Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/229256 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
WIDER Working Paper No. 2020/32
Publisher: 
The United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), Helsinki
Abstract: 
This paper investigates the validity of household survey data published by Statistics South Africa since 1993 and later integrated into the Post-Apartheid Labour Market Series (PALMS). A series of statistical adjustments are proposed, compared, and applied to primary data with the purpose of generating time-comparable, unbiased estimates, and accurate standard errors of labour earnings inequality coefficients. In particular, corrections deal with outliers and implausible data records, missing observations, bracket responses, breaks in the series, under-reporting of high incomes, and quarterly frequency. This work lays the ground for future research on the redistributive dynamics of economic policy in South Africa, which notably suffers from the presence of spurious shifts in repeated cross-sections.
Subjects: 
income inequality
distribution
heterogeneity
survey data
imputation
JEL: 
C31
D31
O15
R20
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
ISBN: 
978-92-9256-789-7
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
815.46 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.