Stimulus effects of public employment programs

Policy-makers, especially in developing countries with low average incomes and productivity, often perceive a trade-off between alleviating poverty and unemployment directly with social assistance and public employment programmes, versus other resource allocation options intended to support economic growth and job creation with long-run benefits.
These aims are somewhat reconciled if government social spending has broader benefits for in.

One of these programs is South Africa’s Presidential Employment Stimulus (PES), announced in 2020 as one of the support measures against the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and its largest component is the Presidential Youth Employment Initiative – Basic Education Employment Initiative (PYEI-BEEI). This webinar will showcase new research that shows how this initiative has impacts on economic growth through its indirect positive effects on non-programme employment and wages.

This paper has been supported through the EU-AFD Research Facility on Inequalities

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