The Impact of Sectoral Minimum Wage Laws on Employment, Wages and Hours of Work in South Africa
Haroon Bhorat,
Ravi Kanbur and
Natasha Mayet (haroon.bhorat@uct.ac.za)
Additional contact information
Natasha Mayet: Development Policy Research Unit
Working Papers from University of Cape Town, Development Policy Research Unit
Abstract:
This paper attempts to investigate the impact of sectoral wage laws in South Africa. Specifically, we examine the impact of minimum wage laws promulgated in the Retail, Domestic work, Forestry, Security, and Taxi sectors using 15 waves of biannual Labour Force Survey data for the 2000-2007 period. Using a quasi-experimental approach, we apply two alternative specifications of a difference-in-differences model to estimate the impact of multiple minimum wage laws in South Africa on employment, wages, and hours of work. In order to assess whether the changes experienced by workers in the sectors analysed were unique to those sectors, a unique control group is identified for each sector.We find some evidence of a significant increase in real hourly wages in the post-law period in four of the five sectors examined. Our results also suggest that whilst there was no significant impact of the laws at the extensive margin, there was some evidence of an adjustment at the intensive margin in certain sectors. We also find that in three of the five sectors, increases in real hourly wages were sufficient to outweigh intensive margin adjustments so that workers in these sectors experienced an improvement in real monthly income as a result of the law.
Keywords: Minimum Wage; South Africa; Wage; Employment; Hours of Work (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 J23 J30 J31 J38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2012-11
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (28)
Published in Working Paper Series by the Development Policy Research Unit, November 2012, pages 1-27
Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/11427/7301 First version, 2012 (application/pdf)
Related works:
Journal Article: The impact of sectoral minimum wage laws on employment, wages, and hours of work in South Africa (2013) ![Downloads](/downloads_econpapers.gif)
Working Paper: The Impact of Sectoral Minimum Wage Laws on Employment, Wages, and Hours of Work in South Africa (2013) ![Downloads](/downloads_econpapers.gif)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ctw:wpaper:12154
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in Working Papers from University of Cape Town, Development Policy Research Unit Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Waseema Petersen (waseema.petersen@uct.ac.za this e-mail address is bad, please contact repec@repec.org).