Introduction to Articles on Black Women and Work

Black women are one of the hardest working groups in the country. However, hard work is not always properly rewarded. The existence of wage inequities based on race has been shown to exist (Darity The Journal of Human Resources XVII: 72–91 1982), and black women have not been exempt from its implications. In addition, African American women still experience higher unemployment levels than their white female counterparts. In papers examining black women in the nursing profession, their income and earnings volatility, and inequities in their employment, Richard McGregory, Bradley Hardy, and Linda Loubert provide an overview of where black women stand in the U.S. labor market with respect to work and earnings. While these pieces show that African American women have made significant inroads into the American labor market there is still further to go.     

Women's labor force participation and marriage: The case of Korea

In this paper, we examine the relationship between marital status and female labor force participation in Korea, and argue that marriage remains a major obstacle to young Korean women's employment. We find that an average married woman is much less likely (by 40–60%) to participate in the labor force than a single woman in urban Korea. Further investigation into the participation patterns among married women reveals that labor force participation rate (LFPR) varies with husband's occupation and her own age. Lower LFPR among the young married women is explained by demand-side factors, while relatively higher LFPR among the middle-aged married women is mostly explained by the supply-side factors.     

The trend of the Gini coefficient of China (1978–2010)

ABSTRACT

This study proposes a new approach to analyse the effects of an overlap term on the calculation of the overall Gini coefficient and estimates China’s Gini ratios since the adoption of the economic reform and open-door policies. A decomposition of the Chinese Gini coefficient for 1978–2010 reveals that the key factor contributing to income inequalities is the income disparity between rural and urban inhabitants. We further investigate the features of this income inequality between rural and urban areas and employ statistical approaches to evaluate the effects of urbanisation and rural-to-urban average income on nationwide income inequality. The results show that accelerating the pace of urbanisation is mainly responsible for decreasing China’s income disparity. Drawing on these results, we conclude with suggestions for related policies.     

ATM Fees at Black and Hispanic Owned Single Market Banks: A Comparative Analysis

This paper presents evidence regarding three types of ATM fees: foreign fees charged for use of a non-bank ATM by the bank’s customers, surcharges for use of bank ATMs by non-customers, and balance inquiry charges for the bank’s own customers. It is hypothesized that, among single market banks, fees will be positively correlated with bank size, a lack of market competition, market penetration by multimarket banks, banks serving low income communities, and Black owned banks (BOBs) and Hispanic owned banks (HOBs), although banks may try to confuse depositors with fees that exhibit a low correlation, or may set low surcharges as part of a loss leader strategy. A 2013 sample of approximately 1500 single market banks, including 21 Black owned banks (BOBs) and 19 Hispanic owned banks (HOBs) is used for correlation and regression analyses. It is found that BOBs charge an average of $0.50 higher foreign fees, and are more likely to charge balance inquiry fees. We also find that larger banks tend to charge higher fees, and that banks may set higher fees where they serve disadvantaged communities of color. Surprisingly, market competition is never significantly associated with ATM fees, and there is minimal correlation across fees, and both results are consistent with banks setting fees strategically to confuse customers.     

人身保险需求与收入关系分析:北京市为例

本文以北京市为例分析收入水平、收入差距与人身保险需求的关系。实证分析的结果表明城镇居民收入的增加促进人身保险需求的增加,农村居民的收入由于还停留在满足基本生活需要上,其收入的增加并不会促进人身保险需求的增加。北京市收入差距的增大将会减少人身保险需求。     

Working Women in an Urban Setting: Traders,Vendors and Food Security in Accra

Data collected from a 1997 household survey carried out in Accra, Ghana are used to look at the crucial role that women play as income earners and securing access to food in urban areas. One-third of the households surveyed are headed by women. For all households, women's labor force participation is high with 75% of all households having at least one working woman. The high number of female-headed households and the large percentage of working women in the sample provide a good backdrop for looking at how women earn and spend income differently than men in an urban area. Livelihood strategies for both men and women are predominantly labor based and dependent on social networks. For all households in the sample, food is still the single most important item in the total budget. Yet, important and striking differences between men's and women's livelihoods and expenditure patterns exist. Compared to men, women are less likely to be employed as wage earners, and more likely to work as street food vendors or petty traders. Women earn lower incomes, but tend to allocate more of their budget to basic goods for themselves and their children, while men spend more on entertainment for themselves only. Despite lower incomes and additional demands on their time as housewives and mothers, female-headed households, petty traders and street food vendors have the largest percentage of food-secure households. Women may be achieving household food security, but at what cost? This paper explores differences in income, expenditure and consumption patterns in an effort to answer this question, and suggests ways that urban planners and policy makers can address special concerns to working women in urban areas.     

新农村建设、农业转型与工业化城市化——一个新农村建设作用机制的经济学分析

本文探讨了新农村建设作用于我国经济发展的农业生产效率提升机制和农产品交易效率提升机制以及相应的具体途径。结果表明,在这两个经济机制发挥作用的条件下,经济结构和人口结构向现代化转型,但如果不彻底解决城乡二元结构、农民迁移和就业方面的歧视,城乡收入差距并不一定会随之缩小。改革开放以来的经验从另一面表明,在二元结构、工业和城市偏向政策下,农业生产效率提升机制作用难以充分发挥,而间接促使农业生产效率提升的财政和金融支持也难以有效地推动农业生产效率提升。这意味着,彻底破解城乡二元结构、破除阻碍农业生产效率提升的各种制度和障碍确应成为新农村建设中的重中之重。

Abstract：

How many policy combinations are involved in China’s New Rural Reconstruction？ Are they consistently interweaved to form a force leading to the increase of industriali-zation and urbanization,the increase of peasant’s income,and the decrease of urban-rural income disparity？This paper aims to analyze the two economic mechanisms,four policy channels and their effects on Chinese agricultural transition,industrialization and urbanization process,and urban-rural disparity. Our results show that these two mecha-nisms and four policy channels will exert a positive effect on the decreasing of agricultural employment and value share,the increasing of urbanization and industrialization,agricultural income,but they will demonstrate both positive and negative effect on the urban-rural income disparity if the removal of the old urban-rural dual structure,the promotion of peasant’s non-agricultural employment,and more integration of rural sector and industrial sector,weren’t placed more emphasis. This means these institutional reforms should be given more priority in the so-called New Rural Reconstruction Program.     

余淼杰:拉动经济 还靠“铁公鸡”

余淼杰认为,根据欧美等国现状,今年中国依然会出现净出口负贡献这一现象,甚至以后将成为常态;而在社会保障不完善的前提下,消费需求也难以快速增长。因此,今年中国的经济增长,还得依靠政府投资。     

The Subprime Mortgage Calamity and the African American Woman

Many media and scholarly reports have focused on the subprime mortgage crisis and the resultant global financial meltdown. Most of the literature notes unequivocally that discrimination in the mortgage market has been, and remains, race-based and that it has damaged the African-American population disproportionately. This paper discusses the consequences of the subprime mortgage calamity and its negative impact on the Black community, women in general, and African-American women in particular. After controlling for individual, credit and housing characteristics, research shows that disparities in lending have persisted. Studies indicate that 63% of those given subprime mortgages qualified for prime mortgages. African-American females received the most high-cost loans and were over twice as likely to be given a subprime mortgage compared to White females. Moreover, African-American women were five times more likely to have received a subprime loan than similarly situated White males. Upper-income Black women were more often targeted for high-cost loans than lower-income women of color. As a result, the subprime mortgage crisis has precipitated an enormous loss of home equity and wealth among African-Americans that will affect generations to come.     

农民家庭风险承担与规避能力分析——以内蒙古西部地区为例

农民家庭规避生产生活中的风险,一般通过社交圈网内的风险统筹、跨时期收入转移、谨慎生产经营决策、缩减非基本现期消费几种方式,但作用都很有限,农民家庭的多数风险处于听天由命的原始状态.内蒙古西部地区生态环境脆弱,巴彦淖尔市旧地村和鸟海市机井村农民人均纯收入仅1100多元,抵御农业生产风险的能力弱小,当地农村正规的规避风险制度缺失,农民收入增长缓慢.随着国家工业反哺农业、城市支持农村和多予少取政策的贯彻实施,农村最低生活保障制度,农村养老保险制度,新型合作医疗制度,失业、工伤、生育保险制度的建设,农民收入将会持续隐定增加,规避风险的社会保障体系将逐步形成、健全,农民家庭规避风险的能力会随之大大提高.     

我国城乡居民收入差距与消费需求的实证分析

20世纪90年代以来,中国城乡居民收入差距不断拉大,国内的消费倾向则呈下降趋势,这与收入差距有密切联系。本文通过构建新的衡量收入差距指标衡量城乡收入差距,同时建立城乡居民平均消费倾向——收入差距方程揭示二者相关关系,证实了收入差距对消费需求的抑制作用,进而提出加大对农村的资金支持和转移支付、开展农村内部循环就业、完善税收结构以及改革收入分配制度等政策措施,以减小收入差距,刺激国内消费需求。     

Spatial and Racial Patterning of Real Estate Broker Listings in New York City

It has been well documented that Black homeseekers face discrimination in the housing market in the form of racial steering and other institutional policies and practices that are critical in limiting housing access. Less is known about the mechanisms that operate on the other side of real estate transactions to perpetuate racially segregated neighborhoods. We investigated whether White and Black brokers face segregation in the housing market. That is, to what extent do White and Black brokers differentially market property listings in neighborhoods of varying racial composition? Using real estate listings extracted from the websites of two of the largest New York City real estate brokerages, we examined whether Black and White brokers market properties primarily in Black and White neighborhoods, respectively; and whether, controlling for gender and experience level, Black brokers had a lower average price per square foot than White brokers. Results showed that Black brokers overwhelmingly marketed properties in Black neighborhoods, with fewer listings in White areas. Black brokers also marketed properties with an average price per square foot that was $197 lower than White brokers. Black brokers who worked in offices in Black neighborhoods had the lowest asking price of all brokers. Taken together, Black and White real estate brokers control a bifurcated market in NYC, perpetuating residential segregation and Black–White income and wealth disparities.     

Race and cesarean delivery in Florida

At a time when the Clinton Administration has set a goal of eliminating racial disparities in health by the year 2010, medical experts are struggling to understand one of the most glaring, and least talked about, disparities of all: death in childbirth. In a study made public this spring, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta reported that black women in the U.S. were nearly four times as likely to die during delivery, or shortly thereafter, as white women. The disparity, which has remained about the same for the last four decades, holds true even for women who … are middle class and have health insurance. The findings … have renewed interest among scientists and legislators in a problem that many peoole think no longer exists … Dr. David Satcher, the United States Surgeon General, (says) “the disparity is important. In this country, we have a certain standard of expectation about the risk of women dying in pregnancy, and black women are off the scale right now.” (Sheryl Gay Stolberg, “Black Mothers' Mortality Rate Under Scrutiny,” Front Page, 8 Aug. 1999 New York Times)     

An Analysis of Perceptions of Job Insecurity among White and Black Workers in the United States: 1977–2012

While objective measures indicate that the risk of job loss is higher for black workers than for white workers, there is little research on how what workers’ expectations of job loss differ by race. This study looks at how secure black and white workers are feeling about their jobs and how their perceptions of job insecurity have been affected by time trends and regional unemployment rates. I find that perceptions of job security of black male workers, older black workers, and black high school graduates have deteriorated relative to their white counterparts during the period 1977–2012. Among those who attended college, white workers’ perceived job insecurity has increased. Black blue-collar workers’ and construction workers’ perceptions of job insecurity also have increased relative to their white counterparts. Moreover, perceptions of job insecurity among several black groups, such as high school dropouts and old workers, are more sensitive to regional unemployment rates than their white counterparts.     

The Incredible Shrinking Black Woman: Implications of Health Policies

Black American women are shrinking in height at a faster rate than other groups, a phenomenon that has consequences for the physical health and economic well-being of black females. Relative to the cohort born from 1955 to 1974, the most recent cohort (1970–1986) of black American women and girls have lost more than half an inch (approximately 0.56) in height. Adult height is a measure of net nutrition acquired during childhood and adolescence and is correlated with a wide variety of economic and health outcomes. Simultaneously, the body mass index (BMI) among blacks has also increased at a faster rate than whites in both the periods of 1988–1994 (1.06 kg/m2) and 1999–2002. Black women and girls, in particular, experienced the greatest increase in BMI since the 1990s. Evidence that black American women are shrinking and BMI is growing highlights the need to examine the nutritional intake of black girls during childhood and adolescence; early nutritional deficiencies have persistent impact over their life course. In this policy brief, we consider several public health policy interventions that affect black girls’ nutritional intake across the life course, particularly during childhood and adolescence.     

Comparative labor supply of black and white women

Conclusions The presence of young children decreases women’s labor supply as shown by the LFPRs for women with young children (which are always considerably lower than those for women without young children). Also, the number of young children is almost always negatively related to annual hours of labor supplied (significantly so in half the regressions). Black and white women are found to have an inelastic labor supply, but with increasing elasticity from 1969 to 1974. There is a statistically significant difference in the estimated regression coefficients of the labor supply model for black and white married women in 1969 and 1974 in both the arithmetic and logarithmic forms. The husband’s earnings are significantly negatively related to white married women’s annual hours of work in 1974, while the relationship is not significant for black married women. Crosselasticity terms show that white married women decrease their annual hours of work in response to an increase in husband’s earnings to a greater extent than black married women in 1971 and 1974. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that black women do not rely on their husband’s earnings to as great an extent as white women.     

Valuing research output: Evidence from a Chinese university

Exploring the economic value of research output is a crucial but neglected issue and thus is worth gaining attention. Using data concerning the promotion from a medium-ranked university in China during 2011–2019, this paper proposes a novel methodology that combines a regression discontinuity design and the theory of “Value of a Statistical Life” to quantify the monetary value of research output. Our findings suggest that each unit of research score is worth $467 for a promotion to associate professor and $515 for full professors. Based on the rate for full professors, the computed economic values for a publication in ordinary journals, famous journals, and top journals are around $1,538, $5,154, and $20,615, respectively. Additionally, the economic value of a book publication is approximately $7,723. These research outputs are significantly undervalued compared to the faculty's own total income, the income of peers in similar sectors, or the income of peers from other countries' higher education. Our analysis provides not only insights for incentive system reform for Chinese higher education but also a methodology that can be universally applicable to any higher institutions that use the scoring system or set implicit research standards in the promotion and merit process.     

Co-Morbidity and Other Complexities Affecting Black Women’s Health

This paper presents some of the major health concerns that affect black women, and examines how various individual health problems co-exist and coincide to create complex health concerns for women. It posits the idea that to effectively address a Black woman’s health, her mental, emotional, social, economic and even spiritual health must be considered as well as her physical condition. The paper focuses largely on the information from individual health-related research presentations at “The Invisible Woman” conference held at Bennett College in March 18–19, 2011 in Greensboro, North Carolina. At this event, scholars presented new research on HIV, obesity and mental health—three areas of critical concern for African–American women—examining ways in which these conditions affect Black women. The paper also addresses the role of health care access and policy in addressing these and other health concerns among women and within the black community. The review of the literature highlights the importance of examining health—perhaps especially Black women’s health—from social, cultural, behavioral, environmental and economic perspectives. It also points out the continued need for research that includes women and people of color.     

Occupation equity: A black and white portrait of women in the united states military

This study examines U.S. military occupation equity with a special focus on African-American women. The dependent variable was occupation category. A three-way interaction of race by gender by mental group was found, making untenable the contention that mental group solely predicts personnel assignment to occupation category. Women, and particularly African-American women, are underrepresented in the core, technical occupations and overrepresented in the nontechnical, support occupations examined in this study. The opposite is true for white men. Social and psychological factors are postulated regarding women’s disproportionate employment in traditionally female and lower status occupations.     

Finding the fat: The relative impact of budget fluctuations on African-American schools

On average, per pupil expenditures were much lower in schools attended by African-American children than in schools attended by whites during the period of de jure segregation. Little is known, however, about what motivated school boards to maintain this inequality or why they funded African-American schools at all. Using newly collected data on schools in early twentieth-century Georgia and exploiting a funding shock resulting from the rules regarding appropriations from the State School Fund, this paper examines how school boards divvied up the proceeds of exogenous shifts in school budgets by race. In response to a one dollar per pupil budget cut, instructional expenditures in white schools fell by $1.21 per pupil, while they remained almost unchanged in African-American schools. Thus, whites, rather than African Americans, bore the brunt of budget cuts, indicating that there was little fat to trim from the budgets of African-American schools.