Labor Market Transitions and Social Security in Colombia
This paper quantifies the magnitude of transitions across occupational categories in Colombia, a country with high unemployment and informality but quickly increasing its social security coverage for health. The analysis makes use of a panel of hou...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2012
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/main?menuPK=64187510&pagePK=64193027&piPK=64187937&theSitePK=523679&menuPK=64187510&searchMenuPK=64187283&siteName=WDS&entityID=000158349_20110504090740 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/3413 |
| Summary: | This paper quantifies the magnitude of
transitions across occupational categories in Colombia, a
country with high unemployment and informality but quickly
increasing its social security coverage for health. The
analysis makes use of a panel of households between 2008 and
2009, representative of the main metropolitan areas in the
country. Results confirm previous evidence found in Colombia
and elsewhere in the region that transitions between
occupations are large and asymmetric: they are
disproportionally more likely to happen from formal to
informal occupations than vice versa. The paper finds for
the first time that such transitions are also different for
salaried workers compared with the self-employed, as well as
by poverty status of the worker. Salaried workers are more
likely to transition first into other salaried jobs, while
self-employed are more likely to transition into
unemployment or out of the labor force. There are marked
differences in the profiles of transitioning and
non-transitioning workers, both in terms of socioeconomic
characteristics and social security coverage. Causal
analysis shows that affiliation to social security on health
deters occupational transitions, while pension insurance
does not. Hence, high-volume transitions may not be
crisis-specific phenomena, but rather associated with
contributive and non-contributive social security mechanisms
that incentivize informality, and workers' preferences
for informal jobs. The debate on labor market and social
security reforms needs to take these features of transitions
into account. |
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