Mobility and Earnings in Ethiopia's Urban Labor Markets: 1994-2004
An analysis of panel data on individuals in a random selection of urban households in Ethiopia reveals large, sustained, and unexplained earnings gaps between public and private, and formal and informal sectors over the period 1994-2004. The author...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2012
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2007/03/7459297/mobility-earnings-ethiopias-urban-labor-markets-1994-2004 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/7237 |
| Summary: | An analysis of panel data on individuals
in a random selection of urban households in Ethiopia
reveals large, sustained, and unexplained earnings gaps
between public and private, and formal and informal sectors
over the period 1994-2004. The authors have no formal
evidence whether these gaps reflect segmentation of the
labor market along either of these divides. In other words,
they cannot show whether they are at least in part due to
impediments to entry in the higher wage sector. But they do
have evidence that, if segmentation explains any part of the
observed earnings gaps, then it could only have weakened
over the survey decade. The authors find, first, that the
rate of mobility increased between the two pairs of sectors.
Sample transition rates grew across survey waves, while
state dependence in sector choice decreased. Second, the
sensitivity of sector choice to earnings gaps increased over
the same period. In particular, the role of comparative
earnings in selection into the informal sector was evident
throughout the survey decade and increased in magnitude over
the second half of the period. |
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