Informal Sector Research Articles

Informal economy in Tunisia

Informality has been a phenomenon that has existed in Tunisia for a long time; it expanded with the Tunisian revolution. The relationship between informal economy and GDP varies in only one direction, that is to say only informality has a negative effect on growth...The expansion of the informal sector comes back to the problem of economic freedom, Tunisia is among the least economically free countries also the political institutional framework such as the problem of government efficiency, the high level of corruption and political instability are among the explanatory variables of informality.

Examining Dark Triad Traits in Formal Leaders and Their Impact on Employee Workplace Stress: A Comparative Study of Family and Non-Family Businesses

This paper aims to explore differences between the perception of dark traits in formal leaders and levels of workplace stress among employees working in family and non-family businesses. Furthermore, we assess if the company nature (family-owned versus non-family-owned) moderates the relationship between the employees’ perception of dark triad traits in their formal leaders and their workplace stress levels. The empirical evidence is provided by a sample of 220 Portuguese employees who responded to a questionnaire that included their perceptions of their formal leaders’ dark triad traits and workplace stress measures. All respondents are employed in small and medium-sized private companies, holding no management responsibilities and under formal hierarchical supervision. The initial ideas that family firms’ employees perceive higher levels of dark triad traits in their formal leaders than non-family firms’ employees and that they also show higher levels of workplace stress than non-family firms’ employees were confirmed. The results also support the notion that higher perceptions of dark triad traits in formal leaders are related with higher levels of workplace stress of employees and that the company nature significantly moderates this relationship. These findings enhance the research literature by addressing two often overlooked aspects in the comparison between family and non-family firms. Additionally, they provide valuable insights into the relationship between dark triad traits in formal leaders and employee workplace stress levels.

CHALLENGES IN HEALTH ACCESS FOR STREET VENDORS ON THE RAILWAY PATHS OF RIO DE JANEIRO

This article investigates the challenges faced by street vendors in the Metropolitan Region of Rio de Janeiro (RMRJ) in accessing health care. The research, part of a doctoral thesis in Public Health, adopts a qualitative approach to understand the experiences and perceptions of these workers. The study utilized semi-structured interviews with twelve vendors to identify the main barriers to health care access and assess perceptions of the quality and effectiveness of the services received. Street vendors, essential to the urban economy, face job precarity and significant difficulties accessing health services due to the informality of their employment and limitations of the Unified Health System (SUS), such as long waiting lines, lack of doctors, and structural deficiencies. Thematic analysis revealed widespread criticism of the SUS's inefficiency, exacerbated by poor management and underfunding. Additionally, a lack of knowledge about the National Network for Comprehensive Worker Health Care (RENAST) and its services was identified, which limits vendors' access to specialized worker health care. The article proposes that improvements in health education and awareness campaigns about resources like RENAST are essential to enhance access and quality of health care for this vulnerable population. Furthermore, it emphasizes the need for integrated public policies that address the health and social conditions of street vendors, promoting investments in health infrastructure, improvements in working conditions, and regularization of informal employment. Lastly, it suggests a profound reform of the SUS to increase its efficiency and equity, ensuring equal access to quality health care for all, especially informal workers.

Increasing informal sector business, does the impact of regulatory barriers? evidence from the enterprises survey

This study uses survey data from the 2015 World Bank Enterprises Survey of firms operating in 9 provinces in Indonesia. Barriers to doing business in Indonesia for companies are calculated and ranked, and then qualitative methods are used to complete the discussion. This study aims to provide an overview and basis for these constraints so that the central and regional governments can collaborate in making policies that can support the progress of the business world through identification and mapping out barriers to doing business in Indonesia. The aid results show that the main obstacles to doing business in Indonesia in 2015 were the practices of competitors from the informal sector, political instability, and tax rates. The results of this study indicate that since starting a business in Indonesia, firms have been faced with difficulties in obtaining permits that are not in accordance with applicable regulations. For instance, data processing results show that of the firms that apply for business licenses in Indonesia, only 51.41% obtain operating license issuance services following regulations.

Informal Employment and High Burden of Out-of-Pocket Healthcare Payments among Older Workers: Evidence from Longitudinal Ageing Study in India.

India's economy is among the fastest growing in the world. However, a large share of informal workforce is a common characteristic of country's economy, comprises a significant portion of most of its labour markets. This workforce often receives low wages and lacks benefits such as strong social security and health coverage for all. The majority of healthcare spending in India is private. As India's population ages and the informal sector expands, it is expected that many of these workers will continue to work beyond the retirement age to bear their own healthcare costs due to lack of savings, pensions and the precarious nature of their employment. In this context, this study estimates the burden of Out-of-Pocket (OOP) payments on India's informal older workers compared to their formal counterparts, using data from the first wave of the nationally representative Longitudinal Ageing Study in India. According to estimates from the Two-part regression model, informal older workers pay, on an average, INR 1113 (p<0.01) and INR 55 (p<0.05) less than their formal counterparts for inpatient and outpatient care, respectively. However, probit regression models revealed that the burden of combined (both inpatient and outpatient) OOP payments exceeding (by 40%, 20%, and 10%) of their income is significantly higher among informal older workers compared to formal older workers. The study underscores the need for strengthening of universal health insurance schemes to ensure everyone has access to medical services without experiencing financial hardship. It also advocates for policies specifically tailored towards informal workers, considering their unique challenges with regard to livelihoods and healthcare security. In particular, this encompasses bolstering the existing social security and healthcare system, and related policies for ensuring financial security against OOP payments, especially for informal workers and all the population in general.

Analysis of Labor Market Dynamics in Indonesia (1986-2012)

The researcher provides new evidence from Badan Pusat Statistik and International Labor Organization data on how labor market dynamics vary in labor market in Indonesia based on the ILO publication, 17 Key Indicators of the Labor Market 2015, which shows statistics on the main indicators in the dynamics of the labor market. Result shows that In Indonesia, the LFPR (Labor Force Participation Rate) for young people (15-19) is relatively low and reaches a peak among men (20-29) and then begins to decline substantially for older people (60+). Japan, as a developed country that is still in the Asian region, has a 2017 LFPR of 60.21%, this is because LFPR is the percentage of the labor force to the working age population. The total population of Indonesia aged 15 years and over is higher than Japan. In Indonesia, based on the number of people working in the sector, for the period 1986 to 2016, the agricultural sector is the most volatile sector. The highest proportion of informal employment in the non-agricultural sector is experienced by those with low education and the lowest is experienced by university graduates. Compared to Laos, Thailand and Cambodia as neighboring countries and developing countries, Indonesia is the country with the highest unemployment rate. Over the period 1991 to 2017, youth unemployment rates increased sharply for both men and women. The characteristics of unemployment in Indonesia based on unemployment show that the unemployed with high education (ILO concept: Intermediate and Advanced) are higher than the unemployed with low education (basic education).

Estimating and forecasting suppressed electricity demand in Ghana under climate change, the informal economy and sector inefficiencies

Suppressed demand arises from inadequate energy access, resulting in unmet basic needs. Therefore, this study investigates the impact of the informal economy, rising temperatures, and electricity transmission losses on suppressed demand in Ghana from 2000 to 2020, using a quantile autoregressive distributed lag (QARDL) approach. The study forecasts suppressed demand using Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) scenarios, offering insights for energy system planning. The results indicate that all the variables significantly affect suppressed demand in the mid-quantiles. Notably, transmission losses and growth of informal economy variables significantly impact suppressed demand within the 50th to 75th quantiles but have minimal impact before the 50th and after the 75th quantiles in the long run. Additionally, rising temperatures substantially increase suppressed demand by increasing electricity demand for cooling. All future scenarios project this growth trend will continue through 2050, albeit at varying rates. In the business-as-usual (BAU) case, suppressed demand is expected to steadily increase from 1782 MW in 2020 to 8636 MW in 2050. This trajectory aligns well with historical growth trends, which saw suppressed demand increase from 659 GWh to 1782 GWh between 2000 and 2020. SSP scenarios suggest that suppressed demand could grow substantially through 2050, driven by high losses and informal sector growth. Despite sustainable development narratives like SSP1, suppressed demand remains high without major grid and governance improvements. Comparing the results with past studies shows that our findings align with previous research but provide more nuanced insights by incorporating the effects of the informal economy and using advanced forecasting techniques. Practical policy implications include investing in green infrastructure, upgrading grid infrastructure, and formalising the informal economy to alleviate suppressed demand. These actions are critical for sustainable energy access and meeting future electricity needs effectively.

Ghosts in the labour market: perceived health implications of informal labour in Australia.

Employment conditions are important social and commercial determinants of health. Informal employment-also known as 'cash-in-hand' and 'undeclared' work-is a discrete employment condition that has salience around the world. Fuelled by neoliberal ideology, informal employment has become increasingly common in high-income countries. Public health research concerning the health of informal workers comes largely from low- and middle-income countries, where the phenomenon is more visible. There has been little research on the health effects of informal employment in high-income countries including Australia. Twenty-nine workers aged 18 years and older, who were undertaking informal work activities, were recruited using social media and an online marketplace in Tarndanya (Adelaide-Kaurna Country), Australia. Qualitative narrative data, demographic profiles, and physical and mental health scores were collected. Most informal workers reported unfair and indecent employment conditions including job insecurity, low income, coercion, and lack of respect and dignity at work, and were often exposed to unsafe and unhealthy work environments. Workplace injuries and exposure to occupational hazards were common; and Physical and Mental Component Scores were poorer among informal workers when compared to the population of South Australia as a whole. With informal employment in Australia described as part of a 'significant, pervasive, damaging and growing' problem, there is a need for a health promotion lens over industrial relations policies in the interest of creating equitable access to fair and decent work.

‘Fettered mobility’ and translocality: Irregular farm workers and the informal labour market in rural Taiwan

Investigating the multi-layered mobility of Southeast Asian irregular farm workers in rural Taiwan, this article examines the formation of their mobility in a physical, geographical, occupational and socio-economic sense. Focusing on frequent movement in these four aspects, this article coins the term ‘fettered mobility’ for workers’ constant relocation in the villages’ informal farm labour market. In tandem with the focus of this Special Issue on the ongoing transformations of migration at the crossroad between the legal, social and economic obstacles dictated by nation states and the market, and new patterns of movement, this article shows how ‘fettered mobility’ is an unintentional result of the Taiwanese state’s mobility regime, which regulates foreign nationals’ mobility by categorizing a hierarchical legal status. Fettered mobility is facilitated by the translocal migrant community constituted by the co-ethnic link between migrant workers and migrant spouse farmers, and also by the inter-ethnic link between the migrant community on the one hand and Taiwanese farmers and unlicensed brokers on the other. When migration is reconfiguring at a global, regional and local scale, fettered mobility is an assemblage in which the state, market and individual amalgamate into a networked, mobile, irregular and precarious labour force in which unprotected migrant workers are vulnerable to the state’s power to repatriate. Repatriation is an omnipresent threat, and anyone who knows of a migrant worker’s fettered mobility can put an end to their migration. Presenting fettered mobility as an assemblage, this article enriches the ongoing debate on the relationship between mobility and immobility and underlines its conditionality and instability.

Beneath the kiln: The unyielding spirit of women shaping rural India's brick tale

The brick industry, characterized as an informal and unorganized sector in India, has witnessed growth concurrent with urbanization across various states. This labor-intensive industry relies significantly on the widespread exploitation of women and children and heavily depends on migrant workers for production. This study aims to shed light on the current socio-economic conditions of women in the brick industries of Falta and Budge Budge-II C.D blocks in the South 24 Parganas District of Indian state West Bengal. The variables considered for this study encompass gender, age, marital status, nature of work, experience, education, income, benefits, and challenges —these factors serve as indicators of the socio-economic status of women in these manufacturing units. Environmentalists have identified the brick industry as one of the hazardous sectors with adverse implications for the health and physiological well-being of women and children. The present study is based on both primary and secondary data. The findings reveal that women in this field experience various forms of suffering, and the prevalence of child labor is notably high for both boys and girls in the brick kilns of these two blocks.

The role of the informal sector in waste sorting, collection, and recycling in Tan An City, Long An

Abstract Despite efforts to adopt at-source waste separation, Tan An city’s solid waste management is under strain due to a lack of infrastructure. The demand of the scrap recycling market has resulted in the forming of a network of informal scrap trading establishments everywhere. Informal garbage workers efficiently collect (pick, buy) scraps from homes, grocery stores, businesses, workplaces, schools, parks, dump sites, and landfills. This boosts waste segregation at the source. Therefore, in Tan An city, most households separate recyclables for sale to informal waste workers. According to survey results, there are approximately 247 informal waste workers in Tan An City engaged in recyclables collection at a daily average rate of 69.66 kilograms per person. Thus, the total quantity of recyclables collected by this sector is approximately 17,260 kg per day, contributing to the daily diversion of 11.4% of waste from landfills. It helps that the annual savings to the city are estimated at VND 2.75 billion for waste collection and transportation and VND 2.47 billion for waste treatment. It also contributes to the creation of jobs, and the reduction of plastic emissions into the ocean because approximately 28.39% of recyclables are plastic waste, and the reduction of approximately 3.076 tons of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere if this amount of waste is transported to a landfill. This study could initiate further research to find a way to introduce modern initiatives that aim to improve working conditions and the environmental impact of the informal sector and include the informal sector into the EPR scheme as their integration is related to social, labor, health, economic, and other issues.

Credit Access and Women Empowerment: Evidence from India’s Informal Sector

Credit Access and Women Empowerment: Evidence from India’s Informal Sector

Do Informal Economy Drivers ‘Gig It’? Persistence of Informal Economy in the Face of Digitization

Do Informal Economy Drivers ‘Gig It’? Persistence of Informal Economy in the Face of Digitization

Planning Strategies for Slum Improvement in Bathinda City

Slum improvement is a critical challenge faced by urban planners and policy-makers globally as burgeoning urban population outstrips the capacity of cities to provide adequate housing and services. This paper explores comprehensive strategies for the improvement of slums focusing on sustainable development, community involvement and policy innovation. By analyzing successful case studies from diverse urban contexts, the paper identifies key elements that contributes to effective slum upgrading including secure land tenure, provision of basic services, economic opportunities and participatory planning process. The research highlights the importance of integrating slum communities into the broader urban framework to ensure social equity and economic inclusiveness. Recommendations are provided for policymakers and urban planners on designing and implementing holistic slum improvement programs that can adapt to the unique needs of each community, fostering resilience and sustainable urban growth. This study also involves finding locational attributes of slums and assessment of present status of slums. The study is focused on the Bathinda Municipal Corporation and information for the analysis is culled from secondary sources. Slums in Bathinda tend to cluster around undeveloped regions, empty lots, and water features (such as the Sarhind canal) and other forms of urban sprawl. As they find it the most suitable and safe place to live. They settle near industrial areas because of their work. The vast majority of slum inhabitants own property and live in permanent residences. However, the actual causes of the difficulties include substantial property prices and a lack of critical amenities such as drainage, sewage, water supply, and solid waste disposal. Furthermore, in the informal home supply sector, there is insufficient land accessible to the poor in Bathinda.

A Qualitative Diagnosis of Factors Influencing Presumptive Tax Collection in Zimbabwe

This study aimed to examine the factors influencing presumptive tax collection in Zimbabwe. An interpretivist paradigm was adopted in this study using a qualitative research approach. Primary data were collected through virtual (online) in-depth interviews with 20 participants drawn from the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority, Civic Societies, Parliament of Zimbabwe, Informal Sector Associations and academics. Qualitative data were analysed using thematic analysis. The results of a qualitative analysis of the factors influencing presumptive tax collection in Zimbabwe show that institutional, legal and regulatory frameworks as well as governance and political factors significantly contribute to presumptive tax collection in Zimbabwe. The findings of this study will help ZIMRA and policymakers formulate policy strategies to promote presumptive tax collection and voluntary tax compliance in Zimbabwe.

Paying (and Paving) my way: Extra-class participation and rent extraction

Extra classes, or private tutoring offered by schoolteachers to their pupils, are a widespread phenomenon, particularly in developing countries. This educational arrangement might leave room for distorted incentives. Using data from Vietnam, I find that teachers grant higher school grades to pupils attending extra classes, but extra-class attendance does not yield higher scores on standardized achievement tests. I interpret these results as evidence of opportunistic behavior, whereby teachers exploit their arbitrariness in awarding grades, which count for secondary school admissions, to extract rents. The extent of grade inflation is higher in institutionally underdeveloped settings. Attending extra classes also generates a gap in pupils’ self-concept. These findings provide relevant policy implications to align this informal sector with the country's education system.

Conditions of Workers Who Worked from Home during the Covid-19 Pandemic in Indonesia

Work from Home (WFH) is one of the policies implemented by the Indonesian government to contain the cases of Covid-19 in Indonesia since March 2020. People were required to adapt to the new normal way of working by means of WFH. WFH applied to workers in both formal and informal sectors. While those working in the formal sector can get a lot done through remote working, the types of work that can be done remotely in the informal sector are still very limited. The WFH way of working has finally become a trend that is considered flexible and has advantages for the workforce to be more productive without having to leave the house. By using the logit model, this study seeks to answer the characteristics of the formal and informal sector workers who work at home as an effect of the Covid-19 pandemic. The result show that the Covid-19 pandemic was the primary reason why workers did WFH and that a majority of them are from the formal sector. The activities of the majority of the workforce during WFH are communication, promotion, and transactions which are mostly carried out by married women workers. In addition, workers who do WFH tend to be young workers who are highly educated and are familiar with the internet. Keywords: labor characteristics, work from home, Indonesia

The impact of the informal sector on supply chains in Africa

ABSTRACT The informal sector adds a systemic layer of uncertainty and risk for the performance of Food Supply Chains in sub-Saharan Africa. Based on interviews conducted among all the agents directly involved in the FSCs and international statistics, we analysed how the informal sector affects five mango FSCs in Burkina Faso in their economic, social and environmental performance. The informal sector accounts for about 30% of the total FSCs value, 67% of the total production, and 99% of the workforce. The lack of statistics, lack of legal compliance, lack of public infrastructure, increases the probability and severity of any given risk and therefore hinders investments. Firms internalise the risks with horizontal and vertical integration, the support of subsidies, or by avoiding the costs of international standards compliance. As a result, we distinguish subsidised resilience from informal resilience. FSC's resilience in sub-Saharan Africa will depend on how the level of state intervention, legal compliance and law enforcement will affect the informal sector.

‘Things have changed since we last spoke…’: The impacts of parental death on the life and livelihood of a young informal vendor in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

AbstractWhile an increasing number of studies concerning youth and informality have examined the complex relationship between youth, informal work and transitions to adulthood, this literature has paid little attention to how the death of a family member presents distinctive challenges to young vendors' life and livelihood progression. Addressing this, the paper draws on a case study of a small‐scale informal worker in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, who was participating in in‐depth ethnographic research when their father died suddenly. Through this, it investigates how parental death intersects with the challenges a young vendor experienced working informally while simultaneously attempting to achieve transitions to anticipated adulthood. Life‐mapping interviews and participatory timeline diagrams were employed, gaining rich insights into a young vendor's experiences of parental death, revealing how these were shaped by an interplay between the past, present and future. More specifically, the research, which brings together literature concerning youth, informality and family relations, explores how parental death can (re)configure a young person's household roles, responsibilities and relations in response to sudden precarity in the present, reshaping priorities and plans towards achieving goals over different timeframes. Given persistent levels of informality and uncertainty across employment in sub‐Saharan Africa and beyond, this article provides a timely contribution by highlighting the need for more studies to investigate how parental death creates and exacerbates the challenges youth vendors experience, constraining their abilities to grow and sustain their lives and livelihoods within the informal sector.

What Works for the Youth: Analysis of Youth Employment Policies in Rwanda

In Rwanda, over 75 percent of youth are not in education, employment and training (NEET). These are mostly absorbed in the informal sector that provides little or no protection to workers against shocks, and are prone to several socio-economic, technical, and financial constraints. Through desk review of existing policies and studies, key informant interviews (KIIs), and focus group discussions (FGDs), this study reviews and analyzes the existing youth employment policies (YEPs) and interventions with intent to identify the hurdles and outcomes of the actual implementation of these YEPs in Rwanda. Youths aged 18 to 30, policy makers, policy implementers, and implementing partners were the key target respondents. The study finds a multitude of YEPs and interventions to promote youth education and skilling, entrepreneurship, and business development funding; though most of them are more focused on supply than demand-side of the labor market, with limited vulnerable youth inclusivity. Common hurdles encountered during implementation of YEPs include: poor coordination among the vast YEPs causing monitoring challenges both at national and district level, and duplication of services. Difficulty to integrate education and skilling into decent youth employment, matching labor laws with youth welfare, cultural bias limiting young women from participating in some labor market activities, funding gaps, and limited youth engagement during program design. Addressing these challenges requires a well-coordinated stakeholder engagement, and strong collaboration between the public and private sector, as well as civil society organizations.