{"title":"When the Rain Stops Falling. Effects of Droughts on the Tunisian Labour Market","authors":"Federica Alfani, Giacomo Pallante, Alessandro Palma, Abdelkader Talhaoui","doi":"10.1093/jae/ejae010","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"We investigate the effects of severe drought shocks in Tunisia’s agricultural sector during the period 2000-2019. Using labour force surveys aligned with granular weather data, we calculate Standardized Potential Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) to detect moderate-to-severe drought shocks occurred at the governorate level and frame the analysis in a staggered difference-in-differences setting with repeated negative events. We find that shocked areas experience a maximum of 7.4 to 10.6 percentage point drop in agricultural employment compared to the untreated or not-yet-treated governorates. We observe a contemporaneous opposite dynamic in the employment rate of low-skill and less climate-sensitive sectors, as well as a modest and transient increase in unemployment. The effects are largely heterogeneous across workers' groups, with women, young individuals and low-educated workers paying the highest toll. Urban non-agricultural workers are temporarily crowded out from the labour market due to the increase in the informal labour supply.","PeriodicalId":51524,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Economies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4000,"publicationDate":"2024-08-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of African Economies","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jae/ejae010","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
We investigate the effects of severe drought shocks in Tunisia’s agricultural sector during the period 2000-2019. Using labour force surveys aligned with granular weather data, we calculate Standardized Potential Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) to detect moderate-to-severe drought shocks occurred at the governorate level and frame the analysis in a staggered difference-in-differences setting with repeated negative events. We find that shocked areas experience a maximum of 7.4 to 10.6 percentage point drop in agricultural employment compared to the untreated or not-yet-treated governorates. We observe a contemporaneous opposite dynamic in the employment rate of low-skill and less climate-sensitive sectors, as well as a modest and transient increase in unemployment. The effects are largely heterogeneous across workers' groups, with women, young individuals and low-educated workers paying the highest toll. Urban non-agricultural workers are temporarily crowded out from the labour market due to the increase in the informal labour supply.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of African Economies is a vehicle to carry rigorous economic analysis, focused entirely on Africa, for Africans and anyone interested in the continent - be they consultants, policymakers, academics, traders, financiers, development agents or aid workers.