The Impact of Transportation Infrastructure on Women's Employment in India

ABSTRACT

Indian women's labor force participation is extremely low, and women are much less likely than men to work in the nonfarm sector. Earlier research has explained women's labor supply by individual characteristics, social institutions, and cultural norms, but not enough attention has been paid to the labor market opportunity structure that constrains women's labor market activities. Using data from the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) in 2004–05 and 2011–12, this study examines how village transportation infrastructure affects women's and men's agricultural and nonagricultural employment. Results from fixed-effect analysis show that access by paved or unpaved roads and frequent bus services increase the odds of nonagricultural employment among men and women. The effect of road access on nonfarm employment (relative to not working) is stronger among women than among men. Improved transportation infrastructure has a stronger positive effect on women's nonfarm employment in communities with more egalitarian gender norms.     

Making Labor Flexible: The Recomposition of Tijuana's Maquiladora Female Labor Force

This article revisits the debate over the benefits of export-oriented manufacturing employment for women by taking up Linda Lim's (1990) critique that such research is often biased in its methods and conclusions. Using a sample of 198 women workers from the 1993 Labor Trajectories Survey, I conduct a multivariate statistical analysis to test whether the social and demographic characteristics of the female maquiladora labor force influence their position in the labor market. I find that maquiladoras in Tijuana, Mexico, employ married women, women with children, and women with low levels of education who constitute a low-wage sector of the labor force with few other employment alternatives. In the drive to keep production costs low, multinational manufacturers have tapped into this low-wage labor force, thereby taking advantage of women's labor market disadvantages and making a labor force willing to accept more "flexible" terms of employment.     

The Gender Pension Gap in China

ABSTRACT

China has had a large gender gap in labor force participation, sectors of employment, and earnings. This study shows that disadvantages in the labor market for women are the primary drivers of the gender pension gap. Among people age 60 and older, women receive about half of the amount of men's social pensions. Using the 2013 wave of China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) and the CHARLS Life History Survey of 2014, this contribution has three main findings. First, about three-quarters of the deficit in women's pensions is explained by women's lower likelihood of receiving occupational pensions, and one-third is due to smaller benefits when they do receive them. Second, the gender deficit in receiving an occupational pension can be explained by education level and employment sector. Third, among pension recipients, nearly one-third of the gender benefit gap is explained by women's fewer years of employment and lower salaries.     

Structural Features of Female Employment Status and Earnings Mobility: The Experience in Germany

Structural changes in basic economic indicators, changes in traditional role patterns, and in female employment behavior shed light on the performance of the European labor markets in the 90s. This paper focuses on the cyclical sensitivity of women's employment status and earnings position in Germany. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) we test the hypothesis that labor market adjustments are not gender-neutral but affect women's employment status and women's relative earnings position to a greater extent than those of men. Cross-sectional as well as longitudinal analysis indicate positive effects on female employment status and earnings position during a period with worsening economic indicators. Logistic regression analysis confirms an increasing likelihood of an upward earnings mobility for women in the 90s. Notwithstanding these positive trends the results show that - due to social norms and attitudes - women are still discriminated against in the labor market and in terms of their relative earnings position. Thus social policy is called upon to improve women's social and employment conditions.     

Employment impacts of a ‘green’ energy transition in China

Before the US financial crisis that began in 2008, China was the ‘factory’ of the world, utilizing energy intensively for such processes as steelmaking, papermaking and concrete production. As such, energy emissions in China increased dramatically until 2007, with much of the energy being provided by the labor-intensive coal industry. Under the 11th five-year plan, China resolved to increase its energy efficiency, setting out to reduce energy consumption while continuing to increase economic growth, and to increase the usage of ‘green’ technologies to 15% of all energy used by 2020. The Renewable Energy Law of 2007 set a guideline for China's energy reduction goals, to quadruple the national GDP while only doubling the country's electricity usage by the year 2020. Currently, there are virtually no studies on the employment effects of a ‘green’ transition to explore what impact the current energy goals, or potentially ‘greener’ energy goals, would have on China's labor force. This paper seeks to analyze the effects on employment of a ‘green’ transition.     

Social economy and employment – the case of Sweden

Recent research has shown growing shares of employment in the social economy (or non-profit sector) both in the European Union and in the United States. In the EU, there seems to be growing hopes that the social economy will be capable of contributing to local progress on the unemployment issue in crisis regions. This paper analyses employment in certain entrepreneurial forms, usually considered belonging to the social economy, in Sweden during the 1990s. The results show considerable regional differences of employment in the social economy, but also that its share of the labor market is very limited. The effect of social-economic organizations on employment, therefore, is probably mainly indirect in as much as they function as platforms for cooperation between firms or else as embryos for enterprises by strengthening local entrepreneurship and helping to nurture a deposit of social capital which has visible effects on private business and jobs. However, these effects need more detailed examinations.     

Smartphone use,off-farm employment,and women's decision-making power: Evidence from rural China

Empowering women is an important goal of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, and studies have proposed various strategies to achieve this goal. However, few have examined the role of smartphone use in empowering women in decision-making and its mechanism. Therefore, this study analyzes how smartphone use affects women's decision-making power and explores whether this influence is due to women's off-farm employment mechanisms. For this purpose, the study uses the survey data of 1110 households in rural China and the endogenous treatment regression model for analysis. The control function approach addresses the selection bias of off-farm employment. The results show that smartphone use significantly increases women's decision-making power, partially channeled through increasing women's off-farm employment. The mechanism effect is robust to using both binary and intensive measurements of off-farm employment. Therefore, a policy to improve access to internet facilities and smartphone use could improve women's decision-making power through employment in the off-farm sector.     

Women's Work Choices in Kenya: The Role of Social Institutions and Household Gender Attitudes

This study considers the factors that influence women's work behavior in Kenya. In particular, it examines whether gender attitudes and certain types of social institution influence the probability of employment or type of employment for women. Using data from the Demographic and Health Survey of 2008–9, it finds that religion and ethnicity are significant determinants of women's employment in Kenya. While personal experience of female genital mutilation is insignificant, spousal age and education differences, as well as marital status (which reflect attitudes both in women's natal and marital families), are significant determinants of women's employment choices.     

生物质能对化石能源的替代性——基于中国工业部门的实证分析

选取1987—2009年中国工业部门能源需求的时间序列数据,利用修正的AES模型和MES模型,实证研究了中国工业部门中生物质能对化石能源的内部替代问题。结果显示:中国对生物质能的需求量会随其自价格弹性的降低而增加;传统化石能源(石油、煤炭)的价格和需求量的同向变化表明,不能依靠价格诱导降低其需求,但价格诱导可促进生物质能对石油和煤炭等传统化石能源的替代。据此得出:中国的石油和煤炭两类化石能源呈现出"吉芬物品"或"低档物品"的特性,作为可再生能源之一的生物质能则表现出"正常物品"的特性;生物质能是传统化石能源的有效替代品。     

GENDER DIFFERENCES IN PH.D. ECONOMISTS' CAREERS

This study of Ph.D. economists' careers during the period 1960–1989 examines both initial and current employment and explicitly accounts for the joint relationship between choosing an employment sector and placement within the academic sector. Initial placement and market conditions create effects that tend to persist throughout an isndividual's career. With the exception of the labor and welfare fields, women are not less likely than men either to enter or to persist in academia. But significant evidence shows that in the past, women have placed in lower-ranked departments. Among recent degree recipients, however, underplacement of women as a general phenomenon apparently has disappeared .     

清洁能源发展对就业规模的门槛效应*——基于金融规模的视角

本文基于2008—2019年省级面板数据，检验清洁能源产业发展的就业效应，并采用面板门槛模型，分析了清洁能源产业发展对劳动力就业影响的金融规模门槛效应。实证研究表明：清洁能源发展对总体就业规模有促进作用，对传统能源行业就业规模有负向作用，并且在不同清洁能源产量地区的就业影响存在异质性；以金融规模为门槛变量时，研究发现金融规模的提高，促使清洁能源产业发展对总体就业规模的提升作用显著提高，对传统能源行业就业规模的冲击作用有所下降；从区域角度来看，清洁能源发展对劳动力就业的影响存在地区差异，表现在清洁能源发展对东西部地区总体就业规模有正向作用，对中部地区则为负向作用。基于此，从完善政策激励机制、金融部门提高支持力度、地方政府因地施策等方面提出政策建议，以充分发挥清洁能源产业发展在就业创造和能源结构优化中的促进作用。     

LABOUR MARKET ACTIVITY OF FOREIGN SPOUSES IN TAIWAN: EMPLOYMENT STATUS AND CHOICE OF EMPLOYMENT SECTOR

The present study examines the employment status and choice of employment sector of female foreign spouses from Southeast Asia and Mainland China in Taiwan. The conceptual framework is based on the family labour supply model, human and social capital theory, and immigrant assimilation theory. Our findings indicate that in regard to employment status, family background variables, including the presence of small children and husbands' characteristics, play a more significant role in determining the employment probability for these foreign spouses than do human capital variables. In particular, for spouses from Southeast Asia, each additional child is correlated with a decrease in working probability of 11.3%, whereas college education has an insignificant effect on their employment probability. Employment assimilation for these marriage immigrants may be confirmed by the finding that the employment probability of foreign spouses rises rapidly with the number of years that have elapsed since migration. As for the choice of employment sector, a strong linkage between the employment sector of the foreign spouses and their husbands' employment sector is found in this study.     

Job-search and foreign capital inflow — A three-sector general equilibrium analysis

The purpose of this paper is to extend the Fields' (1989) multi-sector job-search model in a three-sector general equilibrium framework by introducing international trade and capital as input. The three sectors are the rural sector, the urban informal sector and the urban formal sector. The rural sector and the urban informal sector use one type of mobile capital while the urban formal sector uses a sector-specific capital. We find that the effects of an inflow of foreign capital in the urban formal sector on unemployment and social welfare crucially hinge on the relative factor intensities of the rural sector and the urban informal sector. We show that there is a possibility of trade-off between the government's twin objectives of improvement in social welfare and mitigation of the urban unemployment problem. These results are extremely crucial from the view point of policymaking in an unemployment plagued, low-income developing economy.     

The quality of employment in India's services sector: exploring the heterogeneity

For some observers, the dramatic growth of the services sector in India reflects rapid strides made by educated professionals. Some others see it as the expansion of an employer of last resort. Given this heterogeneity, the object of this article is to analyse the quality of employment being created in different sub-sectors of services, relative to the industrial sector, where quality is defined to include wages, job security and social protection. Analysing household survey data from India in 1993–94 and 2004–05, we find the following. First, sub-sectors of services are generally either 'good' or 'bad' employers – higher wages do not compensate for less job security or less job protection. Second, the classification of most service sub-sectors as 'good' or 'bad' employers in 2004–05 is the same as that in 1993–94. Third, employment expansion during the 10-year period under consideration is more in service sub-sectors where quality of employment is low.     

Public Sector Employment,Wage Inequality and the Gender Pay Ratio in the UK

This paper assesses the relative contributions of the different systems of pay determination in the private sector and the public sector toward the changing level of wage inequality and the gender pay ratio in the UK. The greater centralisation of pay arrangements in the public sector compared with the private sector in the UK suggests that public sector employment may have acted to offset the widening wage inequality seen in recent years, as well as making an important contribution to the increase in women's relative average earnings compared to men. This issue is addressed by drawing on unpublished occupational hourly earnings data from the New Earnings Survey and applying decomposition of the Theil index of wage inequality to analyse both static and dynamic trends. The change in wage inequality for the period 1986 to 1995 primarily reflected the change in wage dispersion within the private sector, and the narrowing of the gender pay gap among the public sector workforce was an important factor in explaining the overall improvement in women's relative earnings. The paper argues that the relatively centralised pay arrangements in the public sector, compared with the private sector, played an important role in slowing the increase in wage inequality and narrowing the gender pay gap. As such, future policies to decentralise pay determination in the UK public sector may exacerbate the increasing level of wage inequality and reverse women's recent relative pay improvements.     

Male–female wage discrimination in Chinese industryInvestigation using firm‐level data1

We use firm‐level data to analyze male–female wage discrimination in China's industry. We find that there is a significant negative association between wages and the share of female workers in a firm's labour force. However, we also find that the marginal productivity of female workers is significantly lower than that of male workers. Comparing wage gaps and productivity gaps between men and women, we notice an intriguing contrast between state‐owned enterprises (SOEs) and private firms. The wage gap is smaller than the productivity gap in SOEs, while the converse is true for private firms. These results suggest that women in the state sector receive wage premiums, whereas women in the private sector face wage discrimination.     

Idiosyncratic risk and aggregate employment dynamics

This paper studies how idiosyncratic productivity risk impacts aggregate employment dynamics when there is a trade-off between workers' productivity and costs of job creation and destruction. In our analysis, increasing idiosyncratic risk induces a producer to move workers out of structured jobs that are costly to create and destroy and towards less productive but more flexible unstructured positions. This substitution leaves the producer's total employment more responsive to both idiosyncratic and aggregate disturbances. If all of an industry's producers respond to heightened idiosyncratic risk in this way, then industry-wide employment can respond more to a given aggregate shock. We apply this insight to connect differences between young and old manufacturing plants' aggregate employment dynamics with their corresponding differences in idiosyncratic variability.     

Married women's labor supply and economic development: Evidence from Sri Lankan household data

Women's labor supply in Sri Lanka has increased steadily since the early 1990s following economic reforms, but remains well below the level predicted by national income, a feature shared by a number of Asian and Latin American countries that have undergone similar reforms and economic growth. To understand the microeconomic determinants of women's work in Sri Lanka's growing economy, this paper estimates a binary‐choice model of married women's labor supply using household survey data spanning a 23‐year period. Decomposition and cohort analysis reveal that women have been drawn into the workforce through falling fertility rates, rising tertiary education, and declining income effects among younger generations, but other factors have undermined this positive trend. Educational attainment reduces married women's labor supply except at the tertiary level, consistent with social stigmas associated with married women in non‐white‐collar employment. The strict sectoral segregation of married women by education level supports this hypothesis. In addition, growth has been concentrated in low‐skilled sectors with self‐employment more prevalent, reducing employment prospects of educated women and prompting their labor force withdrawal. This suggests it is the structure of economic development, rather than speed, that matters for women's labor force activity.     

Implied discount rate and payback threshold of energy efficiency investment in the industrial sector

The industrial sector is responsible for about a third of the energy usage in the United States, and there is significant energy saving potential from the industrial sector. However, the phenomenon of “energy efficiency gap” – the scenario in which cost-effective energy efficient technologies enjoy only limited market success – appears frequently in the industrial sector. This article tries to explain this efficiency gap in the industrial sector by empirically estimating the implied discount rates and payback thresholds industrial firms use to evaluate their energy efficiency investments. Using the Industrial Assessment Centers (IAC) database from 2002 to 2011, with more than 30 000 energy efficiency recommendations, this article builds structural models of firms’ evaluation of an energy efficiency project. The model results show that the implied discount rates of medium to small industrial firms range from 40 to 45%, and the average payback threshold is about 9 months.     

Women's employment patterns during the U.S. inter-war period: A comparison of two states

Establishment data from New York and Ohio, two U.S. states representing mature versus dynamic industrial sectors, are used to decompose changes in women's employment during economic fluctuations in the 1920s and 1930s. By decomposing changes in women's employment, one can distinguish between changes which reflect the gender distribution of employment between various industry categories and changes which reflect employer decisions to mobilize specific groups of workers. The empirical findings suggest that during the inter-war period, economic restructuring in Ohio's mass-production industries resulted in substitution toward women workers. Nevertheless, in both states, working women's segmentation into industries which were less hard hit by the Great Depression confined their employment losses. The results suggest that patterns of gender segmentation which are ordinarily quite rigid may be redefined during the political, social and cultural upheaval that accompanies economic restructuring.