Family size,labor supply,and job prestige: Evidence from three decennial censuses in China

This study investigates the relationship between family size and parents’ labor market performance, measured by labor supply and occupational prestige scores, based on three census waves in 1990, 2000, and 2010. To address the endogeneity problem of family size, we use the indicator of twins at first birth as an instrumental variable. Our results suggest that in nuclear households, family size affects the labor market performance only of mothers, not of fathers, with the negative effects fading and gradually disappearing over time. More specifically, an increase in family size decreases female labor supply in the 1990 wave, leads to lower prestige scores among working mothers in the 2000 wave, and has no impact on labor supply or occupational prestige scores in the 2010 wave. Our subsample analysis indicates that the negative effects of family size are more severe for parents of households with all children under seven years old and for husbands or wives with lower education level than that of their partners. In addition, we find that the negative effects of family size on parental labor market outcomes are not observed in extended households, especially when no grandparents are aged 65 years or older.     

The Contribution of Childcare to Local Employment: Poor Work or Work for the Poor?

In recent years local economic development and regeneration agencies have begun to examine how locally based childcare can contribute to economic and social regeneration. This paper is based on current research by the authors and reports on the expectations and current realities of community based childcare as part of an economic regeneration strategy. It suggests that whilst the incorporation of childcare into urban regeneration strategy holds the potential to reduce the barriers to labour market involvement by mothers in low income households, less positive effects are also identifiable. Early evaluation is used to show that the commodification of care within urban regeneration policies reinforces care work as low paid, insecure gendered employment. It concludes by arguing that a more critical evaluation of both the economic and social impact of childcare on area regeneration is necessary.     

Income Strategies Among Rural Households in Mexico: The Role of Off-farm Activities

Off-farm activities generate on average more than half of farm households' incomes in the Mexican ejido sector. Participation in these activities helps reduce poverty and contributes to greater equality in the distribution of income. This paper analyzes the determinants of access to off-farm sources of income across households. We find that education plays a major role in accessing better remunerated nonagricultural employment. Adults of indigenous ethnic origin suffer from an educational lag and have less access to off-farm nonagricultural employment than non-indigenous adults at identical educational levels. The regional availability of off-farm employment strongly affects participation. In addition, women are differentially limited by distance to urban centers in their ability to gain off-farm employment.     

Is care by grandparents or parents better for children's non-cognitive skills? Evidence on locus of control from China

This study investigates the effect of grandparental involvement in childcare on children's locus of control (LOC), which is an important non-cognitive skill that affects children's future development. We use data from the China Family Panel Studies, which is a nationally representative survey, and employ instrumental variables to address the endogeneity of family childcare choice. We find that children with grandparental care have more external LOC than children in the sole care of their parents do; that is, they are more likely to attribute individual success to external factors, such as luck, fate, and family background. This finding is robust to different measures of grandparental involvement in childcare and different model specifications, as well as a minor violation of the exclusion restriction of the instruments. We further examine the potential mechanisms underlying this effect. Grandparents have more external LOC than parents do, which can affect children's LOC through intergenerational transmission of LOC. Their parenting attitudes and styles are also different from parents' in that grandparents take less responsibility for children's academic performance than parents do and are less strict with children. In addition, grandparental care induces adverse effects on children's family environment.     

The human cost of China's industrial growth

This paper examines whether industrial growth during economic development is associated with a high workplace fatality rate by using panel data from China. Controlling for provincial and year fixed effects, our estimations show that provincial industrial growth has a positive impact on the workplace fatality rate. We also find that both the growth of industrial labor productivity and the growth of industrial employment have an impact on workplace fatalities. Our instrumental variable fixed effects estimations, which control for simultaneity, show an even greater effect of industrial growth on the fatality rate. Our empirical findings suggest that the Chinese government ought to reconsider its growth-centered policies to save lives.     

Changing Sources of Household Income,Poverty, and Sectoral Inequality in Sri Lanka, 1990–2006

Comparing dynamic changes in household income and poverty among urban, rural, and estate sectors in Sri Lanka from 1990 to 2006, this study finds that a shift of household income away from farm to nonfarm sources is accompanied by a significant improvement in household income and reduction in poverty, particularly in the rural sector. Major contributing factors are the rise in returns to labor, in general, and educated labor, in particular, due to the development of the nonfarm labor market. Persistently low income among estate households can be explained primarily by the limited availability of nonfarm employment opportunities and the low education levels of working members.     

Educational differences in parental time devoted to childcare in China

The intergenerational transmission of education in China has drawn extensive public and academic attention. This paper explores the differences in the amount of time Chinese parents spend on childcare stratified by education level and investigates the factors driving these differences. The analysis shows that more educated parents devote more time to childcare than less-educated parents. The educational differences in parental childcare time are particularly pronounced among working parents, parents with school-age children, and parents in the provinces where educational institutions are relatively scarce. Much of the extra childcare time is directed to educational care and travel with children. Compared to households in which the mother has less than a junior high school education, households with university-educated mothers spend 74 min more per day on childcare, with 58% of the extra time devoted to children's learning and education.     

Employment,Wages, and Alcohol Consumption in Russia

This article investigates the association between alcohol consumption and labor market outcomes in Russia, using data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS). It estimates cross-sectional and fixed effects models of the impacts of alcohol consumption on employment and wages for males and females using three different measures of drinking. The cross-sectional findings indicate that alcohol consumption has an inverse U-shaped impact on employment and wages for females. The impact on males appears to be positive but the inverse-U shape is less pronounced. Once the unobserved individual heterogeneity is accounted for using fixed effects, alcohol consumption is found to have no significant effect on employment for either males or females. The fixed effect wage models indicate that alcohol consumption has a small, positive, but linear impact on the wage rate for both males and females. Models including fixed effects generate estimates that are smaller in magnitude compared with those of cross-sectional models. The findings are robust to several diagnostic checks.     

GROWTH,EMPLOYMENT AND UNEMPLOYMENT IN SOUTH AFRICA

The high rate of unemployment in South Africa stands out in an otherwise vastly improved set of macroeconomic fundamentals compared with the situation in the early 1990s. One might be tempted to argue that by this single indicator alone, the government's macroeconomic policies have been a failure. This paper explains why jumping to such a conclusion would be a mistake. Annual time series data on total formal sector employment is constructed dating back to 1946. The relationship between economic growth and formal sector employment is then measured and changes in the employment coefficient over time are described. The employment coefficient was found to be relatively stable, with a long‐term average value of 0.5. It returned to this value after a short‐lived collapse in the mid‐1990s. It is concluded that the main reason for the persistently high and rising rates of unemployment in South Africa since the mid 1990s was the very large increase in the labour force and not a historically deficient growth or employment performance of the economy.     

Impact of Childcare and Eldercare on Off‐farm Activities in Rural China

Using individual data collected in rural China and adopting Heckman's two‐step function, we examined the impact of childcare and eldercare on laborers' off‐farm activities. Our study finds that having school‐aged children has a negative impact on rural laborers' migration decisions and a positive impact on their decision to work in the local off‐farm employment market. As grandparents can help to take care of young children, the impact of preschoolers is insignificant. Having elderly family to care for decreases the income earned by female members of the family. Although both men and women are actively engaged in off‐farm employment today in rural China, this study shows that women are still the primary care providers for both children and the elderly. Therefore, reforming public school enrollment and high school/college entrance examination systems so that migrant children can stay with their parents, this will help rural laborers to migrate to cities. The present study also calls for more public services for preschoolers and the elderly in rural China.     

Long-term effects of labor market conditions on family formation for Japanese youth

This study aims to examine how each cohort’s family formation is affected by labor market conditions experienced in youth in Japan. Although the deterioration in youth employment opportunities has often been blamed for Japan’s declining fertility rate, the effect of slack labor market conditions on fertility is theoretically unclear. We estimate the effects of regional labor market conditions at entry to the labor market and contemporaneous conditions on fertility, controlling for nation-wide year effects and prefecture fixed effects, and find the following. First, high school-educated women who experienced a recession while entering the labor market are less likely to have children. In contrast, a recession rather increases fertility among college-educated women. When summed up, the aggregate impact of labor market conditions experienced in youth on fertility is weak. Second, the unemployment rate at entry to the labor market is positively correlated with the probability of having two or more children conditionally on having at least one child. Third, the contemporaneous unemployment rate is negatively correlated with marriage of women in the local labor market, although the correlation is weak and concentrated on the less educated group.     

Outward FDI and Local Employment Growth in Italy

Using several data sources, we assess the impact of Italy’s outward foreign direct investment (FDI) on local employment growth between 1996 and 2001 for 12 manufacturing industries and 103 administrative provinces. Our main result is that, controlling for the local industrial structure and area fixed effects, FDI is associated with faster local employment growth, relatively to the national industry average. We also find that employment in small plants is not negatively influenced by higher levels of FDI. Our findings do not support therefore the idea that FDI is detrimental to local employment growth in the home country. JEL no.  C21, F21, F23     

Multigenerational Families and Food Insecurity

The prevalence of multigenerational families is on the rise in the United States, as is food insecurity. We estimate the association of resident grandchildren on transitions in food insecurity using longitudinally linked two‐year panels of the Current Population Survey from 2001 to 2010. We find that rates of food insecurity in families with a grandchild present are at least twice as high in a typical year compared with families without a resident grandchild, and the extent of very low food security increased substantially faster among these households over the past decade. The rise in food insecurity during and after the Great Recession is due to both increased entry into food insecurity and decreased exit out of food insecurity. A similar trend accounts for the rise in multigenerational households during the recession—grandchildren were more likely to move in with their grandparents, and once there, were less likely to move out. Our transition models show that whether grandchildren remain, or in periods of transition, multigenerational families are at heightened risk of entering food insecurity and remaining in this state. However, the entry of a grandchild may not always be a negative for the family's food security, nor the exit of the child a positive. Entrance of a child seems to buffer the family from extreme forms of food insecurity while exit exposes the family to risk of deeper food insecurity.     

中国农村投资与农民收入和经济增长——对两类农村投资效果的分析

保持经济较快增长、实现农民持续增收是我国经济政策的核心目标.大量研究表明,投资是实现我国经济保持增长的重要动力,但不同投资的性质决定了其效果和影响的层面相差很大,文章认为投资发生地的不同也将导致投资的效果有所差异.本文利用计量手段,定量的经验分析了我国1990-2010年的数据,比较分析了农村人力资本投资和农村固定资产投资对农民收入、经济增长这两大指标的影响结果,发现固定资产投资更具有滞后效应,人力资本投资总效应更强的结论,并对此进行了解释.     

Employment Creation and Manufactured Exports in Indonesia, 1980–90

One of the most significant effects of the trade and regulatory policy reforms introduced in Indonesia since the mid 1980s has been the growth of manufactured exports, particularly labour-intensive manufactures. The growth of these sectors' exports has in turn generated substantial employment benefits, both directly and through backward linkages. In this paper we estimate the employment effects of the rapid growth in manufactured exports between 1980 and 1990, and compare two subperiods, 1980–85 and 1985–90. In the latter period, employment created by exports of light industries increased dramatically in absolute terms, far exceeding employment created by primary exports.     

Determinants of Long-Run Unemployment

This paper investigates the determinants of long-run unemployment and growth by extending the endogenous growth model of Howitt and Aghion (1998) to allow for a more general treatment of the labor market in the spirit of Pissarides (1990). We find that (i) both long-run growth and unemployment depend not only on factors that affect long-run growth as identified in endogenous growth models with full employment, but also on certain labor market parameters; (ii) long-run unemployment may rise or fall with growth depending on the model's parameters; and (iii) though government policies that promote growth indirectly through improvement in labor market efficiency always reduce the long-run unemployment rate, policies that directly encourage investment in research and development may increase the unemployment rate.     

Making the link. Childcare, employment and area regeneration

Urban regeneration practitioners continue to search for ways to target a larger share of local employment opportunities towards residents in regeneration areas. This paper explores the potential contribution that childcare projects can make in this area. By evaluating the impacts of an innovative childcare project in the East End of Glasgow, the paper shows that the employment situation of many of the users has been improved and that some owe their foothold in the labour market to the service provided. It concludes that childcare merits more attention as a targeting measure and an element in area regeneration strategies.     

ON THE MOTHER AND CHILD LABOR NEXUS UNDER CREDIT CONSTRAINTS: FINDINGS FROM RURAL INDIA

There is an emerging consensus that lack of credit is a major cause of child labor and inequality in the intrahousehold distribution of resources. At the same time, patterns in how children spend their time appear to be strongly influenced by maternal employment decisions. This paper includes an assessment of the effect of credit constraints on maternal employment and that of maternal employment on the intrahousehold allocation of labor, a nexus which has been left unexplored by existing studies. Three findings emerge: (1) a mother is more likely to work outside when a household lacks resources, and her domestic labor can be easily replaced by other members, (2) credit market accessibility is one of the major determinants of maternal labor, and (3) elder daughters assume a large part of the burden of maternal employment by providing domestic labor. Under binding credit constraints, results of this study support the collective as opposed to the unitary model of households.     

Rural Nonfarm Employment and Incomes in Chile

This article analyzes the evolution of rural nonfarm employment (RNFE) and income in Chile during 1990–96. The data used come from the National Socioeconomic Survey (CASEN), and from a household survey undertaken by the authors in two municipalities in 1999. The latter contrasted two zones, very different in terms of economic dynamism and rural poverty. We show that during the period, RNFE and incomes increased 10% and 18%, respectively, in 1996, reaching 39% of rural employment and 41% of rural incomes. The rate of multiactivity (the share of households participating in more than one sector) was only 20%, lower than expected, indicating a tendency toward economic specialization in rural income strategies. The determinants of such employment are mainly household characteristics, in particular variables related to human capital, such as the age and gender of the household head, and the schooling of the household members, although also important are access to credit and physical capital. The level of nonfarm income of rural households is determined mainly by the economic context, in particular the economic level and dynamism of the overall zone and the quality of the roads. It is proposed that policies to develop RNFE should be geared to zone characteristics, and should in general favor investments in education, in roads, and in access to credit. Moreover, households headed by women should be the object of special attention. To promote such policies, it will be necessary to address important gaps and weaknesses in the public institutional structure.     

广西产业增长与就业程度相关性研究

研究通过建立相关的数据模型,分析广西1990～2010年整体经济和三次产业的增长与就业程度的数据,得出二者的相关系数,并对比分析产业的发展现状。提出了总体社会经济和三次产业的发展状况,就如何推进产业增长和实现就业增长提出符合相关性的意见和建议。