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on Unemployment, Inequality and Poverty |
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Issue of 2005‒11‒19
eight papers chosen by |
| By: | Ricardo Mora; Javier Ruiz-Castillo |
| Abstract: | This paper reviews the properties suggested in the methodological literature on the measurement of occupational gender segregation. It is found that an index of (relative) segregation based on the entropy concept, IE, satisfies thirteen basic axioms previously proposed in the single-dimensional case, and can be expressed as the sum of a between-group and a within-group term both for any partition of the set of occupations and in the two-dimensional case. |
| Date: | 2005–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cte:werepe:we056231&r=ltv |
| By: | Chris van Klaveren (Faculty of Economics and Econometrics, Universiteit van Amsterdam); Bernard M.S. van Praag (Faculty of Economics and Econometrics, Universiteit van Amsterdam); Henriëtte Maassen van den Brink (Faculty of Economics and Econometrics, Universiteit van Amsterdam) |
| Abstract: | An empirical model is developed where the collective household model is used as a basic framework to describe the time allocation problem. The collective model views household behavior as the outcome of maximizing a household utility function which is a weighted sum of the utility functions of the male and the female. In this paper we estimate the two individual utility functions and the household power weight distribution, which is parameterized per household. The model is estimated on a sub-sample of the British Household Panel Survey, consisting of two-earner households. The empirical results suggest that: (1) Given that the weight distribution is wage dependent, preferences of males and females differ, which rejects the unitary model; (2) The male and female utility functions are weighted differently in the household function; (3) The power differences are explained by differences in the ratio of the partners' hourly wages, the presence of young children and the non-labor household income; (4) Both males and females have a backward bending labor supply curve. |
| Keywords: | Collective household models; Labor supply; Time allocation |
| JEL: | D12 D13 J22 |
| Date: | 2005–10–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dgr:uvatin:20050096&r=ltv |
| By: | Namkee Ahn (FEDEA, Fundación de Estudios de Economía Aplicada); Juan Ramón García (FEDEA, Fundación de Estudios de Economía Aplicada); Juan Francisco Jimeno (FEDEA, Fundación de Estudios de Economía Aplicada) |
| Abstract: | Among the working-age population, one of the most damaging individual experiences is unemployment. Many previous studies have confirmed the devastating effects of unemployment on individual well-being, both pecuniary and non-pecuniary. Using the data from the European Community Household Panel survey, we examine the factors that affect unemployed workers’ well-being with respect to their situations in their main vocational activity, income, housing, leisure time and health in Europe. Unemployment substantially reduces an individual’s satisfaction levels with his or her main vocational activity and finance, while it greatly increases his or her satisfaction levels with leisure time. With respect to health, it has a small negative effect. Unemployment duration also has a small, negative impact on individual well-being, suggesting that unemployment has a lasting and aggravating effect throughout the spells of unemployment, contradicting the theory of adaptation. Three other results are worth mentioning. First, there are large cross-country differences in the consequences of unemployment on individual well-being. Fewer effects resulting from unemployment are observed in Denmark and the Netherlands than in other countries. Part of this difference seems to be the result of the differences in the regulations and functioning of the labour market. In these two countries, where the unemployment rate is lower, the spells are shorter and unemployment protection (unemployment benefits and active labour market policies) is greater. Second, with respect to methodology, there are small differences between the cross-section and panel estimates, suggesting a small bias as a result of unobserved fixed-effects in the cross-section estimation. Finally, among the unemployed, non-pecuniary factors – such as job prospects, health and social relations – show significant effects on individual well-being, along with household income. |
| Keywords: | satisfaction, health and unemployment |
| Date: | 2004–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:epr:enepwp:029&r=ltv |
| By: | Holmlund, Helena (Swedish Institute for Social Research, Stockholm University); Sund, Krister (Swedish Institute for Social Research, Stockholm University) |
| Abstract: | Girls outperform boys in school. We investigate whether the gender performance gap can be attributed to the fact that the teacher profession is female dominated, that is, is there a causal effect on student outcomes from having a same-sex teacher? Using data on uppersecondary school students and their teachers from the municipality of Stockholm, Sweden, we find that the gender performance differential is larger in subjects where the share of female teachers is higher. We argue, however, that this effect can not be interpreted as causal, mainly due to teacher selection into different subjects and nonrandom student-teacher matching. Exploring the fact that teacher turnover and student mobility give rise to variation in teacher’s gender within student and subject, we estimate the effect on student outcomes of changing to a teacher of the same sex. We find no strong support for our initial hypothesis that a same-sex teacher improves student outcomes. |
| Keywords: | - |
| Date: | 2005–11–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:sofiwp:2005_005&r=ltv |
| By: | Spyros Konstantopoulos (Northwestern University and IZA Bonn); Amelie Constant (IZA Bonn) |
| Abstract: | This study examines the gender gap in wages of young adults in the late 1970s, mid 1980s, and 2000, in the middle and the tails of the wage distribution using quantile regression. We also examine the importance of school quality indicators in predicting future labor market performance. We conduct analyses for three major racial groups in the US: Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics. We employ base year and follow up data from two rich longitudinal studies: the National Longitudinal Study (NLS) of high school seniors in 1972 and the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS) of eighth graders in 1988. Our results indicate that school quality is an important predictor of and positively associated to future wages for Whites, but it is less so for the two minority groups. We confirm significant gender disparities in wages favoring men across three surveys in the 1970s, 1980s, and 2000 that are unaccounted for. While the unexplained gender gap is evident across the entire wage distribution, it is more pronounced for Whites and less pronounced for Blacks and Hispanics. Overall, the gender gap in wages is more pronounced in higher paid jobs (top 10 percent) for all groups, indicating the presence of a n alarming "glass ceiling." |
| Keywords: | wages, gender differences, school quality, school effects, quantile regression |
| JEL: | J16 J24 J31 |
| Date: | 2005–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp1830&r=ltv |
| By: | Orla Doyle (Geary Institute, University College Dublin); Colm Harmon (University College Dublin, CEPR and IZA Bonn); Ian Walker (University of Warwick, Institute for Fiscal Studies and IZA Bonn) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the robustness of recent findings on the effect of parental background on child health. We are particularly concerned with the extent to which their finding that income effects on child health are the result of spurious correlation rather than some causal mechanism. A similar argument can be made for the effect of education - if parental education and child health are correlated with some common unobservable (say, low parental time preference) then least squares estimates of the effect of parental education will be biased upwards. Moreover, it is very common for parental income data to be grouped, in which case income is measured with error and the coefficient on income will be biased towards zero and there are good reasons why the extent of bias may vary with child age. Fixed effect estimation is undermined by measurement error and here we adopt the traditional solution to both spurious correlation and measurement error and use an instrumental variables approach. Our results suggest that the income effects observed in the data are spurious. |
| Keywords: | child health, intergenerational transmission |
| JEL: | I1 |
| Date: | 2005–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp1832&r=ltv |
| By: | Fehr, Ernst; Schmidt, Klaus M. |
| Abstract: | This paper surveys recent experimental and field evidence on the impact of concerns for fairness, reciprocity and altruism on economic decision making. It also reviews some new theoretical attempts to model the observed behavior. |
| JEL: | J3 D0 C9 C7 |
| Date: | 2005–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lmu:muenec:726&r=ltv |
| By: | Maarten Lindeboom University of Amsterdam - Department of Economics (Tinbergen Institute Amsterdam; Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)); Marcel Kerkhofs (OSA Institute for Labour Studies, Tilburg University) |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the interrelation between health and work decisions of older workers. For this, two issues are of relevance. Firstly, health and work may be endogenously related because of direct effects of health on work and vice versa, and because of unobservables that may relate observed health and work outcomes. Secondly, social surveys usually contain self-assessed health measures and research indicates that these may be affected by endogenous, state-dependent, reporting behavior. A solution to the 'Health and Retirement Nexus' requires an integrated model for work decisions, health production and health-reporting mechanisms. We formulate such a model and estimate it on a longitudinal dataset of Dutch elderly. |
| Keywords: | Work, health, endogeneity, subjective health, state-dependent reporting errors |
| JEL: | I12 J14 |
| Date: | 2004–02–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rtv:ceisrp:46&r=ltv |