 |
| | | Title | This paper describes the state of informal sector work in urban Sub-Saharan Africa, using household surveys from 26 countries representing 61 percent of the population of Sub-Saharan Africa and firm surveys from three countries. Five main conclusions emerge. First, the urban informal sector is large and persistent in Sub-Saharan Africa. Approximately 56 to 65 percent of urban workers are informal, half of whom are self-employed. Data from five countries suggest little systematic reduction in the prevalence of informality during the 2010s. Second, heterogeneity in the African informal sector cuts along demographic lines. Women are overrepresented in informal self-employment, men in informal wage work, and youth in unpaid employment. Third, while the urban informal workers are, on average, poorer and in less-skilled occupations than formal sector workers, the majority are not extremely poor and are in mid-skilled occupations. Fourth, informal enterprises are small and are challenged to survive and grow into job-creating firms. Few find much benefit from registration given the costs, both monetary (taxes) and transactional (information about the registration process). Fifth, access to urban public services (utilities) is weakly associated with the probability of working in an informal job, although access to mobile phones is high across all job types. If thriving urban jobs are to contribute to economic and social development in Africa, it will be crucial for policies and programs to take into consideration the heterogeneity in jobs, the profile of workers, and the urban context. | | Author | Carolyn Barnett | | Date of Publication | 2024 | | Publisher | World Bank | | Keywords | Household labor, care work, mental labor, gender norms, perceived norms, female labor force participation | | Abstract | To what extent do attitudes and perceived norms around household roles hinder the emergence of more gender-equal distributions of labor in Morocco Moroccan women undertake a disproportionate share of unpaid household and care labor and participate in the labor force at low rates. Yet everyday practices are shifting, and normative expectations may be as well. From an online survey of predominantly urban, employed Moroccans, this paper finds that respondents aspire for men to be equal contributors in care tasks. Yet, unpaid labor burdens remain highly unequal, respondents disfavor men taking primary responsibility for cooking or cleaning, and women's share of household labor correlates with perceptions of what men prefer more than with individuals' actual preferences. Results from a conjoint survey experiment measuring preferences around employment and the household division of labor confirm respondents' interest in more egalitarian relations in principle, but also suggest that strong preferences for a male breadwinner family model will continue to drive an unequal distribution of labor at home. | | Filesize | 4831207 MB | | File Format | PDF | | [ View / download original document ] |
|
