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on Labour Economics |
| By: | Petri Böckerman; Mika Haapanen; Christopher Jepsen |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the causal effect of parental death on children’s mental health. Combining several nationwide register-based data for Finnish citizens born between 1971 and 1986, we use an event study methodology to analyze hospitalization for mental health-related reasons by the age of 30. We find that there is no clear evidence of increased hospitalization following the death of a parent of a different gender, but there are significant effects for boys losing their fathers and girls losing their mothers. Depression is the most common cause of hospitalization in the first three years following paternal death, whereas anxiety and, to a lesser extent, self-harm are the most common causes five to ten years after paternal death. We also provide descriptive evidence of an increase in the use of mental health-related medications and sickness absence, as well as substantial reductions in years of schooling, employment, and earnings in adulthood for the affected children. |
| Keywords: | parental death, mental health, hospitalization, depression, labor market |
| JEL: | I11 I12 J12 J13 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9099&r= |
| By: | Meltem Dayioglu (Department of Economics, Middle East Technical University); Murat Guray Kirdar (Department of Economics, Boğaziçi University); Ismet Koc (Institute of Population Studies, Hacettepe University) |
| Abstract: | Millions of children are forcibly displaced around the world, making child labor a serious risk. However, little is known about this topic due to the difficulty of finding representative datasets for this population and information on child labor. In this study, we use a representative dataset on Syrian refugees in Turkey, the largest refugee group in any single country, to examine the incidence of child labor and its determinants. The incidence of paid work is remarkably high among boys: 17.4% of 12-14 year-olds and 45.1% of 15-17 year-olds are in paid employment. We find that paid work is positively associated with poverty, proficiency in Turkish, living in an industrialized region in Turkey, originating from rural areas in Syria and living in a household with a young, female, or less-educated head. Family composition matters more for girls’ employment than boys’. Boys’ (girls’) employment increases if their father (mother) is alive – suggesting network effects. Being older at arrival is highly associated with child labor, indicating that difficulty with school integration drives children into employment. |
| Keywords: | child labor; forced displacement; Syrian refugees; paid work; migrants; Turkey. |
| JEL: | J13 J15 J61 O15 O53 |
| Date: | 2021–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:koc:wpaper:2105&r= |
| By: | Alexey Gorn; Antonella Trigari |
| Abstract: | We study the stabilizing role of unemployment benefit extensions. We develop a tractable quantitative model with heterogeneous agents, search frictions, and nominal rigidities. The model allows for both a stabilizing aggregate demand channel and a destabilizing labor market channel of unemployment insurance. We characterize analytically the workings of each channel. Stabilizing aggregate demand effects marginally prevail in the U.S. economy and the unprecedented benefit extensions introduced during the Great Recession played a limited role for unemployment dynamics. Instead, unemployment from the model tracks actual unemployment with a combination of labor market shocks and a shock to the consumers’ borrowing capacity |
| Keywords: | Unemployment insurance; cyclical benefit extensions; heterogeneous agents; redistribution; precautionary motives; opportunity cost of employment; nominal rigidities; search frictions |
| JEL: | E24 E32 E52 J63 J64 J65 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:liv:livedp:202111&r= |
| By: | Patricia Palffy; Patrick Lehnert; Uschi Backes-Gellner |
| Abstract: | The authors analyze the relationship between social gender norms and the occupational choices of adolescents by combining information about regional votes on a constitutional amendment on gender equality with job application data from a large job board for vocational education and training apprenticeships. Results show that adolescent males in regions with stronger traditional social gender norms are significantly more likely to apply for gender-typical occupations. This finding does not hold for adolescent females, suggesting that males align their occupational choices more strongly with social gender norms than females. Additional analyses reveal that the social gender norms in a region are related to the costs that adolescents living in this region are willing to bear for commuting to a firm where they receive apprenticeship training in either a gender-typical or gender-atypical occupation. The results underscore the importance of policies that factor in social gender norms and encourage not only adolescent females, but also adolescent males to make non-traditional occupational choices. |
| Keywords: | social norms, occupational choice, gender typicality, occupational gender segregation |
| JEL: | J24 J16 I24 M59 |
| Date: | 2021–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iso:educat:0183&r= |
| By: | Maryna Tverdostup (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw) |
| Abstract: | The COVID-19 pandemic has highly asymmetric effects on labour market outcomes of men and women. In this paper, we empirically investigate the dynamics and drivers of gender gaps in employment rates, wages and workhours during the pandemic. Relying on Estonian Labour Force Survey data, we document that the pandemic has, if anything, reduced gender inequality in all three domains. Our results suggest that, while the evolution of inequalities mirrored the infection rate development – rising as infections mounted and declining as the first wave flattened – overall, the pandemic did not exacerbate gender gaps in 2020. The cyclical increases in gender disparities were largely driven by parenthood, as child-rearing women experienced a major decline in their employment rate and workhours, as well as gender segregation in the most affected industries. The higher propensity to work from home and better educational attainments of women deterred gender wage gap expansion, as wage returns to telework and education rose during the pandemic. Our results suggest no systematic expansion of gender gaps, but rather short-term fluctuations. However, labour market penalties for women with young children and women employed in those industries most affected by COVID-19 may last longer than the pandemic, threatening to widen gender inequality in the long run. |
| Keywords: | COVID-19, employment, gender, inequalities, wage gap |
| JEL: | J16 J21 J31 |
| Date: | 2021–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wii:wpaper:202&r= |
| By: | Shigeru Fujita; Ippei Fujiwara |
| Abstract: | This paper explores a causal link between aging of the labor force and declining trends in the real interest rate in Japan. We develop a search/matching model that features heterogeneous workers with respect to their ages and firm-specific skills. Using the model, we examine the long-run implications of the sharp drop in labor force entry in the 1970s. We show that the changes in the demographic structure induce significant low-frequency movements in per capita consumption growth and the real interest rate. The model suggests that aging of the labor force accounts for 40 percent or more of the declines in the real interest rate observed between the 1980s and 2000s in Japan. We also examine the impacts of other long-term developments such as a slowdown of TFP growth and higher shares of female and non-regular workers. |
| Keywords: | Aging; Real interest rate; Japan |
| JEL: | E24 E43 |
| Date: | 2021–06–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedpwp:92541&r= |
| By: | Luca Eduardo Fierro (Department of Management, Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, Italy); Alessandro Caiani (University School for Advanced Studies, Pavia, Italy); Alberto Russo (Department of Management, Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, Italy and Department of Economics, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain) |
| Abstract: | The increasing automation of tasks traditionally performed by labor is reshaping the relationship between skills and tasks of workers, unevenly affecting labor demand for low, middle, and high-skill occupations. To investigate the economywide response to automation, we designed a multisector Agent-Based Macroeconomic model accounting for workers’ heterogeneity in skills and tasks. The model features endogenous skill- biased technical change, and heterogeneous consumption preferences for goods and personal services across workers of different skill types. Following available empirical evidence, we model automation as a manufacture-specific, productivity-enhancing, and skill-biased technological process. We show how automation can trigger a structural change process from manufactory to personal services, which eventually polarises the labor market. Finally, we study how labor market policies can feedback in the model dynamics. In our framework, a minimum wage policy (i) slows down the structural change process, (ii) boosts aggregate productivity, and (iii) accelerates the automation process, strengthening productivity growth within the manufactory sector. |
| Keywords: | agent-based model, automation, structural change, wage polarization, minimum wage |
| JEL: | C63 E64 L16 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jau:wpaper:2021/09&r= |
| By: | Andrew Sharpe |
| Abstract: | This report provides a detailed analysis of the productivity performance of the manufacturing sector in New Brunswick. Part one of the report provides a detailed overview of the manufacturing productivity in New Brunswick from 1997 to 2019. This part identifies a major turning point in the province's manufacturing productivity performance in 2004, after which output per hour of manufacturing plummetted from 109 percent of the national average to 75 per cent of the national average. Part two of the report attempts to shed light on this important development from different angles, namely, a growth accounting perspective, an industry perspective, a labour perspective along with a fourth section which examines additional explanations. |
| Keywords: | Productivity, New Brunswick, Manufacturing, Canada, AIPR, Policy |
| JEL: | D63 I38 I31 J18 J24 J15 J6 K37 |
| Date: | 2021–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sls:resrep:1918&r= |
| By: | Lionel Fontagné (Banque de France, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne, PSE, CEPII); Michela Limardi (Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne, RIME lab (Université de Lille)) |
| Abstract: | Can preferential market access help to enforce Labor Laws in beneficiary countries? The Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) is accorded conditional on compliance with labor rights. The United States scheme leaves room for petitioning and revising the scheme upon request by interest groups. We here focus on such a review episode, and ask whether it led to the better enforcement of domestic Labor Laws in Indonesia. Using data from Indonesian Manufacturing firms, we show that GSP renegotiation combined with the activism of workers' rights groups helped increase firm-level average wages up to the minimum wage level, not only inside but also outside the export sector. GSP leverage allowed labor NGOs to act more effectively by putting the violation of national Labor Laws and poor working conditions under the international spotlight |
| Keywords: | GSP; labor standards; NGOs; wage determination |
| JEL: | J52 J80 |
| Date: | 2021–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mse:cesdoc:21014&r= |
| By: | Piotr Denderski (University of Leicester School of Business); Christian A. Stoltenberg (University of Amsterdam) |
| Abstract: | We study the existence of a profitable unemployment insurance market in a dynamic economy with adverse selection rooting in information on future job losses. The new feature of the model is that the insurer and workers interact repeatedly. Repeated interactions make it possible to threaten workers with exclusion from future insurance benefits after a default on insurance premia. With exclusion, not only the insurance against the fundamental risk, but also against future bad news about job losses matters. In contrast to conventional wisdom, we find that private unemployment insurance in the US can be profitable for a relatively short exclusion length of one year. To stimulate the emergence of a private unemployment insurance market, policy makers can facilitate the creation of a registry that archives past defaults on insurance premia. |
| Keywords: | Advance information, subjective expectations, adverse selection, unemployment insurance, repeated interactions, dynamic contracts |
| JEL: | D82 D86 G22 J65 |
| Date: | 2021–06–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20210052&r= |
| By: | Bruce D. Meyer; Angela Wyse; Alexa Grunwaldt; Carla Medalia; Derek Wu |
| Abstract: | Official poverty statistics and even the extreme poverty literature largely ignore people experiencing homelessness. In this paper, we examine the characteristics, labor market attachment, geographic mobility, earnings, and safety net utilization of this population in order to understand their economic well-being. This paper is the first to examine these outcomes at the national level using administrative data on income and government program receipt. It is part of the Comprehensive Income Dataset project, which combines household survey data with administrative records to improve estimates of income and related statistics. Specifically, we use restricted microdata from the 2010 Decennial Census, which enumerates both sheltered and unsheltered homeless people, the 2006-2016 American Community Survey (ACS), which surveys sheltered homeless people, and longitudinal shelter-use data from several major U.S. cities. We link these data to longitudinal administrative tax records as well as administrative data on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), veterans’ benefits, Medicare, Medicaid, housing assistance, and mortality. Our approach benefits from large samples that offer a guide to national homelessness patterns and allow us to compare estimates between data sources, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)’s point-in-time (PIT) counts. By shedding light on issues of data linkage and survey coverage among homeless people, this paper contributes to efforts to better incorporate this hard-to-survey population into income and poverty estimates. |
| JEL: | J0 R0 |
| Date: | 2021–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28861&r= |
| By: | Libertad González Luna; Sofia Trommlerová |
| Abstract: | We estimate the impact of a cash transfer targeting new mothers on their subsequent children's health outcomes at birth. We exploit the unexpected introduction of a generous, universal child benefit in Spain in 2007. Using population-wide, individual-level, high-quality administrative data from birth records and a regression discontinuity approach, we find that women who received the benefit were much less likely to have low-birth-weight children in the future (while their subsequent fertility was unaffected). The overall effect is driven by poor women, unmarried women, and women with low education, and by births taking place relatively soon after the benefit receipt. The Euro 2,500 transfer led to a 0.7 percentage-point decline in the fraction of children born under 1,500 grams in poorer households in the following five years, an 83% reduction. We explore the underlying channels, and find evidence supporting faster intrauterine growth, possibly driven by better maternal health, nutrition, and behaviors. Gestation length, family structure, and maternal employment do not seem to play a role. Recent research suggests that targeting pregnant women may be more effective than later interventions (such as cash transfers to families with children), given the strong persistence of fetal health effects. Our results suggest that the impact may be stronger if women are targeted even earlier, before conception. |
| Keywords: | birth weight, cash transfer, fetal health, prenatal period, child benefit |
| JEL: | H51 I18 J13 |
| Date: | 2021–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:upf:upfgen:1783&r= |
| By: | Alma Cohen; Moshe Hazan; David Weiss |
| Abstract: | Are the political preferences of CEOs associated with the representation and compensation of women in the executive suite? We find that Democratic CEOs (those who contribute more to Democratic candidates) are associated with higher representation of women in the executive suite. To explore causality, we use an event study approach and show that replacing a Republican with a Democratic CEO is associated with 20%-60% in more women in the executive suite. Finally, we show that Democratic CEOs associated with a significant reduction (or even disappearance) of the gender gap in the level and performance-sensitivity of executive pay. |
| JEL: | G30 J16 J30 M12 M14 M51 |
| Date: | 2021–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28893&r= |