TY  - JOUR
AU  - Leibbrandt,Murray
AU  - Levinsohn,James
AU  - McCrary,Justin
TI  - Incomes in South Africa Since the Fall of Apartheid
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 11384
PY  - 2005
Y2  - May 2005
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11384
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11384.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Murray Leibbrandt
University of Cape Town
E-Mail: Murray.Leibbrandt@uct.ac.za

James A. Levinsohn
Yale School of Management
PO Box 208200
New Haven, CT  06520
Tel: 734/763-2319
Fax: 734/764-2769
E-Mail: James.Levinsohn@yale.edu

Justin McCrary
School of Law
University of California, Berkeley
586 Simon Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720-7200
Tel: (510) 643-6252
E-Mail: jmccrary@law.berkeley.edu
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 2006-01-01
AB  - 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 that changes in respondent attributes are insufficient to explain this decline. For most groups, a (conservative) correction for selection into income recipiency explains some, but not all, of the income decline. For other groups, selection is a potential explanation for the income decline. Perhaps the most persuasive explanation of the evidence is substantial economic restructuring of the South African economy in which wages are not bid up to keep pace with price changes due to a differentially slack labor market.
ER  -