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on Unemployment, Inequality and Poverty |
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Issue of 2013‒03‒02
nine papers chosen by |
| By: | Buvinic, Mayra; Das Gupta, Monica; Casabonne, Ursula; Verwimp, Philip |
| Abstract: | Violent conflict, a pervasive feature of the recent global landscape, has lasting impacts on human capital, and these impacts are seldom gender neutral. Death and destruction alter the structure and dynamics of households, including their demographic profiles and traditional gender roles. To date, attention to the gender impacts of conflict has focused almost exclusively on sexual and gender-based violence. The authors show that a far wider set of gender issues must be considered to better document the human consequences of war and to design effective postconflict policies. The emerging empirical evidence is organized using a framework that identifies both the differential impacts of violent conflict on males and females (first-round impacts) and the role of gender inequality in framing adaptive responses to conflict (second-round impacts). War's mortality burden is disproportionately borne by males, whereas women and children constitute a majority of refugees and the displaced. Indirect war impacts on health are more equally distributed between the genders. Conflicts create households headed by widows who can be especially vulnerable to intergenerational poverty. Second-round impacts can provide opportunities for women in work and politics triggered by the absence of men. Households adapt to conflict with changes in marriage and fertility, migration, investments in children's health and schooling, and the distribution of labor between the genders. The impacts of conflict are heterogeneous and can either increase or decrease preexisting gender inequalities. Describing these gender differential effects is a first step toward developing evidence-based conflict prevention and postconflict policy. |
| Keywords: | Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Population Policies,Post Conflict Reconstruction,Gender and Development,Gender and Health |
| Date: | 2013–02–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:6371&r=ltv |
| By: | Justin Wolfers; Daniel W. Sacks; Betsey Stevenson |
| Abstract: | In recent decades economists have turned their attention to data that asks people how happy or satisfied they are with their lives. Much of the early research concluded that the role of income in determining well-being was limited, and that only income relative to others was related to well-being. In this paper, we review the evidence to assess the importance of absolute and relative income in determining well-being. Our research suggests that absolute income plays a major role in determining well-being and that national comparisons offer little evidence to support theories of relative income. We find that well-being rises with income, whether we compare people in a single country and year, whether we look across countries, or whether we look at economic growth for a given country. Through these comparisons we show that richer people report higher well-being than poorer people; that people in richer countries, on average, experience greater well-being than people in poorer countries; and that economic growth and growth in well-being are clearly related. Moreover, the data show no evidence for a satiation point above which income and well-being are no longer related. |
| Keywords: | Subjective well-being, life satisfaction, quality of life, Easterlin Paradox, adaptation, economic growth |
| JEL: | D6 I3 J1 O1 |
| Date: | 2013–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:een:camaaa:2013-03&r=ltv |
| By: | Boll, Christina; Leppin, Julian Sebastian |
| Abstract: | Germany's occupational and sectoral change towards a knowledge-based economy calls for high returns on education. Nevertheless, female graduates are paid much less than their male counterparts. We find an overall unadjusted gender pay gap among German graduates of 27 %. This corresponds to an approximate wage gap of 32.5 % thereof 20,3 % account for different endowments and 12,2 % for different remunerations of characteristics. Suboptimal job matches of females tied in family and partner contexts are supposed to account for at least part of the gendered wage drift. But overeducation does not matter in this regard. Instead, females earn 4 % less because they work on jobs with fewer years of required education. Furthermore, solely males are granted breadwinner wage premiums and only men successfully avoid wage cuts when reducing working hours. We conclude that the price effect of the gap reflects employers' attributions of gender stereotypes, gendered work attitudes as well as noticeable unobserved heterogeneity within and between sexes. -- |
| JEL: | J31 C33 J71 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:hwwirp:138&r=ltv |
| By: | Paul Dolan; Grace Lordan |
| Abstract: | Many people remain in the same income group as their parents and this is a cause of much discussion and some concern. In this work, we examine how intergenerational mobility affects subjective wellbeing (SWB) using the British Cohort Study. Our SWB measures encapsulate life satisfaction and mental health. We find that relative income mobility is a significant predictor of life satisfaction and mental health whether people move upward or downward. For absolute income, mobility is only a predictor of SWB and mental health outcomes if the person moves downward. We also explore pathways through which income mobility can impact on these outcomes. In particular, we present evidence that suggests much of the effect of income mobility on SWB is due to changes in the perception of financial security. But those who slide down are still less satisfied with their lives over and above any effect of financial insecurity. Overall, there is an asymmetric effect of income mobility: the losses of sliding on down are larger than the gains of moving up. |
| Keywords: | income mobility, social mobility, inter-generational, life satisfaction, SWB, subjective wellbeing, mental health |
| JEL: | D31 D63 I1 I14 J60 |
| Date: | 2013–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp1190&r=ltv |
| By: | Akay, Alpaslan; Brereton, Finbarr; Cunado, Juncal; Ferreira, Susana; Martinsson, Peter; Moro, Mirko; Ningal, Tine F |
| Abstract: | Concerns for environmental quality and its impact on people's welfare are fundamental arguments for the adoption of environmental legislation in most countries. In this paper, we analyse the relationship between air quality and subjective well-being in Europe. We use a unique dataset that merges three waves of the European Social Survey with a new dataset on environmental quality including SO2 concentrations and climate in Europe at the regional level. We find a robust negative impact of SO2 concentrations on self-reported life satisfaction. |
| Keywords: | GIS; European Social Survey; Europe; Life Satisfaction; Subjective Well-Being; SO2 Concentrations; Air Quality |
| Date: | 2013–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:stl:stledp:2013-02&r=ltv |
| By: | A. B. Atkinson (Nuffield College, Oxford and Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School); J. E. Søgaard (University of Copenhagen and the Danish Ministry of Finance) |
| Abstract: | We use historical publications and – for more recent years – micro-data from the income tax and wealth tax returns to estimate the development in income inequality in Denmark over the last 140 years. The paper breaks new ground in treating the specific features of the Danish Tax system and in analysing the implications of the switch from joint to individual taxation. We show that income inequality have declined substantially over the last century with an income share for the top 1 per cent dropping from 27.6 per cent from its peak in 1917 to 6.4 in 2010. However the decline is not simply a secular downward trend consistent with the downward part of a Kuznets curve. Instead there seems to be several distinct phases, interleaved with periods of stability. |
| Keywords: | Income inequality, Income distribution, Wealth distribution, Top incomes, Taxation, Denmark |
| JEL: | D31 H2 J3 N3 |
| Date: | 2013–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kud:epruwp:13-01&r=ltv |
| By: | Alberto Chong; Marco Gonzalez-Navarro; Dean Karlan; Martin Valdivia |
| Abstract: | Sexual health problems cause negative externalities from contagious diseases and public expenditure burdens from teenage pregnancies. In a randomized evaluation, we find that an online sexual-health education course in Colombia leads to significant impacts on knowledge and attitudes and, for those already sexually active, fewer STIs. To go beyond self-reported measures, we provide condom vouchers six months after the course, and find a 9 percentage point increase in redemption. We find no evidence of spillovers to untreated classrooms, but we do observe a social reinforcement effect: the impact intensifies when a larger fraction of a student’s friends is also treated. |
| JEL: | I1 I2 O12 |
| Date: | 2013–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:18776&r=ltv |
| By: | Dahlberg, Matz (Department of Economics); Edmark, Karin (IFN); Lundqvist, Heléne (Stockholm university) |
| Abstract: | In a comment to Dahlberg, Edmark and Lundqvist (2012), Nekby and Pettersson-Lidbom (2012) argue (i) that the refugee placement program should be measured with contracted rather than actually placed refugees, and claim that the correlation between the two measures is insignifficant and close to zero; (ii) that instead of using the rotating individual panel, we should have used the full cross-sections in combination with municipality fixed effects; and (iii) that immigrants should be defined based on country of birth rather than citizenship. In this response, we discuss why we (i) do not agree that contracted refugees is the preferred measure, and we show that the correlation be- tween the two measures is highly significant and large; (ii) do not agree that the full cross-sections can be used; and (iii) do agree that defining immigrants according to country of birth is preferred. In a re-analysis, the conclusion from Dahlberg, Edmark and Lundqvist (2012) that ethnic diversity has a statistically and economically significant negative effect on preferences for redistribution is only marginally affected. |
| Keywords: | Income redistribution; ethnic heterogeneity; immigration |
| JEL: | D31 D64 Z13 |
| Date: | 2013–02–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:uunewp:2013_004&r=ltv |
| By: | Jerome Adda (European University Institute); Christian Dustmann (University College London); Costas Meghir (Cowles Foundation, Yale University); Jean-Marc Robin (Sciences Po, Paris and University College London) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the career progression of skilled and unskilled workers, with a focus on how careers are affected by economic downturns and whether formal skills, acquired early on, can shield workers from the effect of recessions. Using detailed administrative data for Germany for numerous birth cohorts across different regions, we follow workers from labor market entry onwards and estimate a dynamic life-cycle model of vocational training choice, labor supply, and wage progression. Most particularly, our model allows for labor market frictions that vary by skill group and over the business cycle. We find that sources of wage growth differ: learning-by-doing is an important component for unskilled workers early on in their careers, while job mobility is important for workers who acquire skills in an apprenticeship scheme before labor market entry. Likewise, economic downturns affect skill groups through very different channels: unskilled workers lose out from a decline in productivity and human capital, whereas skilled individuals suffer mainly from a lack of mobility. |
| Keywords: | Wage determination, Skills, Business cycles, Apprenticeship Training, Job Mobility, Human Capital |
| JEL: | J24 J31 J62 J63 I24 |
| Date: | 2013–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:1889&r=ltv |