Transitions between informal and formal employment: results from a worker survey in Bangladesh

Italo Gutierrez, Krishna B. Kumar (), Minhaj Mahmud, Farzana Munshi () and Shanthi Nataraj
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Krishna B. Kumar: RAND Corporation

IZA Journal of Migration and Development, 2019, vol. 9, issue 1, 1-27

Abstract: Abstract We study transitions between different types of formal and informal employment using retrospective job histories from a new survey in Bangladesh. Workers transitioning between jobs are most likely to remain in the same type of employment, although there is still substantial churn across employment types. Private wage employees have higher probability of transitioning to a new job, and changes in earnings and benefits suggest evidence of upward mobility. Nevertheless, there is also non-trivial risk of downward mobility, especially for those transitioning into casual employment, which has the lowest level of earnings and benefits and the highest levels of exposure to workplace hazards and violence. Overall, the informal sector appears to include subpopulations consistent with both the traditional view that it is a segmented portion of the labor market with few prospects of upward mobility, and with the alternative view that it is a dynamic, entrepreneurial alternative to wage employment.

Keywords: Informal labor; Self-employment; Casual workers; Job transitions; Working conditions; Job benefits (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J32 J46 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

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Working Paper: Transitions Between Informal and Formal Employment Results from a Worker Survey in Bangladesh (2017)
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DOI: 10.1186/s40176-019-0141-2

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