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21. The gendered crisis: livelihoods and mental well-being in India during COVID-19

Author:
Farzana Afridi, Amrita Dhillon, and Sanchari Roy
Publication Date:
05-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This paper studies the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the gendered dimensions of employment and mental health among urban informal-sector workers in India. First, we find that men’s employment declined by 84 percentage points post-pandemic relative to pre-pandemic, while their monthly earnings fell by 89 per cent relative to the baseline mean. In contrast, women did not experience any significant impact on employment post pandemic, as reported by their husbands. Second, we document very high levels of pandemic-induced mental stress, with wives reporting greater stress than husbands. Third, this gendered pattern in pandemic-induced mental stress is partly explained by men’s employment losses, which affected wives more than husbands. In contrast, staying employed during the pandemic is associated with worse mental health for women and their (unemployed) husbands. Fourth, pre-existing social networks are associated with higher mental stress for women relative to men, possibly due to the ‘home-based’ nature of women’s networks.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Employment, Mental Health, COVID-19, Informal Economy, and Social Networks
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

22. Barriers To Formalization Of Businesses In Cameroon: High Tax Rates

Publication Date:
02-2021
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The Nkafu Policy Institute
Abstract:
Clearly expressed in its National Development Strategy 2020-2030 (SND30), Cameroon’s desire for the coming decade is to achieve sustainable growth driven by the manufacturing industry. Thus, the government hopes to increase (i) manufacturing value-added from 14.5% in 2017 to 25% in 2030 and (ii) the share of manufacturing exports to 54.5%. However, in the absence of an efficient industrial sector, the economy tends to specialize in the “end of the chain” activities, including extraction (mining and oil) and subsistence agriculture on the one hand and trade and services on the other. According to the Third Survey on Employment and the Informal Sector conducted by Cameroon’s National Institute of Statistics in 2018, nearly 90% of the Cameroonian labor force remains trapped in the informal sector. The sector comprises a set of individual companies – generally nonagricultural – that operate on a small scale and are not registered with the competent authorities. Many entrepreneurs choose to operate informally because of barriers to formalization. For example, businesses spend an average of 624 hours to make 44 payments per year to the tax authorities. The total tax rate remains one of the highest in Central Africa, at 57.7% of business profits than 47.1% in Gabon (World Bank, 2020).
Topic:
Labor Issues, Business, Tax Systems, Economic Development, Sustainability, Labor Market, and Informal Economy
Political Geography:
Africa and Cameroon

23. Building a Social Security Architecture for Informal Workers in India, Finally!

Author:
Santosh Mehrotra
Publication Date:
07-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
Social protection and social security have very limited coverage in India. This reality has not changed since independence, one of greatest failures of the development strategy India adopted in the early fifties. The labour force is predominantly unorganized. As much as 91 per cent of the labour force are in informal employment, i.e. without any social insurance we estimated from the NSO’s Periodic Labour Force Survey (2017-18) (Mehrotra and Parida, 2019). This is barely down 2 percentage points from 93% in 2011-12 (NSO’s 68th Round). In fact, regardless of the growth rate of GDP, this high share of informality in the workforce had not changed until 2012, and when it fell recently, it did so by merely 2 points. The rest 9 per cent of the workforce has varying levels of social security in the form of provident fund, paid leave, medical insurance and other benefits.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Social Policy, Social Security, Welfare, and Informal Economy
Political Geography:
India

24. COVID-19 and the Informal Sector: What it means for women now and in the future

Author:
Turkan Mukhtarova
Publication Date:
07-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security (GIWPS)
Abstract:
Approximately five months into the global COVID-19 crisis, the short- and long-term damage to national economies—especially in the developing world—continues to be felt disproportionately by poor women. Initial analysis of data from countries including Brazil, India, Russia, and Kenya suggests women workers are particularly vulnerable to the current economic crisis because national lockdowns have brought the informal sector to a halt. Informal sector workers are those with no written contracts, paid leave, health benefits, or social security. Women outnumber men in the informal sector in a majority of least developed economies, and as a result, more women have found themselves out of work during the pandemic. This policy brief explores common problems facing informal women workers such as seasonal farm laborers and street vendors due to COVID-19. It also suggests policies for mitigating the economic damage to their livelihoods, including cash transfers, suspension of debts, and protections from eviction.
Topic:
Women, COVID-19, Economic Security, and Informal Economy
Political Geography:
Global Focus

25. Transforming informal work and livelihoods in China

Author:
Carl Shu-Ming Lin, Linxiang Ye, and Wei Zhang
Publication Date:
11-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
The informal sector has long been viewed as a locus of the disadvantaged, unskilled, and inexperienced workers in under-developed and developing economies. Workers in the informal sector, however, can learn skills and gain experience that could help them switch to better-paying jobs in the formal sector. But evidence of this is limited. China constitutes an important case study because it is the most populous country and has the largest labour force, consisting of over 290 million rural-to-urban migrants whose employment is mostly informal. Using three waves of nationally representative household surveys from 2014 to 2018, we study how the livelihoods of Chinese workers change when transitioning to different work statuses within or between formal and informal sectors. Our results show that transitioning jobs from the informal to the formal sector and from the self-employed to the wage-employed increases earnings, which improves the livelihoods of Chinese workers.
Topic:
Employment, Economic Development, Informal Economy, and Workforce
Political Geography:
China and Asia

26. Employers’ Skills Requirements in the Austrian Labour Market: On the Relative Importance of ICT, Cognitive and Non-cognitive Skills over the Past 15 Years

Author:
Sandra Leitner and Oliver Reiter
Publication Date:
12-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
Abstract:
This paper analyses job advertisements to identify the particular skills, abilities and characteristics that are in demand on the Austrian labour market. It takes a novel approach and uses information extracted from over 1.5 million job advertisements over the past 15 years from Austria’s largest online job portal, karriere.at, to shed light on employers’ skills needs and the relative importance of, and demand for, different skill types over time. It develops a taxonomy which classifies observable skills into information and communications technology (ICT) skills (which are of increasing importance as a result of the ongoing digital revolution), cognitive skills, cognitively based skills and non-cognitive (soft) skills; but it also takes into account other factors that frequently appear in job advertisements, such as previous work experience, physical appearance, and the willingness to travel, work overtime, weekends or shifts, among others. It shows that Austrian employers are quite demanding: cognitive skills, previous work experience and ICT skills were the three most frequent requirements, appearing in (almost) every second job advertisement in 2019. Over the years, these categories have also become increasingly important to employers. Among cognitively based skills, language skills were the most important, also appearing in every second job advertisement. The ability to work as part of a team, communication skills, independence, flexibility and accuracy were the top five non-cognitive (soft) skills demanded by employers.
Topic:
Economics, International Political Economy, Communications, Labor Issues, Employment, Labor Market, Skilled Labor, and Informal Economy
Political Geography:
Austria

27. Informal employment and wages in Poland

Author:
Jacek Liwiński
Publication Date:
10-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Social and Economic Research - CASE
Abstract:
Purpose: This paper tries to identify the wage gap between informal and formal workers and tests for the two-tier structure of the informal labour market in Poland. Design/methodology/approach: I employ the propensity score matching (PSM) technique and use data from the Polish Labour Force Survey (LFS) for the period 2009–2017 to estimate the wage gap between informal and formal workers, both at the means and along the wage distribution. I use two definitions of informal employment: a) employment without a written agreement and b) employment while officially registered as unemployed at a labour office. In order to reduce the bias resulting from the non-random selection of individuals into informal employment, I use a rich set of control variables representing several individual characteristics. Findings: After controlling for observed heterogeneity, I find that on average informal workers earn less than formal workers, both in terms of monthly earnings and hourly wage. This result is not sensitive to the definition of informal employment used and is stable over the analysed time period (2009–2017). However, the wage penalty to informal employment is substantially higher for individuals at the bottom of the wage distribution, which supports the hypothesis of the two-tier structure of the informal labour market in Poland. Originality/value: The main contribution of this study is that it identifies the two-tier structure of the informal labour market in Poland: informal workers in the first quartile of the wage distribution and those above the first quartile appear to be in two partially different segments of the labour market.
Topic:
Demographics, Labor Issues, Employment, Social Policy, and Informal Economy
Political Geography:
Europe and Poland