Using detailed household survey data on male workers in Ghana, the author tests a theoretical model incorporating capital market failure and labour market segmentation into sectors of (largely formal) wage employment and (largely informal) self‐employment and family enterprise employment, in which credit‐constrained individuals draw self‐employment capital from family assets. The data show very low rates of mobility across the three sectors, the highest mobility being observed among family enterprise workers, and the lowest, among the self‐employed. The findings show no robust evidence that wage earnings ease liquidity constraints, while suggesting that both liquidity and skill transferability constraints are important for mobility.

This paper estimates the effect of orphan supply in family networks through parental death on fertility and the quality of children of surviving adults using data from Malawi. To address the potential problem of joint determination of both fertility and mortality, we exploit differences between the patrilineal and matrilineal lineage systems in the composition of family networks and in the structure of contingent obligations. Comparing mortality effects in the matrilineal and patrilineal lineage systems, we find that supply of young orphans in family networks significantly reduces demand for children by surviving adults and raises the quality of their biological children. We do not find any effect when adult mortality does not generate orphans, suggesting that the estimates are indeed orphan effects. Our results from Malawi, a country with moderately high rates of HIV/AIDS incidence, suggest that the HIV/AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa may reduce fertility through adoptive care of AIDS orphans in extended family networks.

Resumen Con datos sobre empleo masculino procedentes de una encuesta de hogares de Ghana, el autor comprueba empíricamente un modelo teórico que contempla la segmentación del mercado en un sector asalariado (fundamentalmente formal), otro independiente y otro familiar (fundamentalmente informales), así como la dependencia del capital familiar para la actividad independiente. Los datos muestran muy poca movilidad entre los sectores (mayor entre los trabajadores familiares y menor entre los independientes). Según los resultados, el ingreso asalariado no proporciona liquidez para la actividad independiente, y a este freno a la movilidad se suman las dificultades de transferencia de competencias entre los sectores.

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