Breaking the Vicious Circles of Informal Employment and Low-Paying Work
This report adds two perspectives on informality. First, it disassembles the mechanics of the deleterious links between informal employment, low-paying work and low skills. It shows that informal employment is highly persistent, and that the vulnerability of informal workers is passed on to their children in the absence of adequate education, skills and social protection policy. Second, the report underscores the double burden of informality and low-paying work that a large share of workers in developing and emerging economies carry, and as such calls for policy solutions that go beyond the formalisation agenda and embrace the goal of social justice.
Investing in the children of informal workers
This chapter shows that the vulnerability challenge faced by informal workers is being passed on to their children. Four ways in which this is happening are identified: growing up in households with informally working parents; lower school attendance from primary levels onwards as compared to children of formally working parents; fewer financial resources and parental time devoted to their education; and longer, more uncertain school-to-work transitions. This chapter discusses policy options to help break the vicious intergenerational cycle of informal employment.
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