PROFILE
The curious economist explores getting hitched “I’m a social scientist who studies human behaviour from the perspective of an economist,” says Dorrit Posel, Distinguished Professor and the Helen Suzman Chair in Political Economy in the School of Economic and Business Sciences at Wits. Posel is an almost accidental economist - the Johannesburg-born, KZN-raised Durban native originally enrolled for a BSc in applied mathematics at the former University of Natal. But the vibrant campus beyond the maths lab compelled her to seek an alternative specialisation. “I was so jealous of the campus life and I missed studying people and how they interact, so at the end of first year I went to see a career counsellor, who suggested I take economics in second year,” says Posel. She had to take an extra year to major in economics but now holds a PhD from the University of Massachusetts (Amherst), a postdoctoral fellowship in economics from Princeton University, is the recipient of the UKZN Vice-Chancellor’s Research Award (2005), and held a South African Research Chair in Economic Development from 2008 to 2015 at UKZN, before moving to Wits in 2016. Posel seemed destined for academia since she comes from a family of academics. Her father, Karl Posel, taught Electrical Engineering at Wits, her mother, Ros, taught history at the former University of Natal, her sister, Deborah, established the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WiSER), her brother Daniel studied medicine at Wits, and her other brother David, studied medicine at UCT. Posel’s own academic career began in 1988, when she became a junior lecturer at the age of 21. “We didn’t have ‘gap years’ in those days,” says Posel, now 52. After postgraduate studies abroad, she returned to the economics division at UKZN, before moving to the School of Development Studies as a South African Research Chair. Here she continued a productive research career exploring the interface between households and labour markets, to better understand the nature of family formation, labour mobility, the constraints and returns to labour force participation, and the allocation of resources within households. “I’m curious. I always want to know more, and research is like peeling an onion – exploring one question raises more questions. I’m also motivated by wanting to have input into people’s lives in order to make a contribution,” she says. A key research area over the past eight years concerns marriage and union formation. Posel’s research revealed that marriage rates were falling while the rate at which women were participating in the labour force was increasing. Significantly, her initial data showed large race differences in marriage rates, and particularly low and falling rates amongst Africans. “I wanted to understand why marriage rates were so low amongst African women in particular and what the implications were for the economic status of women and children,” says Posel.
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Professor Dorrit (Dori) Posel researched marriage and the labour market to find out why fewer African women were marrying while their participation in the labour force was increasing. DEBORAH MINORS
Eligible black bachelors The first phase of this research provided two sets of quantitative evidence consistent with economic constraints of marriage, particularly amongst Africans. The first is the existence of a large marital earning premium amongst African men (and not amongst white men), meaning that married African men earn significantly more than the other African men who are otherwise similar in age and education. Moreover, this earnings premium appeared to derive from the selection of higher-earning African men into marriage, rather than from the causal effect of marriage on men’s productivity. “In other words, it’s not that marriage makes men more productive so that they earn more, but that higher-earning men are more able to marry,” says Posel. The second piece of evidence is the finding that marriage amongst African women is significantly more likely if they live in districts where there are relatively more higher-earning African men. “One reason why the economic status of African men may be particularly important for marriage concerns the traditional practice of bride wealth (ilobolo)”, says Posel, adding that several qualitative studies had drawn a link between changes in the practice of ilobolo, and a delay in marriage or an increase in non-marriage. These findings informed phase two of Posel’s research, which explored the practice and importance of ilobolo in the marriage process.
Marriage market iLobolo is historically paid in cattle and negotiated as a cost per cow. In KwaZulu-Natal, payment was historically codified to 10 cattle plus one beast for the bride’s mother. Persistently curious Posel pondered: If people want to get married, then why doesn’t the price of ilobolo fall to make marriage cheaper? Posel switched her research methodology from analysing microdata to qualitative data. She needed to understand the nuances of people’s marriage aspirations and the importance they attach to marrying with ilobolo and the amount of ilobolo paid. Together with Stephanie Rudwick at UKZN, Posel interviewed 40 married and 40 unmarried African women and men in KwaZulu-Natal. Posel found that “ilobolo was highly valued as a Zulu custom – it was viewed as an integral part of the marriage process and as a key marker of Zulu identity”. Amongst the very few interviewees who did not support the custom, “there was the view that people did not have