Assessments of the impact of minimum wages on labour market outcomes in Africa are relatively rare. In part this is because the data available do not permit adequate treatment of econometric issues that arise in such an assessment. This paper attempts to estimate the impact of the introduction...

In the empirical literature on minimum wage enforcement, the standard approach is to measure the number of violations, not their depth. In this paper we present a family of violation indices which, by analogy with poverty indices, can emphasize the depth of violation to different degrees. The...

Minimum wage legislation is central in South African policy discourse, with both strong support and strong opposition. The validity of either position depends, however, on the effectiveness of minimum wage enforcement. Using detailed matching of occupational, sectoral and locational codes in the...

This paper investigates the determinants of non-compliance or violation of minimum wage legislation in South Africa, a country where violation is high, at just under 50 percent. The number of labour inspectors per capita is used as a proxy for enforcement, whilst non-compliance is measured using...

This is an overview of poverty and well-being in the first decade of post-apartheid South Africa. It is an introduction to a volume that brings together some of the most prominent academic research done on this topic for the 10-year review process in South Africa. This overview highlights three...

This study evaluates the impact of South Africa's long-term economic growth on household poverty and inequality between 1995 and 2005. We find a decline in aggregate levels of poverty, but increasing levels of inequality. The evidence suggests that the growth model provides substantial...