Race and the Incidence of Unemployment in South Africa

Geeta Gandhi Kingdon () and John Knight

Labor and Demography from EconWPA

Abstract: South Africans unemployment rate is one of the highest in the world, and it has important distributional implications. The paper examines the incidence of unemployment using two national household surveys for the mid-1990s. Both entry to unemployment and the duration of unemployment are examined. A probit model of the determinants of unemployment is estimated: it shows an important role for race, education, age, gender, home-ownership, location, and numerous other variables, all of which have plausible explanations. The large race gap in unemployment is explored further by means of a decomposition analysis akin to that normally used to analyse wage discrimination. There remains a substantial residual that cannot be explained by observed characteristics, and which might represent unobserved characteristics, such as quality of education, or discrimination. Implications for policy and for research are drawn.

Keywords: Unemployment; South Africa; racial discrimination (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J64 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-09-08
Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 35
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://129.3.20.41/eps/lab/papers/0409/0409005.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Race and the Incidence of Unemployment in South Africa (2004)
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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wpa:wuwpla:0409005

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Labor and Demography from EconWPA
Series data maintained by EconWPA ().