scholarly journals The labour market impact of COVID-19 lockdowns: Evidence from Ghana

Author(s):  
Simone Schotte ◽  
Michael Danquah ◽  
Robert Darko Osei ◽  
Kunal Sen

In this paper, we provide causal evidence of the impact of stringent lockdown policies on labour market outcomes at both the extensive and intensive margins, using Ghana as a case study. We take advantage of a specific policy setting, in which strict stay-at-home orders were issued and enforced in two spatially delimited areas, bringing Ghana’s major metropolitan centres to a standstill, while in the rest of the country less stringent regulations were in place. Using a difference-in-differences design, we find that the three-week lockdown had a large and significant immediate negative impact on employment in the treated districts, particularly among workers in informal self-employment. While the gap in employment between the treated and control districts had narrowed four months after the lockdown was lifted, we detect a persistent nationwide impact on labour market outcomes, jeopardizing particularly the livelihoods of small business owners mainly operating in the informal economy.

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 491-505 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marita Jacob ◽  
Michael Kühhirt ◽  
Margarida Rodrigues

AbstractThe potential benefits of increased international experience abound, ranging from enriching cultural understanding to an improvement of language skills and intercultural competence. At the same time, empirical evidence is mixed, particularly with regards to how well international experience translates into individual returns on the labour market. This article examines the association between studying abroad and early labour market outcomes in a comparative perspective aiming to shed light on why labour market returns differ across countries. We expect labour market returns to vary with specific country characteristics such as demand for international experience and competition among graduates at labour market entry. In our empirical analyses, we use data from 13 European countries that provide information on graduates’ early labour market outcomes. We find a large variation in the impact of studying abroad on both wages and attaining a higher service class position. Generally, the labour market returns to international experience are larger in countries in Eastern and Southern Europe with poorer university quality, higher graduate unemployment, and fewer students abroad.


2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 463-477 ◽  
Author(s):  
Euna Han ◽  
Tae Hyun Kim

SummaryThis study assesses differential labour performance by body mass index (BMI), focusing on heterogeneity across three distinct employment statuses: unemployed, self-employed and salaried. Data were drawn from the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study. The final sample included 15,180 person-year observations (9645 men and 5535 women) between 20 and 65 years of age. The findings show that (i) overweight/obese women are less likely to have salaried jobs than underweight/normal weight women, whereas overweight/obese men are more likely to be employed in both the salaried and self-employed sectors than underweight/normal men, (ii) overweight/obese women have lower wages only in permanent salaried jobs than underweight/normal weight women, whereas overweight/obese men earn higher wages only in salaried temporary jobs than underweight/normal weight women, (iii) overweight/obese women earn lower wages only in service, sales, semi-professional and blue-collar jobs in the salaried sector than underweight/normal weight women, whereas overweight/obese men have lower wages only in sales jobs in the self-employed sector than underweight/normal weight women. The statistically significant BMI penalty in labour market outcomes, which occurs only in the salaried sector for women, implies that there is an employers’ distaste for workers with a high BMI status and that it is a plausible mechanism for job market penalty related to BMI status. Thus, heterogeneous job characteristics across and within salaried versus self-employed sectors need to be accounted for when assessing the impact of BMI status on labour market outcomes.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yannick Fosso Djoumessi ◽  
Benjamin AWODUMI ◽  
Oluyemi ADEOSUN ◽  
Faith AHABYOONA

Abstract This study is designed to assess the impact of household electricity access on labour market outcomes in Uganda. The quasi-experimental method is applied on a sample of 28,035 households, divided into two counterfactual of treatment (n=8,925) and control (n=19,110) groups. Results strongly show that access to electricity significantly increases wages while decreasing the time spent at work. Specifically, the average wage of the households with access to electricity increased by 155%, 124% and 154% with the Kernel Matching (KM), Nearest-Neighbor Matching (NNM) and Radius Matching (RM) technique, respectively. The average job duration of households with electricity access decreased by 1.34%, 2.01% and 2.5% with KM, NNM and RM technique, respectively. It is recommended that the government of Uganda should increase electricity generation coverage through alternative sources as renewable and nuclear energy and improve the quality of existing energy infrastructures. JEL codes: C13, C31


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Abbos Utkirov ◽  
Rauf Salahodjayev

This paper investigates the impact of the Learning Resource Centre activities of Westminster International University Tashkent (WIUT) graduated students on the labour market outcome. WIUT library provides a learning environment that helps students to create practical teams and individual projects to support the agenda of employability. The study aims to clarify the relationship between library activities and labour market outcomes. This proposes the improvement of a commercial responsiveness workshop, in collaboration with other services, and alumni voices in an employability guide. A quantitative research approach was employed; an online survey questionnaire was distributed to alumni students to obtain the data. It was a semi-structured questionnaire designed using a Likert Scale to collect data from 607 graduates. The study revealed that LRC activities have a significant impact on labour market outcomes for students. LRC activities such as presentation skills, information technology skills, problem-solving skills, research skills were mostly expected in the labour market. Research limitations– The study was focused only on graduates of WIUT, which may limit the generalizability. Therefore, the researcher proposed to study and compare other graduates of universities in Uzbekistan. The insights are valuable for planning the curriculum of LRC activities and developing teaching practices at WIUT. Moreover, current and graduate students can learn market-oriented skills and labour market demands. This is the first-ever study in Uzbekistan that explores the relationship of university library activities on employability skills of alumni.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Inés Berniell ◽  
Lucila Berniell ◽  
Dolores de la Mata ◽  
María Edo ◽  
Mariana Marchionni

We study the causal effect of motherhood on labour market outcomes in Latin America by adopting an event study approach around the birth of the first child based on panel data from national household surveys for Chile, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay. Our main contributions are: (i) providing new and comparable evidence on the effects of motherhood on labour outcomes in developing countries; (ii) exploring the possible mechanisms driving these outcomes; (iii) discussing the potential links between child penalty and the prevailing gender norms and family policies in the region. We find that motherhood reduces women’s labour supply in the extensive and intensive margins and influences female occupational structure towards flexible occupations—part-time work, self-employment, and labour informality—needed for family–work balance. Furthermore, countries with more conservative gender norms and less generous family policies are associated with larger differences between mothers’ and non-mothers’ labour market outcomes.


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