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on Demographic Economics |
| By: | Pierre-Richard Agénor; Jan Mares; Piritta Sorsa |
| Abstract: | This paper studies how public policies, including pro-women interventions, can raise female labour force participation and promote economic growth in India. The first part provides a brief review of gender issues in the country. The second part presents a gender-based OLG model, based on Agénor (2015) and Agénor and Canuto (2015), that accounts for women’s time allocation between market work, child rearing, human capital accumulation, and home production. Bargaining between spouses depends on relative human capital stocks. The model is calibrated and various experiments are conducted, including investment in infrastructure, conditional cash transfers, and a reduction in gender bias in the market place. The analysis shows raising female labour force participation with a package of pro-growth and pro-women policies could boost the growth rate by about 2 percentage points over time. |
| Keywords: | gender equality, female labour force participation, gender, India |
| JEL: | I15 I25 J16 O41 |
| Date: | 2015–09–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:ecoaaa:1263-en&r=all |
| By: | Kenneth Aarskaug Wiik; Jennifer A. Holland (Statistics Norway) |
| Abstract: | Using register data from Norway and Sweden, this study addresses the relationship between partner choice and the timing of first marriage among all migrant- and non-migrant-background individuals born between 1972 and 1989, who were either native-born or who immigrated prior to age 18 (generation 1.5). In multivariate models, we analyze the differential hazards of marrying an individual of majority- or migrant-background within a competing risk framework, by migrant generation and number of foreign-born parents. Multivariate results confirmed that in both countries the marital timing patterns of migrant-background individuals who married exogamously were more similar to the majority populations than among those who married another migrant-background individual. Our findings thus suggest that the Scandinavian pattern of late marriage tends to dominate, even where the immigrant-background composition of the couple is mixed. These results are an important starting point for new insights into adaptation drawn from investigations into the family life courses of children of immigrants in Europe, a population sub group currently entering family formation ages. |
| Keywords: | Marriage timing; Partner choice; Exogamy; Endogamy; Sweden; Norway |
| JEL: | J12 |
| Date: | 2015–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ssb:dispap:810&r=all |
| By: | Claire Crawford (Department of Economics, University of Warwick and Institute for Fiscal Studies); Lindsey Macmillan (Department of Quantitative Social Science, Institute of Education, University College London); Anna Vignoles (Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge) |
| Abstract: | The role of education as a potential driver of social mobility has been well established and it is critical that we understand how children from different socio-economic backgrounds fare in the education system. In this paper, we examine the trajectories of initially high- and low-achieving children from lower and higher socio-economic status families from age 7 through to the end of compulsory education (age 16) in England for the first time. This enables us to provide new insights into when initially high attaining poor children fall behind their better-off peers. We show that there are substantial differences in educational attainment by socio-economic background at age 7, and that these differences increase as children move through the education system. Our results indicate that pupils from poor backgrounds who score highly in primary school fall behind their better-off but lower achieving peers during secondary school. These findings are not caused by ''regression to the mean'' (where a child with 'high' or 'low' achievement on any given day may have over- or under-performed relative to their 'true' attainment, meaning that the next time they are tested they will look more like the average individual). This suggests that secondary school may be a critical period to intervene to ensure poor children do not fall behind their better-off peers. We also provide suggestive evidence on the extent to which these patterns can be explained by the types of schools that pupils from different backgrounds attend, and by the differing attitudes and aspirations of the pupils and their families. Our analysis suggests that there is less convergence amongst pupils who attend the same schools. And if all pupils had the attitudes and aspirations of the average pupil, there would be more convergence. While we remain cautious about the implications of these findings, they provide suggestive evidence that schools (or the sorting of pupils into schools) and the attitudes and aspirations held by children from different backgrounds may contribute to the convergence in attainment that we see. |
| Keywords: | Social Mobility; Education Achievement; Regression to the mean |
| JEL: | I20 I24 J13 |
| Date: | 2015–09–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qss:dqsswp:1508&r=all |
| By: | Claudio Fassio; Fabio Montobbio; Alessandra Venturini |
| Abstract: | This paper uses the French and the UK Labour Force Surveys and the German Microcensus to estimate the effects of different components of the labour force on innovation at the sectoral level between 1994 and 2005. The authors focus, in particular, on the contribution of migrant workers. We adopt a production function approach in which we control for the usual determinants of innovations, such as R&D investments, stock of patents and openness to trade. To address possible endogeneity of migrants we implement instrumental variables strategies using both two-stage least squares with external instruments and GMM-SYS with internal ones. In addition we also account for the possible endogeneity of native workers and instrument them accordingly. Our results show that highly-educated migrants have a positive effect on innovation even if the effect is smaller relative to the positive effect of educated natives. Moreover, this positive effect seems to be confined to the high-tech sectors and among highly-educated migrants from other European countries. |
| Keywords: | innovation, migration, skills, human capital |
| JEL: | O31 O33 F22 J61 |
| Date: | 2015–07–31 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cel:dpaper:30&r=all |
| By: | Kourtney Koebel, Tammy Schirle (Wilfrid Laurier University) |
| Abstract: | Using a difference-in-differences estimator, we find the Canadian Universal Child Care Benefit (a demogrant paid to families with children under age 6 that was introduced in July 2006) has significant negative effects on the labor supply of legally married mothers but significant positive effects on the labor supply of single mothers. The positive effect for single mothers is concentrated among divorced mothers, with results suggesting divorced mothers’ likelihood of participating in the labor force rises by 2.8 percentage points when receiving the benefit. This contrasts with a reduction in the likelihood of legally married mothers participating in the labor force by 1.4 percentage points. Further, the effects for single moms primarily represent entry to employment and the labor force (extensive margin) and not an increase in hours among those who would have been working without the benefits. The estimated effects for common-law married mothers and single never-married mothers are not statistically significant. |
| Keywords: | Labour supply, public policy, child benefits, demogrant |
| JEL: | J22 J18 |
| Date: | 2015–05–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wlu:lcerpa:0094&r=all |
| By: | Vincent Corluy (Centrum voor Sociaal Beleid Herman Deleeck – Universiteit Antwerpen; Centrum voor Economische Studiën – KU Leuven); Joost Haemels (Centrum voor Sociaal Beleid Herman Deleeck – Universiteit Antwerpen); Ive Marx (Centrum voor Sociaal Beleid Herman Deleeck – Universiteit Antwerpen); Gerlinde Verbist (Centrum voor Sociaal Beleid Herman Deleeck – Universiteit Antwerpen) |
| Abstract: | Belgium has one of the largest gaps in labour market outcomes between natives and individuals of foreign origin. One might expect that the children of migrants (the so-called second generation) would perform better than the first generation, as they ought to have a better knowledge of the local language, better educational qualifications and greater opportunities for work experience in the domestic labour market. On the basis of data from the ad hoc module of 2008 Labour Force Survey (LFS) we find that employment rates for generation migrants in Belgium are hardly better than those for first generation migrants. This finding stands in marked contrast what is found in neighbouring countries. Using a unique combination of data sources, we examine the labour market position of second-generation migrants in more depth. We find considerable variation in labour market outcomes by country of origin and a Fairlie decomposition yields that education is an important explanatory factor of the employment rate gap. Yet there still remains a large unexplained part. |
| Keywords: | Second generation immigrants, labour market outcomes, decomposition methods, educational attainment |
| JEL: | J15 J21 J24 J61 |
| Date: | 2015–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbb:reswpp:201509-285&r=all |