Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/161568 
Year of Publication: 
2017
Series/Report no.: 
WIDER Working Paper No. 2017/5
Publisher: 
The United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), Helsinki
Abstract: 
South Africa's Employment Tax Incentive, launched in 2014, aimed to address low youth employment by reducing the cost of hiring young workers. We make use of anonymized tax administrative data from the 2012-2015 tax years to examine the effect of the Incentive on youth employment. We match firms claiming the subsidy with similar firms not claiming the subsidy and observe their hiring behaviour before and after the implementation of the policy. We find no statistically significant impact on youth employment on average. We see a positive and statistically significant effect on youth and non-youth employment in firms with fewer than 200 employees. However, we cannot distinguish whether the increase is due to the policy or to employment growth within the firm.
Subjects: 
wage subsidy
South Africa
difference-in-differences
youth
unemployment
Employment Tax Incentive
JEL: 
H25
H32
J23
J38
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
ISBN: 
978-92-9256-229-8
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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