Reassessing the Gender Wage Gap: Does Labour Force Attachment Really Matter? Evidence from Matched Labour Force and Biographical Surveys in Madagascar

Assessing gender inequalities has become one of the key issues of the new international poverty reduction strategies implemented in most LDCs in the past few years. It has been argued that 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 approach, where potential experience is used as a proxy for actual experience due to lack of appropriate data, has its limits in estimating the true returns to human capital. Such biases in the estimates cannot be ignored since the returns to human capital are used in the standard decomposition techniques to measure the extent of gender-based wage discrimination. By matching two original surveys conducted in Madagascar in 1998 - a labour force survey and a biographical survey - we built a unique dataset that enabled us to combine the original information gathered from each of them, particularly the earnings from current employment and the entire professional trajectories. Our results lead to an upward reappraisal of returns to experience, as potential experience always exceeds actual experience, for both males and females. In addition, controlling for further qualitative aspects of labour force attachment, we obtain a significant increase in the portion of the gender gap explained by observable characteristics, while the differences in average actual experience across sexes lead to markedly different estimates of the fraction of the gender earnings gap explained by experience.gender wage gap, returns to human capital, labour force participation, biographical data, Madagascar.

Export Processing Zone Expansion in Madagascar: What are the Labor Market and Gender Impacts?.

This paper analyses part of the controversy over export processing zones (EPZs)—the labour market and gender impacts—using unique time-series labour force survey data from an African setting: urban Madagascar, in which the EPZ (or Zone Franche) grew very rapidly during the 1990s. Employment in the Zone Franche exhibits some basic patterns seen elsewhere in export processing industries of the developing world, such as the predominance of young, semi-skilled female workers. Taking advantage of microdata availability, we estimate earnings regressions to assess sector and gender wage premia. Zone Franche employment is found to represent a significant step-up in pay for women who would otherwise be found in poorly remunerated informal sector work. As it provides relatively high wage opportunities for those with relatively low levels of schooling, export processing development may also eventually have significant impacts on poverty. Further, by disproportionately drawing women from the low-wage informal sector (where the gender pay gap is very large) to the relatively well-paid export processing jobs (where pay is not only higher but also similar for men and women with similar qualifications), the EPZ has the potential to contribute to improved overall gender equity in earnings in the urban economy. Along many non-wage dimensions, jobs in the EPZ are comparable to or even superior to other parts of the formal sector. However, the sector is also marked by very long working hours and high turnover, which may work to prevent it from being a source of long-term employment and economic advancement for women.genre; discrimination salariale; Zone Franche; Gender; Wage gap; Export Processing Zone; Madagascar;

Corruption and trust in political institutions in sub-Saharan Africa.

Cet article explore les interactions entre la confiance institutionnelle et la corruption à partir d’un riche corpus d’enquêtes-ménages comparables : les enquêtes Afrobaromètre réalisées dans 18 pays d’Afrique sub-saharienne. Plus précisément, il teste les théories de l’ « huile dans les rouages » selon lesquelles la corruption peut renforcer la confiance des citoyens en leur permettant d’accéder à des services publics autrement inaccessibles. Nos résultats infirment clairement ces théories. Nous montrons que la corruption réduit clairement la confiance et ce quelque soit la qualité des services gouvernementaux. Ils suggèrent toutefois que l’expérience et la perception de la corruption ont des effets distincts sur la confiance institutionnelle.This paper analyzes the impact of corruption on the extent of trust in political institutions using a rich collection of comparable data provided by the Afrobarometer surveys conducted in 18 sub-Saharan African countries. More specifically, we set out to test the “efficient grease” hypothesis that corruption can strengthen citizens’ trust since bribe paying and clientelism open the door to otherwise scarce and inaccessible services and subsidies, and that this increases institutional trust. Our findings reject this theoretical argument. We show that corruption never produces trust-enhancing effects regardless of the evaluation of public service quality. The results reveal how perceived and experienced corruption impact negatively, but differently, on citizens’ trust in political institutions. The adverse effect of perceived corruption decreases with the fall in public service quality, whereas the negative effect of experienced corruption decreases as public service quality increases.Africa; Trust; Corruption;

Allocation of Labour in Urban West Africa: Implication for Development Policies

With the use of comparable data from seven West African capitals, we attempt to assess the rationale behind development policies targeting high rates of school enrolment through the prism of allocation of labour and returns to skills across the formal and informal sectors. We find that people with high levels of education allocate to the small formal sector and receive high compensation for their education and experience. Less educated workers allocate to the informal sector. While self-employment reveals some characteristics of a sector of dynamic entrepreneurship, the characteristics of the informal salaried sector are closer to those of a sector of hidden unemployment, or a stepping stone for better jobs in the future.returns to skills, allocation of labour, self-selection, informal sector, Sub-Saharan West Africa

Migration, self selection and returns to education in the WAEMU.

Using data from labour force surveys conducted simultaneously in the capital cities of seven West African Economic and Monetary Union countries, we estimate a model of residential location choice in which expected earnings play a role. The model is first estimated in a reduced form. Estimates are then used to correct for the endogeneity of locational choice in the earnings equations estimated for each country. We find that migration behaviour has a significant effect in shaping earnings differentials between education levels and between the seven capital cities. Corrected predicted earnings in each country are then used as an independent variable in a structural multinomial logit of residential choice. Results show that individuals tend to reside in countries in which their expected earnings are higher than elsewhere.Migration; Self-selection; West Africa;

La dynamique de la consommation des ménages dans l'agglomération d'Antananarivo, 1965-1995 (Madagascar)

Les données de la comptabilité nationale font état d'une régression continue de la consommation par tête depuis l'indépendance, qui atteint 45% en 1995. Cependant, ces données prêtent à discussion, compte tenu de la piètre fiabilité des données officielles. L'objet de cette étude est de confronter les données des cinq enquêtes budget-consommation disponibles depuis 1960, pour tenter de mettre en évidence la véritable dynamique de la consommation sur longue période. Bien que généralisée, la chute de la consommation a affecté différemment les groupes sociaux. Si le sens et la nature des recompositions à l'oeuvre caractérisent bien les changements successifs de politique économique, sur longue période on observe une double régression : chute des niveaux de vie et accroissement des inégalités. Pourtant, les ménages ont mis en oeuvre toutes les stratégies en leur pouvoir pour contrecarrer les effets de la crise : mise au travail généralisée de la main-d'oeuvre familiale, changement dans les comportements de consommation. Les réponses des ménages n'ont pas été seulement individuelles, mais aussi collectives et politiques. Mais ces efforts se sont révélés infructueux, l'ampleur des chocs macroéconomiques ne laissant qu'une marge de manoeuvre dérisoire aux ménages. Compte tenu des niveaux de consommation actuels, les tendances passées sont insoutenables. La stratégie de croissance tirée par les exportations est incompatible avec une régression sans fin du marché intérieur. (Résumé d'auteur

Peut-on se fier aux bases de données internationales sur la corruption ? : une confrontation entre enquêtes-experts et enquêtes-ménages en Afrique subsaharienne

L’émergence des institutions, de la gouvernance et tout particulièrement de la corruption, comme enjeu majeur du développement a engendré la multiplication de bases de données internationales censées mesurer ces concepts. Cette étude s’interroge sur la pertinence et les limites des indicateurs globaux de corruption basés sur la perception des experts. Elle mobilise un dispositif d’enquêtes originales réalisées simultanément dans huit pays africains, couplant deux types d’enquêtes sur la même thématique. Les premières, menées auprès de la population (avec un échantillon de 35 000 personnes au total), permettent d’obtenir une mesure objective de l’incidence et des caractéristiques de la petite corruption bureaucratique. La seconde, menée auprès de 350 experts (enquête-miroir), mesure la perception que s’en font les experts. En confrontant ces deux sources, nous montrons que ces derniers surestiment systématiquement l’incidence de la corruption et que le classement des pays induits par leurs perceptions n’est pas corrélé avec la réalité. L’erreur d’appréciation des experts est d’autant plus forte que les pays sont mal notés dans les bases internationales, pénalisant les plus pauvres d’entre eux. Les analyses économétriques mettent également en évidence la présence de biais idéologiques, ainsi que l’existence d’un modèle culturel implicite, cohérent mais erroné, sur la façon dont « l’Afrique fonctionne ». Les experts ont tendance à surestimer massivement le niveau de tolérance aux pratiques corruptives de la part de la population et à sous-estimer l’importance qu’elle accorde aux questions de « bonne gouvernance ». Ces résultats plaident en faveur d’un usage plus précautionneux et raisonné des indicateurs globaux de gouvernance et confirment la nécessité de les compléter par des enquêtes auprès des acteurs concernés.The emergence of institutions, governance and especially corruption as major development considerations has generated a whole host of international databases intended to measure these concepts. These databases are now widely used in both the academic world and for public policies, especially for aid allocation. This study looks at the pertinence and limits of global corruption indicators based on experts’ perceptions. The study draws on a wave of original surveys coordinated by the authors and conducted simultaneously in eight African countries. This wave combines two types of surveys on the same subject. The first type of survey covering a sample of over 35,000 people takes an objective measure of the frequency of petty bureaucratic corruption and its characteristics. The second type (mirror survey) reports on 350 experts’ opinions on the matter. A comparison of these two sources paints a clear-cut picture of the experts’ error of assessment. We show that the experts do not provide a good gauge of the real level of corruption. They systematically overestimate the frequency of corruption. Moreover, the ranking of countries derived from their perceptions does not tie in with reality. The experts’ measurement error is all the greater in that the countries are not well graded in the international bases, which penalises the poorest of them. The econometric analyses also find ideological biases, with experts tending to rank countries based on their own political preferences, and the existence of a coherent, but erroneous implicit cultural model of how “Africa works”. The experts tend to massively overestimate the population’s level of tolerance of corrupt practices and underestimate the importance it attaches to matters of “good governance”. These findings make a case for a more cautious and rational use of global governance indicators. Our study also confirms the need to supplement global indicators with surveys of the players concerned.no