Publication: Do Labor Markets Limit the Inclusiveness of Growth in the Dominican Republic?
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Date
2017-08-01
ISSN
Published
2017-08-01
Author(s)
World Bank
Abstract
The strong economic growth enjoyed by
the Dominican Republic following its 2003 domestic crisis
was not matched by similarly substantial progress in poverty
reduction. While labor productivity grew by an estimated 39
percent between 2000 and 2013, real wages fell with the
crisis in 2003/04, and, in 2013, remained below their
pre-crisis level. This report presents an assessment of
factors related to the functioning of the labor markets that
constrained more inclusive growth in the Dominican Republic.
It explores several hypotheses related to labor supply
factors, job creation, and global trends in returns to
labor, as well as issues with statistical measurements that
contribute to explain the weak relationship observed between
growth and poverty reduction. The analysis finds that growth
appears to have been driven by productivity increases rather
than by increases in labor inputs. At the same time,
low-skilled workers became increasingly concentrated in
low-quality jobs and in sectors that saw low productivity
growth, a trend enhanced by the loss of manufacturing jobs
since 2000. Low rates of labor force participation,
particularly among the poor, further limited the ability of
households to benefit from growth.
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Citation
“World Bank. 2017. Do Labor Markets Limit the Inclusiveness of Growth in the Dominican Republic?. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/27681 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”