Employment Vulnerability and Earnings in Kyrgyzstan

Abstract

Employment vulnerability is considered as working under inadequate conditions. This research examined the impact of employment vulnerability on earnings with special reference to gender-based differences. Analyses were based on panel data for 2010–2013 and 2016 from the household survey. A panel data fixed-effects model with instrumental variable within the Lewbel (2012) method was applied to estimate an earnings equation. Results indicates negative impact of employment vulnerability on earnings. Women experienced this negative effect more severely. Given these empirical findings, government labour-market policy should not focus on increasing employment alone, but should also address the issue of vulnerability of employment, improvement of working conditions, and expanding employment opportunities for women.

Keywords:

• employment vulnerability
• wage
• self-employment

Acknowledgements

The authors were grateful to Luca Tiberti and Jorge Davalos, as well as to the participants in the PEP Annual Conference 2019, for valuable comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data and code will be made available to researchers upon request.

Notes

1 Estimation of the difference of means between our final sample and the attritted sample showed statistical significance for several covariates. Results are available from authors upon request.

Additional information

Funding

This research work was carried out with financial and scientific support from the Partnership for Economic Policy (PEP-www.pep-net.org) with funding from the Department for International Development (DFID) of the United Kingdom (or UK Aid) and the Government of Canada through the International Development Research Center (IDRC).