Webinar | Discrimination and horizontal inequalities in the South African labour market, 22 May 2024

This seminar was hosted jointly by the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit (University of Cape Town) and the African Centre of Excellence for Inequality Research.

Vimal Ranchhod (SALDRU) presented a study on discrimination and horizontal inequalities in the South African labour market.

About the study
The researchers used Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) and Labour Market Dynamics in South Africa (LMDS) data from 2015 and 2020 to measure the difference in mean labour market outcomes in South Africa by race and gender. They then used a Blinder Oaxaca decomposition to measure the proportion of the gap in outcomes that is unexplained by the covariates.

They found that the unexplained component of the gap was large and remained large in both 2015 and 2020. Including Occupation and Industry into the wage regressions decreased the unexplained gap substantially, which indicated that occupational sorting was particularly important for understanding employment and wage differentials in South Africa.

About the speaker
Professor Vimal Ranchhod is the Deputy-Director of the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, School of Economics at the University of Cape Town, and the Director of ACEIR's South Africa node. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Michigan, United States. His research interests include labour economics, economic demography, the economics of inequality, and the economics of education.