Tuberculosis and labour market participation: Evidence from South Africa

Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the leading causes of death from an infectious disease, but its micro-economic impacts on labour market participation remain poorly understood. We analyse the relationship between TB and employment outcomes in South Africa, one of the countries with the highest TB disease burden worldwide, using individual-level panel data from 2008 to 2017. Applying a coarsened exact matching methodology, we find that contracting TB entails a 5% lower probability of entering the formal labour market. Moreover, TB and its associated employment changes go hand in hand with corresponding reductions in individual income but not in household income and expenditure.