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GTAP Resources: Resource Display

GTAP Resource #5834

"IMPACT OF ECONOMIC POLICIES IN SOUTH AFRICA ON WOMEN'S WORK"
by Escalante, Luis , Margaret Chitiga and Helene Maisonnave


Abstract
Economic reforms affect men and women differently. In South Africa, gender and racial disparities still exist in the labour market, with women being highly vulnerable. The South African economy is in a depressed situation, with high levels of debt and public deficit. To improve the financial situation of the country, the government has implemented two new fiscal reforms: increase Value-added tax (VAT) for all commodities by 1%, excluding food, and reduce public spending by 5%. This paper evaluates the impacts of both reforms on women from all population groups in terms of employment and poverty levels, by using a Computable General Equilibrium model with micro-simulations. The simulations reveal that both policies have negative impacts on agents, particularly households and firms and poverty levels among women of all population groups. The hike in VAT increases the number of poor households, with women more affected than men. The drop in public spending shows negative impacts for all agents, however, it has lower impacts on poverty levels than those occurring from increasing VAT. The results reveal that South African women, of all population groups, are more vulnerable to the negative impacts of both reforms than men.


Resource Details (Export Citation) GTAP Keywords
Category: 2019 Conference Paper
Status: Published
By/In: Presented at the 22nd Annual Conference on Global Economic Analysis, Warsaw, Poland
Date: 2019
Version: Draft paper
Created: Escalante, L. (4/15/2019)
Updated: Escalante, L. (10/6/2020)
Visits: 2,281
- Baseline development
- Water availability
- Labor market issues
- Africa (Southern)


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Comments (1 posted)
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Posted by: Escalante, Luis    4/27/2021 11:57:00 AM
Updated version!
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00036846.2020.1813247

Escalante, L. E., Maisonnave, H., & Chitiga, M. R. (2021). Do South African fiscal reforms benefit women?. Applied Economics, 53(6), 719-729.