Characteristics and Determinants of Underemployment in Cameroon
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Date
2019-10-05
Authors
Stéphane, Hyéfouais Ngniodem Achille
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
African Economic Research consortium
Abstract
The objective of this study was to improve the analysis of the labour market in
Cameroon, through a better understanding of the characteristics and determinants
of underemployment. Specifically, this study aims to: identify the profile of an average
visible and invisible underemployed; identify the determinants of the visible and
invisible underemployment; and assess the contribution of these determinants to
the underemployment gap existing between rural and urban residents. The method
used for empirical analysis was both descriptive and econometric. The level of
visible underemployment was 11.5% among individuals aged between 15 and 64
years. It showed no disparity in age, gender and place of residence, and increased
with education. The estimated invisible underemployment rate was about 62.7%.
Visible underemployment affects young people and women the most. Although it
is more accentuated in rural areas, the informal sector represents the seat of the lowincome jobs. Probit and sample selection, and Fairlie decomposition (2006) are the
econometric techniques used to model the probability of being underemployed. The
results of the probit models suggest that education, business sector, employment
sector, socio-professional category, sex, age and location have significant impact on
the probability of being underemployed. The total gap in mean probability of the
invisible underemployment between rural and urban workers was 26.4%. Results
of the Fairlie decomposition shows that 81.1% of this gap are explained by the
difference in the distribution of observable characteristics between rural and urban
populations. The remaining 18.9% can be assigned to the difference due to the effects
of observed characteristics. The findings also indicate that the business sector has
the highest contribution (36.4%) in the distribution of observable characteristics,
alongside education (13.1%) and the employment sector (10.8%).