‘To help keep the home going’: female labour supply in interwar London

Most prior work on historical female labour supply has been confined to looking at the female labour force participation decision. This article uses the detailed information on weekly hours of work and wages contained in the New Survey of London Life and Labour (NSLLL) (1928–32) to provide the first estimation of both the participation and the hours‐of‐work decisions for female workers prior to the Second World War. The main finding is that the labour supply curve was negatively sloped—women worked longer hours at lower wages. It is also possible to compare the determinants of the labour force participation decision and the hours of work decision among females in the NSLLL. It appears that the labour force participation decision was more strongly related to household income level than to own wages, while the hours of work decision among working women was more strongly related to the wage level than to household income. Finally, the article also examines the differential labour market behaviour of married women, female household heads, and young single women; most striking among these results is the evident added‐worker effect on married women of the onset of the Great Depression in 1930.     

Evidence on the Volunteer Labor Supply of Married Women

I estimate a significant, positive wage elasticity of married women's volunteer labor supply from 1975 to 1976 U.S. time diary data. Increases in the number of children in the household significantly raise participation rates but reduce volunteer hours. I find weak support for a sequential time allocation model of volunteering where the wage as the opportunity cost of time has only a second-order effect on volunteer hours. Increased hours of market work for married women decrease their volunteering. Cash and time donations are complements at the volunteer participation level but substitutes in terms of married women's volunteer hours.     

工资对个人劳动供给的非线性影响：部门市场化程度差异视角

从市场经济体制的建立到经济社会高质量发展，我国不同部门市场化程度有所差异，劳动供给的部门异质性随之体现。基于中国劳动力动态调查数据，结合汉森门槛回归模型和劳动供给模型，依托部门市场化程度的差异性，文章探讨了工资对劳动力个人供给的非线性影响及其部门异质性。主要得出以下研究结论：第一，我国市场部门与公共部门劳动力的个人劳动供给有所差异。第二，工资与个人劳动供给呈现非线性关系并且存在部门异质性。实证分析结果显示，工资对个人劳动供给的影响存在三个"突变点"，工资门槛均使得工资"激励效应"加强并呈现逐步增加的趋势。第三，劳动供给的工资门槛存在性别、城乡和行业异质性。第四，随着年龄增长、人力资本积累，个人劳动时间供给趋于降低，签署书面劳工合同使得市场部门劳动力工作时间显著增加，而政治面貌显著影响公共部门劳动供给。总体来看，无论是市场部门还是公共部门，我国劳动力个人供给曲线均未"向后弯曲"，国民经济高质量发展、改善收入分配格局、提升居民幸福感等议题需持续关注。     

Black-white wage differential: The relative importance of human capital and labor market structure

This article uses the decomposition analysis developed by Neumark and the 1987 CPS data to investigate the relative importance of human capital and labor market structure in explaining the observed wage differential between white males and blacks (both male and female). We find that labor market structure, as opposed to differences in human capital, explains a relatively large portion of the wage gap between white males and blacks. In addition to blacks and whites being paid different wages for the same work, they are also given unequal opportunities. This means that narrowing the human capital gap between the races will not be enough to close the wage gap, as argued by human capital theorists. It is equally important to pursue policies that provide access to higher paying jobs and industries for blacks.     

Effects of birth spacing and timing on mothers' labor force participation

Data from the March 1991Current Population Survey [Bureau of the Census, 1992] were used to investigate the effects of children on single and married mothers' labor force participation decisions. Logit results indicated that for both single and married mothers, an increase in education and market experience increases the probability of market participation while an increase in income has a negative effect on the likelihood of mothers' labor market participation. The number of children present in the household negatively affected participation while an increase in the age of children positively influenced the mother's labor market participation. The spacing effect in the married group and the timing effect in the single group were significant. Furthermore, an increase in the number of older children in the household (between the ages of 12 and 17 years) increased the probability of labor market participation by single mothers but decreased that of married mothers.     

Women's Economic Status in Rural China: Household Contributions to Male–Female Disparities in the Wage–Labor Market

Rapid industrial growth in China coupled with economic reforms in the rural areas has created a growing demand for rural women's labor, though often at substantially lower wages than those earned by men employed in the same sector. An analysis of data collected in rural Guangdong province suggests that households may contribute to the observed male–female market wage differential through their influence in the formation of individuals' reservation wages. Under these circumstances, external employment opportunities, while no doubt serving to increase the household's overall level of income, may, on their own, be a less effective mechanism for raising the economic status of women. On the contrary, market wage signals may serve to reinforce, rather than to ameliorate, sex-based differences that arise within the household.     

Trends in the Male-Female Wage Gap: The 1980s Compared with the 1970s

Despite a more rapid increase in female work behavior in the 1970s than in the 1980s, the male-female wage gap in the 1970s narrowed one-eighth as quickly as in the 1980s. This paper uses 1972 through 1988 Panel Study of Income Dynamics data to explain why women's wages rose less quickly in the 1970s. It illustrates how new female labor market entrants in the 1970s brought down mean female wages, thereby driving down female wage growth. This decline played itself out in the 1980s as the relative growth in female labor market entrants diminished and as the proportion of women's potential work years actually worked increased.     

Taxation and the redistribution of income

Conclusion This paper has offered no empirical evidence, and is not trying to argue that after-tax relative wage rates will not change at all in response to a change in the progressivity of the tax structure.⁸ Rather, the point is that there is a market mechanism that causes changes in progressivity to be at least partially offset by changes in the pretax wage structure. This mechanism is not taken into account by any model of redistribution through taxation that treats labor output as a homogeneous factor of production. Treating labor output as homogeneous eliminates adjustments to relative wages that are certain to occur in response to a change in the progressivity of the tax structure. Thus, progressive taxation has less ability to redistribute income than is commonly realized. Any shortcomings in the paper remain the responsibility of the authors.     

What is Behind Increasing Wage Inequality in Mexico?

We evaluate the impact of the educational expansion and changes in labor market institutions on wage inequality among Mexican workers using a simulation technique proposed by Knight and Sabot [The American Economic Review 73(5) (1983) 1132–1136]. We conclude that while increases in the relative rate of return of higher education would have induced an increase in wage inequality, changes in the composition of the educational distribution would have led to a stronger decline in wage inequality. Instead, increased wage inequality is largely explained by changes in Mexican labor market institutions; namely, unionization rate and minimum wages.     

Wage Gaps Large and Small

The law of one wage does not strictly hold, nor should it be expected to hold, in contemporary labor markets. The law of one wage, however, provides a surprisingly good first approximation of the structure of U.S. wages. This generalization is drawn from research on a diverse set of topics: the Mincerian wage equation and earnings imputation, union wage differentials, product market regulation and the labor market, wages in male and female jobs, the wage effects of military service, and interarea wages and cost of living.     

Job tasks and wages in the Japanese labor market: Evidence from wage functions

Based on the microdata from the Basic Survey on Wage Structure and the original survey, we estimate the Mincerian wage function, incorporating job tasks, to examine the importance of job task wage premiums as well as long-term changes in the Japanese labor market. In the estimation, we found that the association between abstract tasks and wages is positive and that a one standard deviation increase in the abstract task scores was associated with a 21.2% wage premium, while that of routine and manual task wage premiums are negative. We also found that the total explanatory power of three task scores (routine, abstract, and manual tasks) is higher than that of the education dummies or the major occupation group dummies. We also confirmed two testable implications from the Roy model regarding the workers’ self-selection into occupations in the Japanese labor market. These findings are similar to those obtained by Autor and Handel (2013). On the other hand, we found no major changes between 2005 and 2016 in the coefficients of routine, abstract, or manual task scores as well as their explanatory powers in the wage function. We then observed that demand for labor increased in many occupations involving many non-routine or manual tasks, but at the same time, the supply of labor to those occupations also increased. Therefore, we discussed that the change in labor demand and supply may be one of the reasons for the stable relationship between job tasks and wages.     

社会网络与民工工资：来自中国的证据

 本文基于来自中国22个省的农户调查数据研究了利用的不同社会网络对于不同的民工在城市劳动力市场上的工资水平的影响,结果发现：并不是利用所有的社会网络都能够提高所有民工的工资水平。首先,只有利用亲友关系找到的工作才能够得到更高的工资;其次,即使亲友关系也不能提高利用它找到工作的所有民工的工资水平,而只能显著提高女性和已婚民工的工资水平。所以,在研究中忽略社会网络和民工的差异性会导致错误的研究结论。本文有助于帮助理解中国的劳动力流动及社会网络在劳动力市场中的作用。     

Evaluating public sector sponsored training in East Germany

Support of training has been a very important instrument ofactive labor market policy in East Germany. This paper attemptsan evaluation of the employment and wage effects of trainingsupported by public income maintenance outside of a firm. Afterdescribing the labor market developments in East Germany, weillustrate the evaluation problem. Then, we estimate a simultaneousmodel for participation in training, employment, and wages.Taking account of selection effects before participation, ourfindings mostly suggest positive though only partially significantlong-run effects of training on employment or wages.     

Wage increases, wage convergence, and the Lewis turning point in China

We examine the wage trends of ordinary workers and the wage convergence between unskilled and skilled workers in China. First, we find that wages in all non-agricultural sectors, wages of migrant workers, and wages of hired workers in the agricultural sector have increased dramatically since 2003. Second, through comparing wage differentials between migrant and urban resident workers and between heterogeneous education groups within migrant workers, and by investigating the changes in the contribution of the returns to education to wage differentials, we find that the wages of unskilled and skilled workers have converged. Both the increasing wage trends and wage convergence are interpreted as evidence supporting the hypothesis that China has passed what can be called the Lewis turning point in the industrial sector. We conclude that the sustainability of economic growth in China requires an upgrading of labor market institutions to accommodate the merging of the rural and urban labor forces.     

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.     

Divorce and female labor force participation: Evidence from times-series data and cointegration

The divorce rate in the United States has increased over the last 40 years. This increase was accompanied both by growing female labor force participation and rising female income. These changes were accompanied by a significant reduction in the birth rate for married women. This article uses time-series data and cointegration techniques to determine the direction of causality between these variables. Analysis of the impulse functions show that the divorce rate will increase if either female labor force participation or income increases. Positive innovations to the divorce rate increase the labor force participation rate of married women. Rising levels of income lead to greater female participation in the labor market.     

Working hours in the European periphery: The length of the working day in Spain, 1885-1920

This paper studies the decline of the working day in Spain from 1885 to 1920. The decline was more continuous than previously thought. Differences in hours reinforce wage differentials, showing labor markets were not well integrated. Cross-sectional and time-series analysis suggests that hour reductions reflect a labor supply rather than a labor demand effect. Given the comparatively slow growth of real wages in Spain from 1870 to 1920, the Spanish case shows that international convergence in hours of work must have been stronger than convergence in wages.     

The labor market in Tokugawa Japan: Wage differentials and the real wage level, 1727–1830

Tokugawa economic history provides quite an interesting example of the workings of the labor market: In the Tokugawa period a contraction in occupational wage differentials occurred concurrently with a rise in real wages. This paper deals with these aspects of wage change and a general set of problems which has arisen about them. The first section sets out these problems; the second deals with the evidence on wage differentials and real wages in Kinai from 1727 to 1830. The third provides a theoretical framework to explain the findings; finally the last section examines the implications of the findings.     

最低工资制度对劳动力市场影响的实证分析

本文对最低工资理论模型进行了拓展分析,并以深圳为案例分析了最低工资制度对区域就业的影响。在跨区域劳动力流动的情况下,区域劳动力市场均衡工资趋近最低工资标准,并且不会导致区域就业量的下降。     

Firm Size and Work Compensation in China

Remarkably, recent research on the Chinese labor market has suggested that the situation in China is inconsistent with the stylized fact that large firms pay higher wages and offer more generous benefits. Expanding the empirical basis from 78 to 300 000 industrial firms, I overturn theprevious result andshow that wage determination in the averagefirmfits the international norm. Exploring subsamples of firms I also point to a likely source for the conflictingfindings： firm size is positively correlatedwith the average wage in private firms, but negatively correlated with the average wage in the state-owned sector. These novel results couM guide future studies aiming to understand the sources of the firm size wage premium, and, in particular, studies that target the largest industrial labor market in the world