Papers by Murray Leibbrandt
Review of Income and Wealth, 2011
Abstract We investigate the implications of the Markovian assumption for predicting the long run ... more Abstract We investigate the implications of the Markovian assumption for predicting the long run distribution of occupations. We postulate that the dynamical structure of the underlying transition process governing educational attainment and occupational choice, in the case ...
S Afr J Econ, 2005
Sustainable poverty reduction requires that poor households effectively manage risk. The absence ... more Sustainable poverty reduction requires that poor households effectively manage risk. The absence of basic financial services is a major obstacle to poverty reduction in South Africa. This paper reviews available South African literature on utilisation of formal and informal risk management instruments. The centrality of income in accessing the complementary bundle of formal financial services excludes households in the lower deciles from formal financial services. Rural households and households without formally employed household members are also denied access. Strong complementarities with informal channels of finance mean that these same households have limited access to even informal financial services. Promoting the use of savings accounts in pension and social grant payouts and the growth of village banks have been suggested as means to increase formal access for the poor.
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 0376835x 2013 851022, Dec 17, 2013
This paper provides a brief summary of key labour market outcomes in Wave 2 of NIDS and also exam... more This paper provides a brief summary of key labour market outcomes in Wave 2 of NIDS and also examines labour market transitions that occurred between Wave 1 and Wave 2. This corresponds approximately to changes between 2008 and 2010. The primary purpose of this paper is to spur discussion of these initial findings and to encourage more detailed analytical work on the labour market using the NIDS data.
, focusing on the Black/African population group. The analysis uses data from the 2001 census and... more , focusing on the Black/African population group. The analysis uses data from the 2001 census and 1996 census, the Labour Force Surveys for September 2000 and 2001, and the Income and Expenditure Survey for 2000. Findings show that participation rates fall fairly rapidly after age 45, with particularly sharp declines in both participation and work at the age of eligibility for the old-age pension. Measures of unused productive capacity demonstrate that South
Journal of African Economies
This paper uses the Cape Area Panel Study (CAPS), a new longitudinal survey of 4,800 young people... more This paper uses the Cape Area Panel Study (CAPS), a new longitudinal survey of 4,800 young people in metropolitan Cape Town, to analyze the impact of individual, household, and school characteristics on progress through school. CAPS provides data on roughly 1,500 students who were enrolled in grades 8, 9, and 10 in 2002. We follow these students over the next three years, looking at whether they reached grade 11, grade 12, and completion of grade 12 by 2005. We document large differences in the probability of grade advancement between white, coloured, and African youth. While 86% of white 9 th graders in 2002 had reached grade 12 by 2005, only 29% of Africans and 42% of coloureds had reached grade 12. Probit regressions indicate that grade advancement between 2002 and 2005 is strongly associated with the respondents' performance on the literacy and numeracy evaluation conducted by CAPS in 2002.
This paper makes use of the Cape Area Panel study (CAPS), a longitudinal study of youth and their... more This paper makes use of the Cape Area Panel study (CAPS), a longitudinal study of youth and their families in metropolitan Cape Town in order to broaden the empirical body of evidence of the causal impact of parental death on children’s schooling in South Africa in two dimensions. First, analysis of CAPS allows us to examine the extent to which
It is widely agreed that studying the relationship between school quality and academic achievemen... more It is widely agreed that studying the relationship between school quality and academic achievement will benefit public investment in education. This is particularly true in Africa where, the 1990 World Conference on ‘Education for All’ led to renewed commitments to quality basic education. At this time, Uganda implemented a set of public reforms that were designed to increase educational opportunities
Enrolment ratios are the number of students enrolled in a particular grade (irrespective of age) ... more Enrolment ratios are the number of students enrolled in a particular grade (irrespective of age) divided by the population who should be enrolled in that grade according to their age.
We examine the role of reservation wages in youth unemployment in South Africa by estimating a st... more We examine the role of reservation wages in youth unemployment in South Africa by estimating a structural job search model both with and without survey data on the reservation wage. We find that inclusion of reservation wage data implies a labor market in which job offers are relatively frequent but at wages that tend to be too low to be accepted. Using a novel procedure, we combine our structural estimates with reservation wage survey data to estimate the full distribution of search costs in the sample. These estimates confirm the model's predictions about the relationship between search costs and labor market outcomes, thereby allowing for insights into individual-specific heterogeneity in structural parameters that may not be inferred from the observed data alone. Counterfactual simulation of an employer wage subsidy predicts an increase in reservation wages, but also an increase in accepted wages and a decreased probability of experiencing a lengthy unemployment spell. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to apply survey data on reservation wages to a structurally estimated search model for a developing country.
Trends in inequality, poverty, and redistribution in post-apartheid South Africa have received in... more Trends in inequality, poverty, and redistribution in post-apartheid South Africa have received intense attention especially in terms of measuring inequality and poverty levels and the proximate causes of these levels. We review this literature and find a set of established trends. Inequality levels have increased but the face of inequality has changed with present-day inequality displaying a lessened racial make-up than under apartheid. In contrast, poverty has decreased but is still bears the strong racial makers of apartheid. The labour market continues to drive inequality. A related literature has concentrated on fiscal redistribution in South Africa after the transition, arguing that social policies are well targeted towards the poor with social grants being central in lifting people out of poverty. At the same time, these policies have not succeeded in reversing inequality trends and in providing equal opportunities for all South Africans. To bulk of paper probes this further. We use fiscal incidence analysis to show that redistribution increased slightly since 1993, that this redistribution is higher than in Latin America but far below European levels. Second, looking at spending for all social services we find a mixed picture. There has been an increase in spending since the end of apartheid on social policy and for a number of social policy items in the progressivity of this spending. At the same time, spending has not increased as a percentage of GDP and has become less progressive for social grants. Finally, we examine education policy in more detail. We find that the importance of tertiary education, as a predictor of income has increased considerably whereas individuals with low or incomplete secondary education were worse off in 2008, compared to 1993. Second, we find that state spending on education has increased since the early 1990s. The spending gap between rich and poor provinces has become much narrower but spending equality has not been reached. The academic achievements of students display high inequality, compared to international standards and there is also evidence that the capabilities of students have decreased, rather than increased, suggesting that increased spending has not translated into an increase in the quality of education provision.
Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics (Global), 2013
Economic Disparities and the Middle Class in Affluent Countries, 2013
This paper examines changes in individual real incomes in South Africa between 1995 and 2000. We ... more This paper examines changes in individual real incomes in South Africa between 1995 and 2000. We document substantial declines--on the order of 40%--in real incomes for both men and women. The brunt of the income decline appears to have been shouldered by the young and the non-white. We argue that changes in respondent attributes are insufficient to explain this decline. For most groups, a (conservative) correction for selection into income recipiency explains some, but not all, of the income decline. For other groups, selection is a potential explanation for the income decline. Perhaps the most persuasive explanation of the evidence is substantial economic restructuring of the South African economy in which wages are not bid up to keep pace with price changes due to a differentially slack labor market.
Abstract: This paper sets out the methodological issues for the measurement of poverty before pre... more Abstract: This paper sets out the methodological issues for the measurement of poverty before presenting a poverty profile of South Africa. It tests the sensitivity of the poverty profile to choices around the metric used to measure well-being, the equivalence scale used and the level of the poverty line. The key finding is that the defining features of South African poverty are so pronounced that the profile of poverty is robust to changes in the underlying measurement assumptions. Gauteng, South Africa's economic powerhouse, has long been dependent on immigration to supply its labour requirements, a phenomenon deeply rooted in the provinces early economic history and the development of mining and heavy industry. Although migration has contributed to the development of the province, it also poses challenges to the provincial government partly through the added burden on state-financed services and programmes. In this context, this study aims to quantify and describe migration t...
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Papers by Murray Leibbrandt