This lunch-time seminar is hosted jointly by ACEIR and the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit (SALDRU, University of Cape Town).

Prof. Vimal Ranchhod will present a study on discrimination and horizontal inequalities in the South African labour market. 

The researchers use 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 use a Blinder Oaxaca decomposition to measure the proportion of the gap in outcomes that is unexplained by the covariates.

They find that the unexplained component of the gap is large and remains large in both 2015 and 2020. Including Occupation and Industry into the wage regressions decreases the unexplained gap substantially, which indicates that occupational sorting is particularly important for understanding employment and wage differentials in South Africa.

The study was conducted by Prof. Ranchhod, Gabriel Espi-Sanchis, and Arindam Jana.

About the presenter

Prof. 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.