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on Unemployment, Inequality and Poverty |
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Issue of 2024‒01‒22
four papers chosen by |
| By: | David G. Blanchflower; Alex Bryson |
| Abstract: | We find expectations are more sensitive to economic growth than traditional wellbeing metrics. We examine Eurobarometer micro data from 1973-2023 on movements in life satisfaction along with data from 1995-2022 on five expectations variables on and individual’s life and their financial and job situations plus their views on the economic and employment situation of their country in the year ahead. These expectations start to decline several months before the onset of downturns with especially large drops for the Great Recession and Covid. Annual GDP growth is positively associated with these expectations variables while it is uncorrelated with life satisfaction. The unemployment rate and the CPI reduce both. We analyze data for 29 European countries to predict changes in the unemployment rate 12 months ahead using individuals’ fears of unemployment in the presence of country and year fixed effects and lagged unemployment. We also use firms' expectations of future employment, which are also predictive of what happens to unemployment three months later. Using our preferred model specification, we present out-of-sample predictions that track actual movements in unemployment rates closely over a period in which there were two major recessions and unemployment shifted by a factor of two. |
| JEL: | J60 J64 J68 |
| Date: | 2023–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32006&r=ltv |
| By: | Costa-Font, Joan; Cowell, Frank; Shi, Xuezhu |
| Abstract: | We study inequality in the distribution of self-assessed health (SAH) in the United States and China, two large countries that have expanded their insurance provisions in recent decades, but that lack universal coverage and differ in other social determinants of health. Using comparable health survey data from China and the United States, we compare health inequality trends throughout the period covering the public health insurance coverage expansions in the two countries. We find that whether SAH inequality is greater in the US or in China depends on the concept of status and the inequality-sensitivity parameter used; however, the regional pattern of SAH inequality is clearly associated with health-insurance coverage expansions in the US but not significant in China. |
| Keywords: | health inequality; self-assessed health; health insurance coverage; social determinants of health |
| JEL: | D63 I18 I30 |
| Date: | 2023–12–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:121099&r=ltv |
| By: | Ariel J. Binder; Amanda Eng; Kendall Houghton; Andrew Foote |
| Abstract: | No: it is at least as large at bottom percentiles of the earnings distribution. Conditional quantile regressions reveal that while the gap at top percentiles is largest among the most-educated, the gap at bottom percentiles is largest among the least-educated. Gender differences in labor supply create more pay inequality among the least-educated than they do among the most-educated. The pay gap has declined throughout the distribution since 2006, but it declined more for the most-educated women. Current economics-of-gender research focuses heavily on the top end; equal emphasis should be placed on mechanisms driving gender inequality for noncollege-educated workers. |
| Keywords: | gender pay gap, education, conditional quantile regression, glass ceiling, labor supply |
| JEL: | I24 J16 J31 |
| Date: | 2023–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cen:wpaper:23-61&r=ltv |
| By: | Chiswick, Barry R. |
| Abstract: | This paper is a review of the literature in economics up to the early 1980s on the issue of estimating the earnings return to schooling and labor market experience. It begins with a presentation of Adam Smith's (1776) analysis of wage determination, with the second of his five points on compensating wage differentials being "the easiness or cheapness, or the difficulty and expense" of acquiring skills. It then proceeds to the analysis by Walsh (1935) estimating the net present value of investments at various levels of educational attainment. Friedman and Kuznets (1945) also used the net present value method to study the earnings in five independent professional practices. Based on the net present value technique, Becker (1964) estimates internal rates of return from high school and college/university schooling, primarily for native-born white men, but also for other demographic groups. The first regression-based approach is the development of the schooling-earnings function by Becker and Chiswick (1966), which relates the logarithm of earnings, as a linear function of years invested in human capital, with the application to years of schooling. This was expanded by Mincer (1974) to the "human capital earnings function" (HCEF), which added years of post-school labor market experience. Attractive features of the HCEF are discussed. Extensions of the HCEF in the 1970s and early 1980s account for interrupted labor marker experience, geographic mobility, and self-employment and unpaid family workers. |
| Keywords: | Human Capital, Schooling Earnings Function, Human Capital Earnings Function, Schooling, Labor Market Experience, Women, Immigrants, Less Developed Countries, Self-Employed, Unpaid Workers |
| JEL: | I24 I26 J3 J46 J61 O15 B29 |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:1365&r=ltv |