Employment precarity and energy poverty in post-apartheid South Africa: Exploring the racial and ethnic dimensions

Abstract

This study examines the link between employment precarity and energy poverty from racial and ethnic perspectives. Data are extracted from a five-year panel survey from South Africa—a country noted for its high rate of racial, ethnic and gender segregation of occupations. Both employment precarity and energy poverty are measured using multidimensional indices. Our endogeneity corrected results indicate that employment precarity is associated with higher likelihoods of energy poverty, with racial and ethnic heterogeneities. These findings are consistent across different endogeneity-resolving techniques, alternative ways of capturing energy poverty, and robust to different cut-offs and weighting schemes used for the energy poverty index. Based on race, we find that employment precarity increases energy poverty more among Black South Africans compared to White/Asian/Indian/Other South Africans. Ethnically, the increasing effect of employment precarity on energy poverty is lowest among the Afrikaans/English speakers and highest among the Venda ethnic group. Labour income is identified as an important pathway through which employment precarity influences energy poverty.