JEL Classification:C9, C72, D63, D64, H41, Z13I would like to thank FORMAS for financial support. Martine Visser is Associate Professor within School of Economics at the University of Cape Town. She is on the Executive Committees of the Environmental–Economics Policy Research Unit (EPRU) and the Research Unit for Behavioral Economics and Neuroeconomics (RUBEN) and a research associate of the South African Labour and Development Research Unit (SALDRU). She is also on the Steering Committee for the African Climate Development Initiative (ACDI)
Mobility and Inequality in the First Three Waves of NIDS
No full textHow much income mobility was there in South Africa between 2008 and 2012? Did this mobility serve to equalise or disequalise longer-term measures of income? In this paper we address the first question by assessing the extent of absolute and relative economic mobility. We then turn our attention to the second
question of the joint relationship between mobility and inequality, and implement a new measure that is designed to reveal just how equalising or disequalising mobility has been. We find that there was a lot of absolute and relative mobility in the period covered by the first three waves of NIDS, and that this mobility served
to equalise longer-term incomes slightly.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
The influence of older classmates on adolescent sexual behavior in Cape Town, South Africa
No full textThis study examines the influence of exposure to older within-grade peers on sexual behavior among students in urban South Africa. Data are drawn from the Cape Area Panel Study, a longitudinal survey of young people conducted in metropolitan Cape Town from 2002 to 2006. The combination of early sexual debut, high rates of school enrollment into the late teens, and grade repetition create an environment in which young people who progress through school ahead of many in their cohort interact with classmates who may be several years older. We construct a measure of cumulative exposure to classmates who are at least two years older and show that such exposure is statistically significantly associated with early sexual initiation among adolescent girls. This exposure also increases the age difference between these girls and their first sexual partner, and helps explain a significant proportion of the earlier sexual debut of African girls, compared with colored and white girls in Cape Town
The matric certificate is still valuable in the labour market
No full textIncreasing levels of youth unemployment and learners’ poor performance at school have led to claims that the matric certificate no longer has much value in the labour market. However, the evidence does not support this claim. While the labour market conditions facing secondary school graduates have indeed worsened with time, the value of a matric certificate relative to that of grade 10 and 11 has remained positive both in terms of earnings and the likelihood of finding employment
Learning that circumcision is protective against HIV: Risk compensation among men and women in Cape Town, South Africa
No full textObjectives
We examined whether knowledge of the HIV-protective benefits of male circumcision (MC) led to risk compensating behavior in a traditionally circumcising population in South Africa. We extend the current literature by examining risk compensation among women, which has hitherto been unexplored.
Methods
We used data on Xhosa men and women from the 2009 Cape Area Panel Study. Respondents were asked if they had heard that MC reduces a man’s risk of contracting HIV, about their perceived risk of contracting HIV, and condom use. For each gender group we assessed whether risk perception and condom use differed by knowledge of the protective benefits of MC using bivariate and then multivariate models controlling for demographic characteristics, HIV knowledge/beliefs, and previous sexual behaviors. In a further check for confounding, we used data from the 2005 wave to assess whether individuals who would eventually become informed about the protective benefits of circumcision were already different in terms of HIV risk perception and condom use.
Results
34% of men (n = 453) and 27% of women (n = 690) had heard that circumcision reduces a man’s risk of HIV infection. Informed men perceived slightly higher risk of contracting HIV and were more likely to use condoms at last sex (p<0.10). Informed women perceived lower HIV risk (p<0.05), were less likely to use condoms both at last sex (p<0.10) and more generally (p<0.01), and more likely to forego condoms with partners of positive or unknown serostatus (p<0.01). The results were robust to covariate adjustment, excluding people living with HIV, and accounting for risk perceptions and condom use in 2005.
Conclusions
We find evidence consistent with risk compensation among women but not men. Further attention should be paid to the role of new information regarding MC, and drivers of HIV risk more broadly, in modulating sexual behavior among women
The fiscal cost of child grants in the context of high adult mortality in South Africa: A simulation to 2015
No full textThis paper investigates the expected costs of cash transfers to children in South Africa up to 2015. The child population is not expected to grow between 2008 and 2015 and thus the fiscal cost of the Child Support Grant is expected to stabilise in the near future. The other major child grant, the Foster Care Grant, is far less predictable – while it is not intended to be an orphan grant, three quarters of its beneficiaries are orphans. Because of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the number of dual orphans is expected to double between 2008 and 2015, reaching 1.3 million, and the overall number of orphans (maternal, paternal and dual) to reach 4.8 million by 2015. If the Foster Care Grant were to become a de facto orphan grant, its costs would escalate rapidly. The paper does not argue in favour of an orphan grant, but rather for greater effort in ensuring that the Child Support Grant reaches the neediest children, especially maternal orphans
The economic consequences of death in South Africa
No full textUsing a large longitudinal dataset, we quantify the impact of adult deaths on household
economic wellbeing. The timing of lower socioeconomic status observed for households in which members die of AIDS suggests that the socioeconomic gradient in AIDS mortality is being driven primarily by poor households being at higher risk for AIDS. Following a death, households that experienced an AIDS death are observed being poorer still. However, the additional socioeconomic loss following death is very similar to the loss observed from deaths from other causes. Funeral expenses can explain some of the impoverishing effects of death in the household.We thank Angus Deaton for helpful comments.
Ardington gratefully acknowledges funding from the South African National Research Foundation/Department of Science and Technology: Human and Social Dynamics in Development Grand Challenge.
Bärnighausen was supported through Grant Nos. R01 HD058482-01 from the National Institute of Child Health and Development, National Institutes of Health (NIH); and R01 MH083539-01 from the National Institute of Mental Health, NIH; and by the Wellcome Trust.
Case thanks Alice Muehlhof for expert research assistance, and gratefully acknowledges fi nancial support from the National Institute of Aging under grant P30 AG024361.
Menendez gratefully acknowledges funding by the National Institutes of Health, including the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) (#5R24HD051152).
Analysis is based on data collected through the Africa Centre Demography Uni
Risk aversion: Experimental evidence from South African fishing communities
No full textWe estimate the risk attitudes of a large sample of individuals from various fishing communities along the west coast of South Africa. Female fishers and rights holders are found to be more risk averse than their male counterparts, while rights holders are found to be less risk averse relative to subjects without fishing rights. Risk attitudes are found to be correlated with compliance with fisheries regulations. In particular, a greater degree of risk aversion translates into a reduction in compliance. Furthermore, in the case of gender, female fishers and rights holders are more likely to comply with fisheries regulations
A strategic view of South African trade in policy in relation to the future global trading environment
No full textThis paper puts forward a strategic view of what South African trade policy should be doing in relation to the future global trading environment. The future is uncertain, but if the past is prologue, South African trade policy needs to be positioned for a continuation of the commodity cycle, and to exploit markets in emerging economies, including Africa, more fully. Simultaneously, it needs policies to spur labour-intensive services and manufacturing exports, both because these will be needed if commodity markets are less robust and because of their employment-creating potential. South Africa's current strategy, however, is inflexible, heavily focused on domestic concerns and is in danger of placing South African exporters at a disadvantage in accessing the growing emerging economies. It also gives rise to an inherent tension between the interests of South Africa and the African region in trade negotiations. Having as the central tenet of trade policy a commitment to deal with tariffs on a case-by-case basis will not serve South Africa well in the global economy that is likely to emerge over the next 15 years. A simpler tariff structure would facilitate the conclusion of free trade agreements and actually make industrial policy more effective