Privatization and enterprise wage structures during transition: Evidence from rural industry in china

Wage structures in transition economies usually diverge significantly from their centrally–planned predecessors. Using a matched sample of employees and enterprises, we examine the effects of privatization on wage structures in rural industry in two provinces of China. We find that privatization was associated with increased wage and earnings inequality. We report increased returns to education, increased returns to experience for mid–age workers, and increases in gender wage discrimination. We find these aspects of wage structures are similar in different types of private ownership emerging from the reform process. JEL classification: P31, P23, P26 and J31.     

Negotiating ‘ethically important moments’ in research with young people: reflections of a novice researcher

The latter half of the twentieth century witnessed a surge in interest around ethics in research. Originally focused on the compilation of ethics guidelines and the importance of having all research approved by institutional review boards before commencement, discussions of research ethics have more recently centred on how such guidelines translate into ethical practice during the research process. Leisure research has been no exception to this trend. Using as an example, a research project in Ireland centred on focus groups with young people (aged 15–19) regarding their physical activity behaviours and preferences, this paper explores the situated judgement of the interviewer, a novice researcher, as she attempted to navigate four ethically important moments. Discussions centre on moments where the interviewer’s situated judgement resulted in research ethics being compromised and moments where the interviewer experienced difficulty reconciling personal and research ethics. Our intention in sharing the situations and resulting questions from this research is to shine a light on the decision-making which takes place during the research process and consider how researchers might prepare adequately to make decisions in an ethically sound way.     

What caused earnings inequality to increase in Canada during the 1980s?

While broad consensus exists that earnings inequality increasedin Canada during the 1980s, as in other industrialised countries,there is little agreement about the causes. The main contributionof this paper is the simultaneous, empirical examination ofeight hypotheses of increased earnings inequality, using multivariateregression analysis, namely: the decline in unionisation, minimumwages and industrialisation, as well as the increase in unemployment,trade, relative supply of university-educated workers and relativesupply of female workers, and technological change. In Canada,during the 1980s, employment and unionisation factors stronglyand consistently explain the increase in annual earnings andhourly wage-rate inequality, after controlling for six otherpossible determinants. The results also point to the importanceof considering a multidimensional explanation of increased earningsinequality and avoiding generalisations across gender, incomeand work status groups.     

Temporary work and neoliberal government policy: evidence from British Columbia,Canada

We examine the impact of government policy on the incidence of temporary work by analysing the case of British Columbia (BC), Canada. The analysis is based upon the Canadian Labour Force Survey 1997–2004; temporary work is defined as work that is not expected to last for more than 6 months and includes seasonal, fixed‐term, casual, and temporary help agency work. A case study of BC provides a valuable opportunity to assess the impacts of neoliberal government policy, designed to increase labour market flexibility, on the extent of temporary work because we are able to compare labour market trends in BC both before and after the reforms introduced in 2001 and to compare BC with other provinces in Canada that were not subject to such large changes in their policy environments. We find that the shift to neoliberal policies in BC led to significant increases in the likelihood of workers finding themselves in temporary employment. We also find that the likelihood of being a temporary worker in BC in the post‐policy change period increases relative to all other provinces over the same period. Taken together, these results indicate that government policy is a key determinant of the level of temporary work. As such, the level of temporary work should be seen as a policy‐sensitive variable, rather than as a phenomenon determined solely by the exogenous forces of globalization and technological change.     

Gender,Work Burden,and Mental Health in Post-Reform China

ABSTRACT

This study investigates how total work burden, including paid work and unpaid care work, affects the mental health of prime-age, employed women and men in urban China. Based on the 2010 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), regression results indicate that total work burden is negatively related to the mental health of both men and women, consistent with the idea that additional work hours reduce time available for rest and leisure. Women have longer working hours and are more likely to be time poor than men, and this gender inequality in total work burden contributes to the gender gap in mental health. The relationships between the components of total work burden – paid and unpaid work – and mental health shed further light on the strength of gender norms and the barriers to redistribution of unpaid work from women to men necessary to reduce the gender gap in mental health.