Measuring labour earnings inequality in post-apartheid South Africa

Abstract

provides economic analysis and policy advice with the aim of promoting sustainable and equitable development. The Institute began operations in 1985 in Helsinki, Finland, as the first research and training centre of the United Nations University. Today it is a unique blend of think tank, research institute, and UN agency-providing a range of services from policy advice to governments as well as freely available original research.The Institute is funded through income from an endowment fund with additional contributions to its work programme from Finland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom as well as earmarked contributions for specific projects from a variety of donors.

Fiscal policy, labour market, and inequality: Diagnosing South Africa's anomalies in the shadow of racial discrimination

“…The dataset consists of high-quality microdata from 69 household surveys conducted by Statistics South Africa over the period 1993-2019. The harmonized data include the Household Surveys from 1994 to 1999, the Labour Force Surveys from 2000 to 2007, and the Quarterly Labour Force Surveys from 2008 to 2019 (see Finn and Leibbrandt 2018;Kerr and Wittenberg 2019;Merrino 2020). We restrict the analysis to the period 2000-17 for reasons related to data availability.…”

“…This paper contributes to this literature, providing a broad narrative of a number of stylized facts related to inequality and proposing a theoretical model that can be useful for estimating the sensitivity to economic policy shocks of labour market dynamics and distributional trends. This analysis exploits the recent improvement of the household survey data integrated in the Post-Apartheid Labour Market Series (PALMS), which allows a reliable comparison over time of inequality measures (Merrino 2020).…”

Wage inequality under inflation-targeting in South Africa

“…This apparently contradictory finding is not completely surprising in South Africa. By looking at the evolution of the labour share in the post-apartheid era, it emerges that it has been moving in the same direction as wage inequality (Merrino 2020). In particular, it started to increase when the growth rate of the South African economy began to decline around 2011.…”

Introduction to the application of social justice theories in energy engineering education for socio-technical design

“…A qualitative interpretation of the preceding findings is that the black majority population of South Africa live below the poverty threshold in informal settlements with few or no resources nor human capabilities that can propel them to a higher social level. Various social development intervention programmes are being rolled out and implemented to correct the injustices perpetrated by the previous apartheid government that segregated the country's development along the lines of racial demography (Merrino, 2020). According to the South African government, the National Development Plan (NDP) 2030, christened 'Our Future' , is poised to lay the pathways to evenly develop society by sustaining existing developments and addressing the past apartheid government's injustices (RSA NPC, 2012).…”