This paper explores the socio-economic identity of Public Works Programme (PWP) participants in two programmes in South Africa, in order to establish the incidence of PWP participation, a question which is central to assessing the social protection impact of PWPs, but which is frequently omitted...

This paper investigates the effects of long bouts of unemployment on the employment probabilities of the unemployed, and the factors affecting unemployment duration. This is achieved through the estimation of the hazard rate. The parametric analysis was conducted using a Weibull regression...

How do poor households respond to the cessation of cash transfers in developing countries? South Africa's generous social pension system results in most of the poor elderly being the primary 'breadwinner' in the household. I estimate the magnitude of the changes in household composition and...

In South Africa, the causes of migration and its impact on society first became entrenched, institutionalised and studied in the latter decades of the 19th Century as mining activity catapulted the country onto the world economic stage. As South Africa evolved into a more modern, capitalist...

Using 11 nationally representative surveys conducted between 1993 and 2005 this paper assesses the extent to which the vulnerability of orphans to poorer educational outcomes has changed over time as the AIDS crisis deepens in South Africa. This paper seeks to establish whether the fear that...

South Africa has seen a dramatic decrease in household size over the last decade. In Table 1 we show that over the eight-and-a-half years from October 1995 to March 2004 the average household size has decreased by 20% or 0.74 persons (see also Pirouz 2004). Consequently for a fixed population...

This paper reports the results of an economic experiment which was designed to test the effect of racial identity on generosity in a non-strategic setting. A sample of undergraduate University students was recruited to participate in a Dictator game, where surnames of individuals were revealed...

This paper analyses the impact of educational interventions made in the first- and second-year microeconomics courses on academic development students’ final mark in the second-year course. It also addresses issues of methodology, specification, and statistical analysis with respect to other...

Wage or employment subsidies have been used in both developed and developing countries to raise employment levels. Various advisers to the South African government have endorsed wage subsidies as a policy measure to deal with this country’s massive unemployment problem. This paper takes stock...

The wide prevalence of HIV in Africa has long been associated with seemingly irrational levels of sexual risk taking. Hence understanding the rationale behind risky sexual behavior is critical for designing effective prevention policies. This paper empirically assesses links between expectations...