This paper examines changes in individual real incomes in South Africa between 1995 and 2000. We document substantial declines--on the order of 40%--in real incomes for both men and women. The brunt of the income decline appears to have been shouldered by the young and the non-white. We argue...

This paper makes use of the Cape Area Panel study (CAPS), a longitudinal study of youth and their families in metropolitan Cape Town in order to broaden the empirical body of evidence of the causal impact of parental death on children’s schooling in South Africa in two dimensions. First,...

It is widely agreed that studying the relationship between school quality and academic achievement will benefit public investment in education. This is particularly true in Africa where, the 1990 World Conference on ‘Education for All’ led to renewed commitments to quality basic education....

This paper discusses the theoretical background to handling missing data in a multivariate context. Earlier methods for dealing with item non-response are reviewed, followed by an examination of some of the more modern methods and, in particular, multiple imputation. One such technique, known as...

We use panel data collected in metropolitan Cape Town to document the role played by aging parents in caring for the children of children who die. In addition, we quantify the probabilities that older adults and the older adults' children provide financial support to orphaned grandchildren. We...

This paper develops a stochastic model of grade repetition to analyze the large racial differences in progress through secondary school in South Africa. The model predicts that a larger stochastic component in the link between learning and measured performance will generate higher enrollment,...

The problem of high youth unemployment is a global phenomenon. According to an International Labour Office study in 2004, youth (15-24) make up nearly half (47%) of the world's unemployed, 88 million out of 186 million, even though youth are only 25% of the world's working age population. Of the...

This paper reviews the history of the noncontributory social pension in South Africa, as well as recent work on the distributional and poverty-alleviating effects of this program. The pension has a strong gender dimension, reaching three times as many women as men, and has an unambiguous impact...

The labour market is central in determining individual and household well-being in South Africa. Therefore, an understanding of earnings and employment dynamics is a key policy issue. However, the absence of panel data has constrained empirical work addressing these issues. This paper makes use...