Wilson Wittenberg Memorial Prize Winners

We are delighted to announce the recipients of the Wilson Wittenberg Memorial Prize, recognising outstanding research using data available through the DataFirst Open Data Site.

Article Prize

Awarded to Jacqueline Mosomi, for her co-authored paper with Amy Thornton "Childcare and Labor Market Trajectories by Gender During the COVID-19 Pandemic in South Africa", published in Feminist Economics.

This paper asks an important question about the gendered costs of the COVID-19 pandemic: how did the sudden rise in demand for at-home childcare, when schools and childcare centres closed during lockdown, affect the paid work of South African women and men? A large literature has looked at this question in high-income countries. Much less is known about settings like South Africa, where labour force and household structures are very different. Mosomi and Thornton address this question using the NIDS-CRAM data and two complementary methods: regression analysis of paid work hours and sequence analysis of employment and childcare trajectories. They compare men and women, using the timing of lockdown together with whether children lived in the household at baseline. They find that living with children over lockdown cut women's paid work by about one to two hours, with no significant effect for men. The sequence analysis is striking. Women's most common path was moving from employment into full-time childcare after the "hard" lockdown, while men's most common paths all kept them in work even as their childcare responsibilities changed.

The committee admired how carefully and transparently the authors dealt with the limits of their data, while also appreciating the paper’s exploration of the social processes driving the results. The paper's figures are compelling and make the data visible and tell the story clearly, an approach both Francis Wilson and Martin Wittenberg would have particularly appreciated.

Dissertation Prize

Awarded to Raynold Runganga, [PhD] (University of Cape Town). Advisors: Lawrence Edwards / Godfrey Paradzai Kamutando. The award is given to Raynold for his chapter " Chinese Import Penetration, Labour Market Rigidities and Local Labour Markets: Evidence from South Africa".

Raynold's chapter studies how the "China shock", the rapid rise in imports from China, affected local labour markets in South Africa. It also asks how labour market rigidities shape the way regions adjust. Research on trade and local labour markets has grown quickly in the last decade, but most of it is on high-income countries. Raynold builds a rich empirical setting by combining publicly available data from many sources: the Post-Apartheid Labour Market Series (PALMS), available through DataFirst, matched with trade data from the UN Comtrade database. He finds that rising Chinese import competition reduces regional employment, driven by losses in both formal and informal manufacturing jobs. It also lowers labour force participation and increases the number of discouraged workers. Notably, the negative effects on total and informal employment are weaker in regions with higher union membership.

The committee was enthusiastic about this chapter for several reasons. It speaks directly to labour market outcomes, by linking an external trade shock to local labour market institutions in a thoughtful way. We also appreciated the careful linking of a multitude of secondary datasets. Both Francis Wilson and Martin Wittenberg would have appreciated the focus on policy sensitivity of local labour markets, given these markets’ tight connection to economic welfare. We encourage Raynold to refine the chapter and submit it to a journal.

Honourable Mention (Article Prize) – Georgi Borros, for "Computational methods for optimal stratified sampling of ECE outcomes, fees and household income in South Africa", co-authored work with Sebnem Er and Sulaiman Salau, published in the South African Statistical Journal.

This paper looks at a question that comes before any analysis: how should we design samples so that surveys give the most precise information possible? The authors offer a quantitative evaluation of the stratification approaches commonly used in South Africa, comparing them with five computational methods: random search, a genetic algorithm, a biased random key genetic algorithm, a grouping genetic algorithm and variable neighbourhood search. Their applications use important recent South African data: the Thrive by Five Index 2021, the ECD Census 2021, and the General Household Surveys of 2023 and 2024. The committee valued this paper's attention to getting the technical process of data generation right. It reflects Martin Wittenberg's own work in building NIDS and his commitment to high-quality data.
 

Honourable Mention (Dissertation Prize) – Gameli Adika, [PhD] (University of Cape Town), Advisors: Martin Wittenberg, and Justine Burns for "Hidden Burdens: Socioeconomic Inequality in Childhood Chronic Illness in South Africa".

Gameli's chapter starts from a puzzle: in South Africa, reported chronic illness is more common among children in wealthier households. Using the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) from 2012 and 2017, he shows that this pattern comes less from real differences in illness and more from unequal access to healthcare and diagnosis. He uses concentration indices and decomposition methods to measure how socioeconomic factors contribute to these gaps. He finds that falling inequality in race, income and access to sanitation helped narrow the pro-rich gap between 2012 and 2017. He then uses geographic variation in the National Health Insurance (NHI) Phase 1 pilot in a difference-in-differences design. He finds that reported chronic illness rose by 40% in pilot districts compared with other districts, consistent with better access to diagnosis bringing hidden illness to light. The committee liked how the chapter brings several methods together into a coherent investigation, and its careful attention to institutional context, with clear policy relevance as South Africa considers how to fund and expand the NHI, all features that Francis Wilson and Martin Wittenberg would have appreciated. We encourage Gameli to refine the chapter and submit it to a journal.

Prize Committee:
(Chair) Susan Godlonton, Professor of Economics, Williams College
Taryn Dinkelman, Associate Professor of Economics, University of Notre Dame
Robert Garlick, Acting Associate Professor, Emory University

Congratulations to both winners on this well-deserved recognition of their research contributions! 

The Wilson Wittenberg Memorial Prize honours the legacies of Professors Francis Wilson and Martin Wittenberg and celebrates the value of data-driven research.