![]() ![]() In line with the global literature, there was an unequal distribution of job loss by employment formality in South Africa (Benhura and Magejo 2020 Rogan and Skinner 2020 Köhler et al. A lockdown of this type was always expected to have significant economic costs, and official estimates reveal a contraction of 2.2 million jobs (14%) in the second quarter of 2020 relative to the first-essentially erasing the last decade of job growth in the economy.Ĭrucially, the job axe of this initial lockdown did not fall evenly. In the labour market, only workers in occupations deemed essential for economic function and pandemic response were permitted to continue working at their usual place of work during this period. Research using anonymized mobile phone data shows a substantial reduction in population mobility in response to these regulations (Carlitz and Makhura 2021). ![]() The regulations prevented any non-essential activities outside the home, imposed restrictions on all public gatherings, led to the closure of all schools, the introduction of a curfew, a prohibition on the sale of tobacco products and liquor, and strict domestic and international travel controls. This initial lockdown, which began on 27 March 2020 and lasted for 5 weeks, was relatively stringent by international standards (Bhorat et al. Like many governments around the world, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic the South African government implemented a national lockdown to prepare necessary health infrastructure as well as delay and minimise the spread of the virus. From a policy perspective, evidence of such heterogeneity can inform decisions around the optimal targeting of support as the pandemic progresses and lockdown policies are reconsidered. We find that more stringent lockdown levels negatively affected informal, but not formal sector employment, while less stringent levels negatively affected formal, but not informal sector employment. Furthermore, we observe important effect heterogeneity by employment formality as the stringency of the country’s lockdown regulations changed over time. ![]() We find that the negative employment effects of the country’s lockdown policy were driven by effects on the informal sector. ![]() South Africa is a useful case study given its upper-middle-income status and relatively small informal sector, thus serving as an example to a variety of developing and developed country economies. In this paper, we estimate the causal effect of lockdown stringency on employment probabilities, adopting a quasi-experimental design on unique labour force panel data from South Africa. Such variation may have large heterogenous effects both on aggregate and between worker groups. While studies estimating the labour market effects of lockdown policies exist in both developed and developing countries, there is limited evidence on the impact of variation in lockdown stringency, particularly in developing countries. This required making iterative policy decisions in a rapidly changing epidemiological environment resulting in varying levels of lockdown stringency over time. In response to COVID-19 most governments used some form of lockdown policy to manage the pandemic. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |