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on Unemployment, Inequality and Poverty |
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Issue of 2024‒01‒29
eight papers chosen by |
| By: | Stark, Oded (University of Bonn); Bielawski, Jakub (University of Krakow); Falniowski, Fryderyk (University of Krakow) |
| Abstract: | We present a new index for measuring income inequality in networks. The index is based on income comparisons made by the members of a network who are linked with each other by direct social connections. To model the comparisons, we compose a measure of relative deprivation for networks. We base our new index on this measure. The index takes the form of a ratio: the network's aggregate level of relative deprivation divided by the aggregate level of the relative deprivation of a hypothetical network in which one member of the network receives all the income, and it is with this member that the other members of the network compare their incomes. We discuss the merits of this representation. We inquire how changes in the composition of a network affect the index. In addition, we show how the index accommodates specific network characteristics. |
| Keywords: | income inequality in networks, relative deprivation in networks, an index of income inequality in networks, compositional changes of networks |
| JEL: | D31 D63 I31 L14 |
| Date: | 2023–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16666&r=ltv |
| By: | Alec Brandon (Johns Hopkins University); Justin E. Holz (University of Michigan); Andrew Simon (The University of Chicago, Australian National University, Research School of Economics); Haruka Uchida (University of Chicago) |
| Abstract: | When minimum wages increase, employers may respond to the regulatory burdens by substituting away from disadvantaged workers. We test this hypothesis using a correspondence study with 35, 000 applications around ex-ante uncertain minimum wage increases in three U.S. states. Before the increases, applicants with distinctively Black names were 19 percent less likely to receive a callback than equivalent applicants with distinctively white names. Announcements of minimum wage hikes substantially reduce callbacks for all applicants but shrink the racial callback gap by 80 percent. Racial inequality decreases because firms disproportionately reduce callbacks to lower-quality white applicants who benefited from discrimination under lower minimum wages. |
| Keywords: | minimum wage, correspondence study, racial discrimination |
| JEL: | J23 C93 J71 J15 |
| Date: | 2023–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:upj:weupjo:23-389&r=ltv |
| By: | Michel Lubrano (AMSE - Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - ECM - École Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Zhou Xun (NUFE - Nanjing University of Finance and Economics) |
| Abstract: | This chapter reviews the recent Bayesian literature on poverty measurement together with some new results. Using Bayesian model criticism, we revise the international poverty line. Using mixtures of lognormals to model income, we derive the posterior distribution for the FGT, Watts and Sen poverty indices, for TIP curves (with an illustration on child poverty in Germany) and for Growth Incidence Curves. The relation of restricted stochastic dominance with TIP and GIC dominance is detailed with an example based on UK data. Using panel data, we decompose poverty into total, chronic and transient poverty, comparing child and adult poverty in East Germany when redistribution is introduced. When panel data are not available, a Gibbs sampler can be used to build a pseudo panel. We illustrate poverty dynamics by examining the consequences of the Wall on poverty entry and poverty persistence in occupied West Bank. |
| Keywords: | Bayesian inference, mixture model, poverty indices, stochastic dominance, poverty dynamics |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04347292&r=ltv |
| By: | Chiswick, Barry R. (George Washington University) |
| 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: | 2023–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16668&r=ltv |
| By: | Borra, Cristina (University of Seville); González, Libertad (Universitat Pompeu Fabra); Patiño, David (University of Seville) |
| Abstract: | We study the effects of school starting age on siblings' infant health. In Spain, children born in December start school a year earlier than those born the following January, despite being essentially the same age. We follow a regression discontinuity design to compare the health at birth of the children of women born in January versus the previous December, using administrative, population-level data. We find small and insignificant effects on average weight at birth, but, compared to the children of December-born mothers, the children of January-born mothers are more likely to have very low birthweight. We then show that January-born women have the same educational attainment and the same partnership dynamics as December-born women. However, they finish school later and are (several months) older when they have their first child. Our results suggest that maternal age is a plausible mechanism behind our estimated impacts of school starting age on infant health. |
| Keywords: | school starting age, infant health, maternal age, school cohort |
| JEL: | I12 J12 J13 |
| Date: | 2023–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16676&r=ltv |
| By: | Philippe, Arnaud (University of Bristol); Skandalis, Daphné (University of Copenhagen) |
| Abstract: | Why do women experience a persistent drop in labor earnings upon becoming mothers, i.e. a "child penalty"? We study a new mechanism: search frictions. We analyze data on job applications sent on a popular online platform linked with administrative data for 350, 000 involuntarily unemployed workers in France. First, we highlight differences in job search behavior between mothers and similar women with no children. Mothers send 12.2% fewer job applications and are more selective regarding wage and non-wage amenities. Consistently, they have a lower job finding rate. Second, we analyze the exact time when applications are sent and highlight differences in the timing of job search. We find that mothers' rate of applications decreases by 20.3% in the hours and days when there is no school. We also show that mothers responded to a reform that introduced school on Wednesday by smoothing their search across weekdays and narrowing their search timing gap with other women. In a simple search model, we show that our results imply that mothers both face lower incentives and higher costs to search. We conclude that search frictions disproportionately prevent mothers from improving their labor market situation and contribute to the child penalty. |
| Keywords: | job search, gender inequality, time allocation, child penalty |
| JEL: | J16 J22 J64 |
| Date: | 2023–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16669&r=ltv |
| By: | Kim, Sang-O; Palm, Matthew; Han, Soojung; Klein, Nicholas J. (Conrell University) |
| Abstract: | Transportation scholars are keenly interested in the relationship between transportation and subjective well-being. To date, this body of scholarship has not addressed feelings of time pressure. We use the time crunch index from Canada’s 2015 General Social Survey (GSS) to analyze the role that transportation resources, travel behavior, and social demographics play in respondents’ self-reported experiences of time pressure. We find that resources and daily travel strongly affect the time crunch index and are compounded by the large effect of sociodemographic vulnerability, namely being a woman, immigrant, or member of an ethnic minority, and having a condition of disability. Our analysis presents a new approach for transportation scholars to measure the relationship between social well-being and transportation grounded in several decades of social science research on time use and well-being. |
| Date: | 2023–12–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:z6tvd&r=ltv |
| By: | Shahe Emran, M.; Ferreira, Francisco; Jiang, Yajing; Sun, Yan |
| Abstract: | We extend the Becker-Tomes model to a rural economy with farm-nonfarm occupational dualism to study intergenerational educational mobility in rural China and India. Using data free of coresidency bias, we find that fathers’ nonfarm occupation and education were complementary in determining sons schooling in India, but separable in China. Sons faced lower mobility in India irrespective of fathers’ occupation. Sensitivity analysis using the Altonji et al. (J. Polit. Econ. 113(1), 151–84, 2005) approach suggests that genetic correlations alone could explain the intergenerational persistence in China, but not in India. Farm-nonfarm differences in returns to education, and geographic mobility are plausible mechanisms behind the contrasting cross-country evidence. |
| Keywords: | China; complementarity; coresidency bias; educational mobility; farm-nonfarm; India; occupational dualism; rural economy; This project was partially funded by World Bank RSB.; Springer deal |
| JEL: | J1 |
| Date: | 2023–11–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:120699&r=ltv |