Earnings volatility in South Africa

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dc.creatorRanchhod, Vimal
dc.date2014-02-06T10:16:18Z
dc.date2014-02-06T10:16:18Z
dc.date2013-12
dc.date.accessioned2015-05-28T10:06:30Z
dc.date.available2015-05-28T10:06:30Z
dc.date.issued2015-05-28
dc.descriptionHow much volatility is there in earnings in South Africa? The South African labour market has been shown to be a key determinant of welfare, both in terms of poverty and inequality. These are a function of both the high levels of unemployment as well as the wage distribution, conditional on being employed. One aspect of welfare that derives from the labour market, which has been relatively understudied to date, is the amount of volatility in earnings that various groups of South Africans experience over time. This has implications directly for welfare, as well as for inequality. We make use of the first three waves of data from the National Income Dynamics Study to describe the amount of earnings volatility experienced by different demographic groups. We then make use of a regression model to estimate the partial correlation between the various characteristics that we use and earnings volatility. Our main findings are that earnings volatility is high over a four year interval. The mean within‐person standard deviation in earnings across the three waves lies between 50% and 66% of the mean earnings depending on the time period, and the mean within‐person coefficient of variation in earnings is 0.641.
dc.descriptionVimal Ranchhod - Chief Research Officer, SALDRU, Dept. of Economics, University of Cape Town. Email: vimal.ranchhod@gmail.com
dc.identifier978-1-920517-62-5
dc.identifierhttp://hdl.handle.net/11090/686
dc.identifier.ris TY - Working Paper DA - 2015-05-28 DB - OpenUCT DP - University of Cape Town KW - National Income Dynamics Study KW - NIDS KW - Earnings Volatility LK - https://open.uct.ac.za PB - University of Cape Town PY - 2015 T1 - Earnings volatility in South Africa TI - Earnings volatility in South Africa UR - http://hdl.handle.net/11090/686 ER - en_ZA
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/11090/686
dc.languageen
dc.publisher.departmentSALDRUen_ZA
dc.publisher.facultyFaculty of Commerceen_ZA
dc.publisher.institutionUniversity of Cape Town
dc.relationSALDRU Working Papers;121
dc.subjectNational Income Dynamics Study
dc.subjectNIDS
dc.subjectEarnings Volatility
dc.titleEarnings volatility in South Africa
dc.typeWorking Paper
uct.type.publicationResearchen_ZA
uct.type.resourceWorking Paperen_ZA
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