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Behavioural preferences and labour market attachment among South African youth
Youth unemployment in South Africa remains a persistent and multifaceted challenge. This study explores how behavioural preferences—specifically risk aversion and probability weighting—vary across employment categories among South African youth. Using structural estimates from incentivised Multiple...
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English English |
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School of Economics
2025
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| _version_ | 1867614337708851200 |
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| access_status_str | Open Access |
| author | Goddard, Ianthe |
| author2 | Keswell, Malcolm |
| author_browse | Goddard, Ianthe Keswell, Malcolm |
| author_facet | Keswell, Malcolm Goddard, Ianthe |
| author_sort | Goddard, Ianthe |
| collection | Thesis |
| description | Youth unemployment in South Africa remains a persistent and multifaceted challenge. This study explores how behavioural preferences—specifically risk aversion and probability weighting—vary across employment categories among South African youth. Using structural estimates from incentivised Multiple Price List (MPL) tasks, we estimate parameters for relative risk aversion (r) and probability sensitivity (γ) and examine how these relate descriptively to wage employment, self-employment, and unemployment. Our findings suggest that employed females exhibit higher levels of risk aversion, consistent with a preference for stable income under constrained structural conditions. Unemployed individuals, particularly those exhibiting back-switching behaviour in MPL tasks, display more curved or non-linear probability weighting. We interpret lower γ values not as psychological pessimism or irrationality, but as reduced sensitivity to probability - potentially a bounded rationality response to uncertainty and limited feedback. We do not infer causality, but highlight how behavioural regularities correlate with labour market status in a high-uncertainty, developing-country context. Our results contribute to the behavioural economics literature by extending models of bounded rationality to explain labour market disengagement. The findings offer preliminary policy insight into how informational environments and employment support structures could be designed to improve labour market participation among youth |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/42240 |
| institution | University of Cape Town (South Africa) |
| language | English eng |
| last_indexed | 2026-06-10T12:50:26.825Z |
| license_str | Not specified — see source repository |
| provenance_str_mv | Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| publishDateRange | 2025 |
| publishDateSort | 2025 |
| publisher | School of Economics |
| publisherStr | School of Economics |
| record_format | dspace |
| source_str | UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| spelling | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/42240 Behavioural preferences and labour market attachment among South African youth Goddard, Ianthe Keswell, Malcolm Bhorat, Haroon TBD Youth unemployment in South Africa remains a persistent and multifaceted challenge. This study explores how behavioural preferences—specifically risk aversion and probability weighting—vary across employment categories among South African youth. Using structural estimates from incentivised Multiple Price List (MPL) tasks, we estimate parameters for relative risk aversion (r) and probability sensitivity (γ) and examine how these relate descriptively to wage employment, self-employment, and unemployment. Our findings suggest that employed females exhibit higher levels of risk aversion, consistent with a preference for stable income under constrained structural conditions. Unemployed individuals, particularly those exhibiting back-switching behaviour in MPL tasks, display more curved or non-linear probability weighting. We interpret lower γ values not as psychological pessimism or irrationality, but as reduced sensitivity to probability - potentially a bounded rationality response to uncertainty and limited feedback. We do not infer causality, but highlight how behavioural regularities correlate with labour market status in a high-uncertainty, developing-country context. Our results contribute to the behavioural economics literature by extending models of bounded rationality to explain labour market disengagement. The findings offer preliminary policy insight into how informational environments and employment support structures could be designed to improve labour market participation among youth 2025-11-17T13:45:28Z 2025-11-17T13:45:28Z 2025 2025-11-17T13:41:57Z Thesis / Dissertation Masters MCom http://hdl.handle.net/11427/42240 en eng application/pdf School of Economics Faculty of Commerce University of Cape Town |
| spellingShingle | TBD Goddard, Ianthe Behavioural preferences and labour market attachment among South African youth |
| thesis_degree_str | Master's |
| title | Behavioural preferences and labour market attachment among South African youth |
| title_full | Behavioural preferences and labour market attachment among South African youth |
| title_fullStr | Behavioural preferences and labour market attachment among South African youth |
| title_full_unstemmed | Behavioural preferences and labour market attachment among South African youth |
| title_short | Behavioural preferences and labour market attachment among South African youth |
| title_sort | behavioural preferences and labour market attachment among south african youth |
| topic | TBD |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/11427/42240 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT goddardianthe behaviouralpreferencesandlabourmarketattachmentamongsouthafricanyouth |