Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/229346 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
WIDER Working Paper No. 2020/122
Publisher: 
The United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), Helsinki
Abstract: 
Inequality in South Africa is the enduring legacy of racial discrimination. We use a dynamic perspective to show the linkages between persistent effects of discrimination in the labour market and the efficacy of redistributive fiscal policy in reducing inequality. We present a machine-learning analysis based on household survey data in the Post-Apartheid Labour Market Series to predict the main drivers of the relationship between workers' heterogeneous socioeconomic characteristics, the behaviour of variables related to labour market status, and labour income inequality. The empirical investigation covers the period 2000-17. Drawing on this preliminary evidence, we build a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with a dual labour market and job search frictions that represents the structural features of South Africa's economy, which can be used to assess the effects of fiscal policy on inequality in the postapartheid period and to simulate the effects of alternative fiscal measures and labour market reforms.
Subjects: 
inequality
discrimination
job search
labour market
general equilibrium
JEL: 
D50
D63
J71
J46
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
ISBN: 
978-92-9256-879-5
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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