Given that the chief objective of development policies is to reduce poverty and that work is practically the only source of income for the poor, it is paradoxical that no system has yet been introduced in Africa to monitor the labour market. The labour force survey, the first phase of the 1-2-3...

In January 2010, Haiti has been hit by the worst earthquake in its dramatic history. It was followed by an unprecedented international mobilization. Since then, a succession of natural disasters has struck the country (floods, epidemics, etc.). At the commemoration of the fourth anniversary of...

This article sets out to investigate the reasons why some household businesses decide to register and become formal (while others do not) in order to shed light on the origins of informality. We use qualitative as well as quantitative data on household businesses (HB) derived from first-hand...

The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of education on urban labour market participation and earnings in seven major West African cities. Our results show that although education does not always guard against unemployment, it does increase individual earnings in Abidjan, Bamako,...

Differences in labour force attachment across gender are important to explain the extent of the gender earnings gap. However, measures of women's professional experience are particularly prone to errors given discontinuity in labour market participation. For instance, the classical Mincerian...

In spite of its predominant economic weight in developing countries, little is known about informal sector income dynamics vis-à-vis the formal sector. Some works have been done in this field using household surveys, but they only consider some emerging Latin American countries (Argentina,...

Labour market segmentation is usually defined as the division of the labour markets into separate submarkets or segments, distinguished by different characteristics and behavioural rules (incomes, contracts, etc.). The economic debate on the segmentation issue has been focusing in developed...

In spite of its predominant economic weight in developing countries, little is known about the informal sector earnings structure compared to that of the formal sector. Taking advantage of the rich VHLSS dataset in Vietnam, in particular its three wave panel data (2002, 2004, 2006), we assess...

The second wave of the 1-2-3 survey was carried out in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2012. It allows for important insights on basic socio-economic indicators for the first time since the first wave was carried out in 2004-2005. The present survey differs from the previous one in that a...