Occupational segregation by race in South Africa after apartheid

• Author: Carlos Gradín
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/rode.12551
• Published date: 01 May 2019
• Date: 01 May 2019

REGULAR ARTICLE

Occupational segregation by race in South Africa

after apartheid

Carlos Gradín

UNU-WIDER, Helsinki, Finland

Correspondence

Carlos Gradín, United Nations University

World Institute for Development

Economics Research (UNU-WIDER),

Katajanokanlaituri 6 B, FI-00160

Helsinki, Finland.

Email: gradin@wider.unu.edu

Funding Information

I acknowledge the support received from

UNU-WIDER and from Agencia Estatal

de Investigación/Fondo Europeo de

Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) (ECO2016-

76506-C4-2-R).

Abstract

This paper investigates progress in reducing the high level

of racial stratification of occupations after apartheid in

South Africa. Empirical analysis, using census microdata

and Labour Force Surveys, does not provide compelling

evidence of sustained or significant desegregation. Occupa-

tions remain highly segmented by race, with blacks dispro-

portionally holding low‐paying jobs (compared with

whites), although segregation and segmentation also affect

in a different way the other population groups (Indians/

Asians and Coloureds). Less than a third of the occupa-

tional segregation and about half of the segmentation of

Africans (with respect to whites) are related to their charac-

teristics, especially their lower educational achievement, a

gap that has been reduced over time. Segregation and strati-

fication, however, remain when blacks and whites with

similar characteristics are compared.

KEYWORDS

occupational segregation, stratification, low-paying, apartheid, South

Africa, race

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INTRODUCTION

The lives of South Africans have been dominated by racial segregation since the first Europeans

arrived at the Cape in 1652, beginning the largest European settlement on the continent. The segre-

gation of blacks, along with that of Coloured and Indians/Asians, was intensified during apartheid,

Rev Dev Econ. 2019;23:553–576. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/rode

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This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial‐ShareAlike License, which permits use

and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non‐commercial and the content is offered under

identical terms.

© 2018 UNU-WIDER. Review of Development Economics published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd

DOI: 10.1111/rode.12551

the political and social regime enforced by the National Party after it took office in 1948 until the

first general democratic elections in 1994.

The ultimate aim of white rulers was to force nonwhites to provide seasonal, cheap, and abun-

dant labor for farms, mines, and other sectors, while keeping economic and political power in their

own hands. Segregation in South Africa stood out for the range and extent of its discriminatory

legislation, which affected every possible sphere of life (e.g., work, education, health, transport,

recreation, politics, sexual relationships). Among this legislation, the ‘color bar’resulted in job

reservation for whites that excluded blacks from skilled and semi‐skilled jobs, also depriving them

of an adequate education (e.g., 1953 Bantu Education Act). Segregation was also an ideology and

set of practices seeking to legitimize social difference and economic inequality (Beinart & Dubow,

1995). Core elements of this segregation, such as the exclusion of blacks from skilled work (espe-

cially if it involved supervisory functions over whites), or the system of large‐scale oscillating

labor migration, were determined by custom as well as legislative bars.

The construction of a new deracialized South Africa started after the end of the apartheid

regime under the rule of the African National Congress. This involved the formal dismantlement

of all the remaining segregative legislation, along with the introduction of anti‐discriminatory and

affirmative policies to reverse its effects (i.e., 1995 Labour Relations Act, 1998 Employment

Equity Act, 2000 Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act, 2003 Black

Economic Empowerment Act). Deeply rooted inequalities along racial lines, however, proved more

difficult to remove, especially in the context of a sluggish economy, the result of the shrinkage of

the nonmineral tradable sector from the early 1990s on (Rodrik, 2008), with a chronically high

level of unemployment.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the extent to which the end of apartheid produced a sus-

tained process of racial desegregation in the distribution of occupations, thus dismantling one of

the core elements of racial inequality in South Africa. This has strong implications for the degree

of inclusion of blacks as citizens, as well as for improving their material living conditions.

We document the extent and nature of the segregation of black and white workers across occu-

pations based on post‐apartheid census and labor force data. For that, we first use the conventional

framework based on segregation curves and indices such as Gini and Dissimilarity (Jahn, Schmid,

& Schrag, 1947; Duncan & Duncan, 1955). We also analyze the vertical or ordinal dimension of

segregation, measuring the extent to which the labor market is stratified by race, with blacks being

systematically segregated into low‐paying occupations, using concentration curves and indices

when occupations are sorted by average earnings (Gradín, 2013a, 2017). Additionally, we attempt

to identify the driving factors of this segregation at each moment in time by measuring the level

conditional on workers’characteristics using a counterfactual distribution in which blacks are given

the characteristics of whites (Gradín, 2013a). More precisely, we analyze if segregation is driven

by workers’endowments, such as the lower level of education of blacks or their over‐representa-

tion in rural areas and the poorest provinces of the country. Alternatively, segregation might result

from the labor market being intrinsically segregative among workers with similar characteristics

based on their race. Both sources of segregation might be the result of discrimination (actual or

anticipated), but their distinction helps us to better understand its nature.

In what follows, the next section briefly reviews the relevant literature. The third and fourth

sections describe the methodology and data. The fifth section discusses the main empirical results,

the sixth section deals with the multigroup case and the last section concludes.

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GRADÍN