Differences in hourly earnings across Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban.
Abstract
Researchers have long noticed the existence of wage differentials across metropolitan areas and researchers have documented wage differentials across metropolitan areas to be due to differences in the employment and industrial structures of regional economies. This paper aims to examine differences in hourly earnings across Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town, which are the largest metropolitan areas of South Africa. In doing, the study uses pooled cross-sectional data from the Labour Force Survey, which is a household-based sample survey collected by Statistics South Africa and data is pooled from the years 2005 to 2007. The study estimates a standard wage equation through Ordinary Least Squares and by controlling for metro dummy variables only; Results suggest there are significant differences in hourly earnings across the three metropolitan areas. However by including observable characteristics, results suggest there are no significant differences in hourly earnings between Johannesburg and Cape Town whilst difference in earnings between Johannesburg and Durban still persist. The study uses the Oaxaca Blinder decomposition to decompose the mean difference in hourly earnings into a part that is explained by observable characteristics and into part that is unexplained. Oaxaca Blinder decomposition results suggest that the mean difference in hourly earnings between Cape Town and Johannesburg is 13.8 percent, the mean difference in hourly earnings between Johannesburg and Durban is 26.9 percent and the mean difference in hourly earnings between Cape Town and Durban is 44.4 percent. Overall, differences in earnings across the three respective metropolitan areas can be attributed to both varying returns to
observable characteristics and discrimination.
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
The development and evaluation of a community-based programme offering psychosocial support to vulnerable children affected by HIV/AIDS, poverty and violence.
Killian, Beverley Janet. (2004)This research programme endeavours to develop, implement and evaluate an effective method of offering psychosocial support to vulnerable children. Vulnerability is defined by trained community members as including children ... -
The state of spatial information for land reform in South Africa : a case study of the Amantungwa Land Reform project.
Kubheka, Sipho. (2006)Many authors and practitioners involved in rural or local development agree that co-operation and the integration of efforts by the delivery agents is crucial for sustainable development programmes. The delivery of Land ... -
Loan products to manage liquidity stress when broad-based black economic empowerment (BEE) enterprises invest in productive assets.
Finnemore, Gareth Robert Lionel. (2005)Investments in productive assets by broad-based black economic empowerment (BEE) enterprises in South Africa (SA) during the 1990s have been constrained, in part, by a lack of access to capital. Even if capital can be ...