Labor Market Transitions and Social Security in Colombia

Cuesta, Jose ; Bohorquez, Camilo

关键词: ACCOUNTING;    AGE GROUP;    BUSINESS CYCLE;    CHRONIC POVERTY;    CULTURAL CHANGE;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-5650
RP-ID  :  WPS5650

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

This paper quantifies the magnitude oftransitions across occupational categories in Colombia, acountry with high unemployment and informality but quicklyincreasing its social security coverage for health. Theanalysis makes use of a panel of households between 2008 and2009, representative of the main metropolitan areas in thecountry. Results confirm previous evidence found in Colombiaand elsewhere in the region that transitions betweenoccupations are large and asymmetric: they aredisproportionally more likely to happen from formal toinformal occupations than vice versa. The paper finds forthe first time that such transitions are also different forsalaried workers compared with the self-employed, as well asby poverty status of the worker. Salaried workers are morelikely to transition first into other salaried jobs, whileself-employed are more likely to transition intounemployment or out of the labor force. There are markeddifferences in the profiles of transitioning andnon-transitioning workers, both in terms of socioeconomiccharacteristics and social security coverage. Causalanalysis shows that affiliation to social security on healthdeters occupational transitions, while pension insurancedoes not. Hence, high-volume transitions may not becrisis-specific phenomena, but rather associated withcontributive and non-contributive social security mechanismsthat incentivize informality, and workers' preferencesfor informal jobs. The debate on labor market and socialsecurity reforms needs to take these features of transitionsinto account.