Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/289901 
Year of Publication: 
2023
Series/Report no.: 
Documento de Trabajo No. 320
Publisher: 
Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales (CEDLAS), La Plata
Abstract: 
Understanding the selection of workers into informality is a policy priority to design programs to increase formalization across Sub-Saharan Africa, where nine out of ten workers are informal. This paper estimates a model of self-selection with entry barriers into the formal sector to identify the extent of involuntary informality in Senegal, a representative country in terms of levels of informality in West Africa and with one of the most rigid labor markets in the world. Results show that the desire of being formal is greater for workers with formal education, married and with a lower proportion of children under the age of 5 living in the household. The individual's preference for the formal sector also grows with age at a decreasing rate. Results also show that labor informality is mainly a voluntary phenomenon with 30 percent of informal workers being involuntarily displaced into the informal sector. Results are robust to different model specifications, definitions of labor informality and heterogenous groups of workers.
Subjects: 
Labor informality
segmentation
labor markets
Senegal
JEL: 
J42
J46
N37
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.