Is Informality a Good Measure of Job Quality?: Evidence from Job Satisfaction Data

Carmen Pages and Lucia Madrigal

No 1098, IDB Publications (Working Papers) from Inter-American Development Bank

Abstract: The formality status of a job is the most widely used indicator of job quality in developing countries. However, a number of studies argue that, at least for some workers, the informality status may be driven by choice rather than exclusion. This paper uses job satisfaction data from three low-income countries (Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador) to assess whether informal jobs are less valued than formal jobs. The paper finds substantial differences in job satisfaction within different types of informal jobs. More importantly, according to self-reported measures of job satisfaction, informality is not necessarily associated with poor job quality. This correspondence varies across countries, and seems to be lower for less-skilled workers.

Keywords: WP-654 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J21 J28 O17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-12
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://publications.iadb.org/publications/english ... atisfaction-Data.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Is Informality a Good Measure of Job Quality? Evidence from Job Satisfaction Data (2008)
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:idb:brikps:1098

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IDB Publications (Working Papers) from Inter-American Development Bank Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Felipe Herrera Library ().