Tim Köhler

Great to be in Sydney🇦🇺 for the first time for the 2025 @sioecon.bsky.social Conference hosted by UNSW. Turns out koalas are indeed real (and adorable!), and apparently sleep even more than academics after conference dinners.

The gender pay gap in South Africa: Firms, formality and churn Half of South Africa’s gender pay gap comes from women sorting into low-paying firms, with low formality and high churn being key to understanding this dynamic.

🆕 The gender pay gap in South Africa: Firms, formality and churn

Today on VoxDev, Ihsaan Bassier (@uniofsurrey.bsky.social) & @leilagautham.bsky.social (@universityofleeds.bsky.social) discuss the dynamics of the gender pay gap in South Africa: voxdev.org/topic/labour...

HAROON BHORAT: Getting the numbers right on the informal economy It is wrong to assume that what is true at the local level must translate to a 1:1 relationship at national level

HAROON BHORAT (@haroonbhorat.bsky.social, our colleague at @dpru-uct.bsky.social): Getting the numbers right on the informal economy

www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/2...

Very grateful to be in Senegal 🇸🇳 for the first time this week for @j-pal.bsky.social’s Summer School on advanced randomised evaluation design. Many thanks to J-PAL, CESAG, @afd-france.bsky.social, and others for hosting me!

A fantastic and timely summer school, thanks very much @rodrigooliveira.bsky.social and the @unu-wider.bsky.social team for organising!

The State of Development Journals 2025: Quality, Acceptance Rates, Review Times, Open Access, and What’s New

Now up: the 9th in my annual series of efforts to put together data on development journals: rankings, number of papers submitted (over 12,000 last year across 12 journals), number published (937), acceptance rates, time to review, open access stats, and more... blogs.worldbank.org/en/impacteva...

Thank you for being such a fantastic Chair, Rachel. And so great to finally meet in person!

Grateful to be attending the 2025 @unu-wider.bsky.social Development Conference here in Helsinki, which explicitly focuses on the role of social protection in driving growth and equality. Only Day 1 and I’ve learnt so much from everyone’s impressive work already!

Great to be a part of this work. Excited to see how it evolves!

It’s been a really great two months so far, very grateful to be here! Thanks very much to the welcoming folks at @unu-wider.bsky.social for having me.

How have the returns to education evolved during the post-Apartheid era in South Africa?🇿🇦

Read about it in a new short Econ3x3 blog I’ve put together below, summarizing a 2024 RESEP paper also below.

www.econ3x3.org/article/how-...

Full paper for those interested: resep.sun.ac.za/wp-content/u...

Presented some work at the University of Turku🇫🇮 today. Grateful for the opportunity to share some ideas & learn from such a welcoming & kind group of researchers - an impressive bunch doing great work. Thanks to @jerniemin.bsky.social @asfandyk.bsky.social @selcencakir.bsky.social for organising!

Really kind of you to share, @leightjessica.bsky.social! I've long admired your efforts to help promote young scholars. Thank you very much!

Today's cool young researcher #econtwitter #econsky is @TimothyKohler @timkohler.bsky.social @DPRU_UCT who works on topics related to labor + development

Very grateful to be in beautiful Maastricht🇳🇱 today to present some work at @unumerit.bsky.social. Thanks for having me!

If you’re interested in attending in-person or online: go.unu.edu/9zq7Q

Very excited and grateful to be in beautiful Helsinki 🇫🇮 for the next few months as a Visiting Scholar at @unu-wider.bsky.social. If you’re around and would be keen to connect, please get in touch!

The six thematic areas that are the focus of the research, advocacy and education of the Children's Institute: Monitoring the advancement of children's rights; reducing poverty and inequality; protecting children from violence; enhancing health and development; promoting children's voice and agency; and securing futures for children.

Hi Bluesky! We're a research unit at University of Cape Town, addressing challenges facing children in South Africa through research, advocacy & education. We explore tensions between policy, practice & lived realities, to promote design & implementation of laws & services enabling kids to thrive 🌱

A picture of the University of Cape Town, where SALDRU is based.

Hello, Bluesky #EconSky! We're the Southern Africa Labour & Development Research Unit (SALDRU) at UCT, dedicated to challenging inequalities through policy-relevant academic research. We are one of the leading Labour & Development #Economics units on the continent. Explore our work: saldru.uct.ac.za

Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Opportunity We invite applications for a postdoctoral position to work in the AFLEARN Data Hub. The successful candidate will be involved in original empirical research; collating and analysing large-scale Africa...

🔊Postdoc Research Fellowship at DataFirst!
Analyze large-scale African foundational learning data, conduct original research, & shape education policy.
Apply now!
➡️https://www.datafirst.uct.ac.za/articles/2025-02-04-postdoctoral-research-fellowship-opportunity

Excited to be joining @unu-wider.bsky.social in Helsinki 🇫🇮 as a Visiting Scholar for 3 months starting in April! While there, my work will focus on social protection policy & labor market inequality in lower-income countries, with a particular focus on South Africa. Very much looking forward to it!

#Econsky

Thanks for reading. This work is ongoing, so any feedback is of course welcomed!

A large amount of between-race wage inequality, which has ⬇️ over time, remains due to differences in education levels. However, differential returns to education across race groups are playing an increasingly important role.

5/n

⬆️ in both (i) educational attainment & (ii) returns to education have driven real wages ⬆️. While, on average, the former is dominant, the latter has ⬆️ in importance over time. At the bottom of the wage distribution, where wages have ⬆️ the most, the latter is dominant.

4/n

While previously being relatively constant across the wage distribution, the returns to education have ⬆️ at the bottom and ⬇️ at the top, placing downward pressure on wage inequality which has decreased but, nevertheless, remains extremely high.

3/n

Following international trends, the returns structure has shifted to favour tertiary education. The returns to tertiary education have at least doubled in size, while those of lower levels have shrunk. The consequence: an increasingly convex education-earnings relationship.

2/n

Despite a substantial ⬆️ in educational attainment (by 25% on average), the average return to education has also ⬆️ (by 8-12% on average), implying that the increased demand for higher-educated workers has outpaced the increased supply.

1/n

How has the return to education evolved in post-Apartheid SA?🇿🇦

Happy to share a new working paper where I use reliable earnings data not publicly available to provide a more precise analysis than previously possible.

🔗: tinyurl.com/educ-returns...

5 key findings below!

Been a while since we shared this!

Here is a selection of our favourite sources of research, newsletters, articles, blogs, podcasts, and videos related to development economics, including researchers who have written for VoxDev.

go.bsky.app/4rsxm7G

Adaptation helped Cape Town, South Africa dodge the Day Zero drought (where city's pipes run dry), but with long-term fiscal, distributional, and environmental consequences, from Alexander C. Abajian, Cassandra Cole, Kelsey Jack, Kyle C. Meng, and Martine Visser https://www.nber.org/papers/w33468