THE DECLINE IN MALE EMPLOYMENT IN AUSTRALIA: A COHORT ANALYSIS

We use Census data to investigate the sources of the decline in the level of employment of working age males in Australia in recent decades. Alternative measures of the male employment rate are considered before settling on two complementary measures: the full‐time employment rate and the full‐time equivalent employment rate. The latter measure weights part‐time jobs according to the fraction of a full‐time job they represent. Models of the determinants of these two employment rates are estimated using data from the Censuses conducted between 1971 and 2001. We construct a pseudo panel by ‘stacking’ the seven Census data sets ( Deaton, 1997 ; Kapteyn, et al., 2005 ). This facilitates the tracing of birth cohorts over time, in turn making it possible to control for cohort unobserved heterogeneity that may bias cross‐sectional estimates of effects of other characteristics, in particular age and year/time period. We produce evidence that a number of factors have contributed to the decline in male employment, including the decline in couple households with dependent children, growth in income taxes and welfare replacement rates and changes in the structure of labour demand away from traditionally male‐dominated industries. We also find that, all else (observable) constant, more recent birth cohorts have no lower – and possibly higher – employment rates than earlier birth cohorts.     

TAXES,HEALTH INSURANCE,AND WOMEN'S SELF‐EMPLOYMENT

I examine whether the availability of health coverage through the spouse's health plan influences a married woman's decision to become self‐employed. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 (TRA86) introduced a tax subsidy for the self‐employed to purchase their own health insurance. I test whether this “natural” experiment induced more women without spousal health insurance coverage to select into self‐employment. The most conservative difference‐in‐difference estimates based on an analysis of employed women indicate that the incidence of self‐employment among single women rose by 10% in the post‐TRA86 period, while a multinomial specification based on a sample of both employed and nonemployed women suggests that the increase was about 13%. (JEL J0, J3, I1)     

SELF EMPLOYMENT AMONG GRADUATES

An econometric model of the self employment decision is estimated for a large sample of UK graduates. Although the earnings distributions suggest that there are incentives to be self employed, the difference in the predicted earnings that an individual receives in the self employed and employed sectors is not a significant influence on the choice of sector and the decision depends on personal and social factors. Policies based on changing the pecuniary returns may not encourage the growth of self employment among graduates. The econometric results also suggest that the self employed are a non-random subset of the graduate workforce., revision accepted August 1989     

EMPLOYMENT EFFECTS OF THE MINIMUM WAGE: PANEL DATA EVIDENCE FROM CANADIAN PROVINCES

Recent U.S. studies offer conflicting evidence on minimum wage impacts. This paper studies the effects of 185 amendments to minimum wage on employment rates using panel data across Canadian provinces from 1981 to 2011. Ordinary least squares and instrumental variables (IV) estimates imply a 10% increase in minimum wage is associated with a 1%–4% reduction to employment rates for both male and female teens. We also find that an increase in the minimum wage is associated with lower employment of prime‐aged immigrants. Our results are robust to a wide array of IV and the use of controls for spatial heterogeneity. (JEL J30, J71, J23)     

Self-Employment and Wage Earning in Hungary

This paper examines the earnings determinants of the self‐employed and wage earners in Hungary in the mid‐1990s, taking into account two forms of selection: selection into working or non‐working for every individual in its sample and selection into self‐employment or wage‐earning jobs for workers only. Previous studies use switching regression to examine the returns to individual characteristics, taking into account only selection into self‐employment or wage‐earning jobs. The authors find that the estimated returns to individual characteristics when accounting for both forms of selection, differ from estimates correcting for only selection into self‐employment or wage‐earning jobs. They also find that the earnings determinants of the two sectors are not significantly different from each other.     

UNDOCUMENTED WORKERS' EMPLOYMENT ACROSS U.S. BUSINESS CYCLES

Using matched employer‐employee data from the state of Georgia, this paper investigates how employment of undocumented workers varies along the business cycle and how it differs from the adjustment in employment of documented workers. The cyclical component of undocumented employment is found to be significantly more volatile than the cyclical component of documented employment. Simulation results indicate that complementarities between documented workers and capital account for almost 90% of the difference in measured volatility between documented and undocumented employment. (JEL E24, J21, J15)     

THE IMPACT OF INSURANCE SUBSIDIES ON SELF‐EMPLOYMENT: DO STATE NON‐GROUP HEALTH INSURANCE REGULATIONS MATTER?

This paper tests whether the effect of tax‐based subsidies for self‐employed health insurance on the level of self‐employment differs with the type of non‐group insurance regulatory regime at the state level. Using a panel of tax returns from 1999 to 2004, we estimate fixed effects instrumental variable regressions for the probability of being self‐employed, allowing the effect of the after‐tax price of self‐employed health insurance to differ by regulatory regime. Our results suggest that states with community rating and guaranteed issue regulations had significantly smaller increases in the fraction of taxpayers reporting some amount of self‐employment income as a result of a decrease in the after‐tax price of self‐employed health insurance. However, there is suggestive evidence that heavily regulated states experienced a larger increase in exclusive self‐employment, particularly among older taxpayers. (JEL J24, H24, I18)     

Incentives to self-employment decision in Sweden

The objective of this paper is to empirically examine the determinants of the self‐employment decision, with a particular focus on gender differences and occupational choice by using register‐based individual panel data for the period 2003 to 2006. Individuals choose to move into self‐employment out of three possible initial statuses: paid employment, combiner or inactivity. These groups are of specific interest for the Swedish political agenda. The question that we specifically pose is how a set of socio‐economic factors separately induce men and women in these three statuses to enter self‐employment.     

THE IMPACT OF THE MINIMUM WAGE ON FEMALE EMPLOYMENT IN JAPAN

This article examines the impact of the minimum wage on employment, focusing on women in their 20s and 30s, who are known to be typical low‐wage workers in Japan. The results, based on a panel estimation, suggest that the minimum wage has a measurable impact on employment; the workers whose current wage is below the revised minimum wage are about 20–30 percentage points less likely to be employed in the following year than comparable low‐wage workers who are not affected by the revision of the minimum wage. The estimation results are sensitive to the choice of the control group. (JEL J23, J38, J88)     

EMPLOYMENT VERIFICATION MANDATES AND THE LABOR MARKET OUTCOMES OF LIKELY UNAUTHORIZED AND NATIVE WORKERS

As recent efforts to reform immigration policy at the federal level have failed, states have started to take immigration matters into their own hands and researchers have been paying closer attention to state dynamics surrounding immigration policy. Yet, to this date, there is not a clear understanding of the consequences of enforcing E‐Verify on likely unauthorized immigrants or on natives across the United States. This study aims to fill in that gap by analyzing the impact that the enactment of various types of E‐Verify mandates may have on the employment and wages of these groups. We find that the enactment of employment verification mandates reduces the employment likelihood of likely unauthorized workers. Additionally, it raises the hourly wages of likely unauthorized women. None of these impacts are observed among a similarly skilled sample of naturalized Hispanic immigrants. Finally, the enactment of E‐Verify mandates appears to raise the employment likelihood of alike non‐Hispanic natives, while raising the hourly wage of native‐born male employees, alluding to the potential substitutability of unauthorized immigrants and non‐Hispanic natives. (JEL J2, J3, J6)     

INDUSTRIAL UPGRADE,EMPLOYMENT SHOCK,AND LAND CENTRALIZATION IN CHINA

After 30 years of agricultural reform started in 1978, peasant workers in China are experiencing new changes in their employment, land security, and income inequalities. This article theoretically investigates the relationships among industrial upgrading, mid‐aged peasant nonfarm employment, and land conversion systems. We prove that China's efforts to upgrade its industries generate a negative employment shock on mid‐aged peasant workers, forcing some of them to return to their home villages. The current lump‐sum land acquisition system, however, will neither help peasant workers deal with the adverse employment shock nor promote land centralization for industrial and urban uses. On the contrary, land cooperation, an emerging land centralization system, will help peasant workers mitigate the adverse employment shock and centralize rural land for nonagricultural purposes. (JEL Q15, J43)     

ECONOMY‐WIDE EFFECTS OF REDUCING ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS IN U.S. EMPLOYMENT

We use an economy‐wide model to analyze the effects of three broad programs to reduce illegal immigrants in U.S. employment: tighter border security; taxes on employers; and vigorous prosecution of employers. After looking at macroeconomic industry and occupational effects, we decompose the welfare effect for legal residents into six parts covering changes in: producer surplus and illegal wage rates; skilled employment opportunities for natives; aggregate capital; aggregate legal employment; the terms of trade; and public expenditure. The type of program matters. Our analysis suggests a prima facie case in favor of taxes on employers. (JEL J61, C68)     

EMPLOYMENT EFFECTS OF HEALTH SHOCKS: THE ROLE OF FRINGE BENEFITS

This paper examines whether health shocks influence labour supply. Estimates rely on detailed health measures that not only are more homogeneous than commonly‐used self‐reported health measures, but they also can be interpreted as plausibly exogenous with respect to labour supply. Further, this paper investigates the unique role that certain fringe benefits, namely health insurance and paid sick leave, play in the link between health shocks and subsequent employment activity. Results show that, compared to commonly‐used self‐reported measures of health, health problems defined by the US government as ‘priority’ conditions correlate with smaller labour supply shifts, but non‐work‐related injuries lead to larger shifts. Second, the arrival of a health shock appears to reduce the probability of remaining employed full time, while also increasing the likelihood of quitting work. Relatively few full‐time workers who acquire health problems switch to part‐time employment. Third, in the event of a health shock, sick leave appears to facilitate reductions in employment activities, while employer‐provided insurance appears to hinder such adjustments.     

Cost-effectiveness Analysis of Demand- and Supply-side Education Interventions: the Case of PROGRESA in Mexico

The paper is concerned with the issue of the most cost‐effective way of improving access to education for poor households in developing countries. The authors consider two alternatives: extensive expansion of the school system (i.e., bringing education to the poor), and subsidizing investment in education by the poor (i.e., bringing the poor to the education system). To this end, the authors evaluate PROGRESA, a large poverty‐alleviation program recently introduced in Mexico, which subsidizes education. Using double‐difference regression estimators on data collected before and after the program for randomly selected “control” and “treatment” households, the relative impacts of the demand‐ and supply‐side program components are estimated. Combining these estimates with cost information, it is found that the demand‐side subsidies are substantially more cost‐effective than supply‐side expansions.     

HAS NEW ZEALAND'S EMPLOYMENT CONTRACTS ACT INCREASED EMPLOYMENT AND REDUCED WAGES?*

The Employment Contracts Act 1991 substantively altered the structure of the industrial relations system in New Zealand. This study estimates the effects of this legislation on employment levels and average hourly earnings in this country using disaggregate industry level data from 1986(1) to 1996(2). In the five years following the enactment of the ECA, nonagricultural union membership declined from 49.5 to 27.2 per cent of the work force. This is an important consideration because our regression analysis suggests that this decrease in unionisation is solely responsible for any effects of the ECA on the labour market. Full-time equivalent employment grew by 14.2 per cent between 1991(2) and 1996(2). At least 2.3 percentage points of this employment growth can be attributed to this legislation. If the ECA was partly responsible for the recent economic recovery, then more of this employment growth could be credited to this act. There are two basic reasons why the ECA might have increased employment over the past five years. It could have lowered hourly earnings, or increased effective labour demand. Estimates of a reduced-form wage equation and a structural labour demand function both point to the latter explanation. Since there is no statistical evidence that ECA reduced hourly earnings, falling unionisation must have increased effective labour demand.     

Self‐employment Dynamics in Australia and the Importance of State Dependence

Using Australian labour force data, both cross‐sectional and longitudinal, this study examines the dynamics of self‐employment with a particular focus on workers transitioning between self‐employment and salaried employment, and the extent to which self‐employment is the result of workers’ observed and unobserved characteristics or is instead determined by their prior employment experience itself. Probability models of self‐employment using both pooled‐panel probit and dynamic random‐effects panel probit methods are estimated, and the results are found to be extremely sensitive to the differences in the econometric methods. Once unobserved heterogeneity and initial conditions are controlled for in the dynamic model, the importance of observed characteristics in determining self‐employment is greatly diminished. Instead, workers’ past experience in self‐employment (as opposed to salaried employment) is found to have a large favourable effect on their future self‐employment prospects. The influence of this state dependence is also considerably more important in determining self‐employment outcomes than salaried ones. Despite establishing the importance of state dependence, however, what this effect implies about why individuals choose to become self‐employed or the role that self‐employment plays in the labour market remains unresolved.     

WILL TAX‐BASED HEALTH INSURANCE REFORMS HELP THE SELF‐EMPLOYED STAY IN BUSINESS?

The self‐employed face a tax‐induced disadvantage relative to wage and salary workers when it comes to the payment of health insurance premiums. This paper uses a panel of individual tax return data to test whether lower health insurance premium costs because of an expanded tax incentive result in longer periods of self‐employment. The results suggest that households claiming the deduction are indeed less likely to exit self‐employment. Equalizing the treatment of health insurance premiums for the self‐employed and wage workers by allowing full deductibility from Self‐Employment Contributions Act (SECA) taxes would result in a 7% decrease in the probability of exit. (JEL H32, I18, L26)     

A WARM EMBRACE OR THE COLD SHOULDER? WAGE AND EMPLOYMENT OUTCOMES IN ETHNIC ENCLAVES

This paper examines how immigrant enclaves influence labor market outcomes. We examine the effect of variation in ethnic concentration across counties and county subdivisions on both immigrant earnings and employment using the non‐public use, 1‐in‐6 sample of the 2000 U.S. Census. We find that there is heterogeneity in enclave impacts by ethnic group and skill composition of the enclave. While some groups tend to suffer from lower wages and employment propensities when residing in areas with larger ethnic concentrations, others have higher wages and improved employment opportunities in enclaves. (JEL J61, J15, R23)     

THE EFFECT OF WELFARE ASSET RULES ON AUTO OWNERSHIP,EMPLOYMENT, AND WELFARE PARTICIPATION: A LONGITUDINAL ANALYSIS

This paper investigates how asset tests for welfare eligibility affect auto ownership, employment, and welfare participation for single mothers without a college degree. We combine longitudinal data from the 1996 Survey of Income and Program Participation with data on state‐level welfare program rules from the Urban Institute and data on state‐level controls to test whether these single mothers were more likely to (1) own a car, (2) be employed, and (3) be off of welfare, depending on the welfare asset rules instituted in their state. We find evidence that, taken as a group, the asset rules have a statistically significant effect on the probability of car ownership. Ordinary least squares results and cross‐sectional two‐stage least squares (2SLS) results using the asset rules to instrument for car ownership show a large, positive, statistically significant effect of car ownership on employment. However, in 2SLS models controlling for prior car ownership and prior employment, the asset instruments are weaker and we do not find an effect of car ownership on employment. Of significance for policy makers, we find that the asset rules do not have a statistically significant joint effect on welfare participation, even after addressing possible endogeneity. (JEL I38, J68, J08)     

TURNING PINK SLIPS INTO RED TAPE: THE UNINTENDED EFFECTS OF EMPLOYMENT PROTECTION LEGISLATION

This article presents evidence on the link between employment protection legislation (EPL) and the rate of unemployment in a cross‐country panel dataset of Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development countries from 1985 to 2013. We use both a traditional panel specification with lags of the policy variable, and also a unique structural panel vector autoregression (PVAR) method to determine the long‐run dynamic interaction between EPL and unemployment. We confirm that more restrictive EPL for permanently employed workers causes a significant and persistent increase in unemployment, but the effect is only apparent at long‐lag lengths, some 2–5 years after the law has been implemented. (JEL J68, J65, J63)