Affirmative Action in South Africa: an empirical assessment of the impact on labour market outcomes (original) (raw)

Returns to race: Labour market discrimination in post-apartheid South Africa

2006

Abstract This paper empirically assesses the impact of post-1994 policy making on racial discrimination in the South African labour market. The post-apartheid government has implemented a series of remedial measures, including an ambitious set of black empowerment and affirmative action policies. The first part of the paper gives an overview of the South African labour market post-1994 and the most important legislation, regulations and other measures aimed at redressing the inequalities of the past.

The Impact of Affirmative Action on the Gendered Occupational Segregation in South Africa

2017

This paper studies the impact of an affirmative action policy on occupational segregation by gender in South Africa. We estimate effects of the Employment Equity Act of 1998, the Black Economic Empowerment Act in 2003 and the Codes of Good Conduct in 2007 on (Black) female employment in top occupations using individual level, repeated cross-section data of 21 years. The findings based on difference-in-difference-in-difference identification strategy show that the probability of Black female employment in top occupations increased after 2003, however it decreased after 2007. Overall, the effects are quite small. We offer several explanations for these effects.

Minding the gap: attitudes toward affirmative action in South Africa

Since its introduction, affirmative action has become an increasingly controversial policy to address labour market inequalities in South Africa. Yet, in spite of this public debate, nationally representative, empirical research on patterns of opposition to and support for the redress policy remains relatively circumscribed. In this article, attitudinal data collected over the past decade is employed to examine the factors that influence these perceptions, and the extent to which they have been changing. The results reveal that attitudes to race- and gender-based affirmative action in employment have been favourable on aggregate over the last decade. The specified beneficiary of affirmative action appears to matter, with more positive evaluations evident when the policies target women and disabled persons than when racial disadvantage is targeted. Furthermore, while there is a broad-based, resolute belief in racial equality in principle, there is less agreement on the implementation of particular redress policies. Affirmative action for instance enjoys less support than compensatory policies or those focused on addressing class-based disadvantage. An element of self-interest appears to be informing evaluations among designated beneficiary groups, with black respondents more inclined than other population groups to support race-based affirmative action and women more partial to gender-based affirmative action than men. While the beneficiaries of affirmative action have typically been the better educated and skilled among the designated groups, highest support for this policy is reported by the more marginalized and vulnerable who are least likely to have personally benefitted from affirmative action implementation to date. This support may reflect a sense of collective self-interest or possibly an expectation that this redress policy will bring benefits in the future. Finally, views on whether affirmative action is producing a more skilled workforce and socially cohesive society are again broadly positive, though the profile of those believing in such outcomes deviates somewhat from those supporting affirmative action generally. In this instance, those least likely to have gained from affirmative action in practice are those least confident in the policy’s outcomes, possibly due to a gap between perceived performance of affirmative action policy and expected benefits

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION IN MALAYSIA AND SOUTH AFRICA: CONTRASTING STRUCTURES, CONTINUING PURSUITS

This paper examines affirmative action in two majority-favouring regimes. Malaysia's highly centralized and discretionary program contrasts South Africa's more democratized, decentralized and statutory structure. In terms of affirmative action outcomes, both countries have made quantitative gains in increasing representation of Bumiputeras in Malaysia and blacks in South Africa, in tertiary education and high-level occupations. However, evidence also points to continuing, primarily qualitative, shortfalls, in terms of graduate capability, dependence on public sector employment, and persistent difficulty in cultivating private enterprise. Our results underscore the importance of effectively implementing affirmative action in education, while exercising restraint in employment and enterprise development.