A Detailed Decomposition Analysis of the Public-Private Sector Wage Gap in South Africa

Prudence Magejo () and Miracle Benhura ()
Additional contact information
Prudence Magejo: University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Miracle Benhura: University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

No 9271, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The present study examines the public-private sector wage gap in South Africa using individual cross section data for 2000-7. Results from unconditional quantile regressions and generalised Oaxaca-Blinder type decompositions show that the wage gap is inverted-U shaped across the wage distribution. The 'composition' effect is more important than the 'price' effect at the bottom of the distribution while the opposite applies at the top. Key factors underpinning the 'composition' effect are unionisation, industry of employment and education, while those associated with the 'price' effect are education, race and occupation.

Keywords: public sector; wage gap; recentered influence function; decomposition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 J31 J45 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2015-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ger and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp9271.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:iza:izadps:dp9271

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().