HIGH AND LOW EARNINGS JOBS: THE FORTUNES OF EMPLOYERS AND WORKERS

The focus of the literature on the effect of job changes has been on the consequences of job destruction on the individual worker. In this paper we analyze the impact on the earnings distribution of both job creation and job destruction. We establish a link between job reallocation and the movement of workers into and out of the tails of the earnings distribution. Both job creating and job destroying employers shed jobs mostly from the middle and lower tails of the earnings distribution, although this is cyclically very sensitive. Labor mobility (triggered by job reallocation) is risky: mobile workers will generally end up in the upper or lower tail of the distribution rather than in the middle. If workers move across industry boundaries, they typically move to the lower tails of the distribution. In sum, the fortunes of workers depend on the fortunes of their employers.     

MEASURING EARNINGS INEQUALITY: AN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF THE BONFERRONI INDEX

This paper studies the economic content of the Bonferroni index. The most remarkable property of the Bonferroni index is that it overweights income transfers among the poor, and the weights are higher the lower the transfers occur on the income distribution. Hence, it is a good measure of inequality when changes in the living standards of the poor are concerned. There are many problems—especially in labor economics—that fall into this category. Using a version of the assignment model, we show that the Bonferroni index can be formulated endogenously within a mechanism featuring efficient assignment of workers to firms. This formulation is useful in evaluating the interactions between the distribution of skills and earnings inequality with a special emphasis on the lower tail of the earnings distribution. Moreover, it allows us to think about earnings inequality by separately analyzing the contribution of each economic parameter.     

IMMIGRANT EARNINGS: A LONGITUDINAL ANALYSIS

This paper uses the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Australia to analyze the determinants of the level and growth in earnings of adult male immigrants in their first 3.5 years in Australia. The theoretical framework is based on the immigrant adjustment model, which incorporates both the transferability of immigrant skills and selectively in migration. The cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses generate similar findings. The level and relative growth of earnings are higher for immigrants with higher levels of skill and who are economic/skills tested migrants, as distinct from family based and refugee migrants. The analysis indicates that immigrant economic assimilation does occur and that in these data the cross-section provides a good estimate of the longitudinal progress of immigrants. The findings are robust across statistical techniques.     

JOB DISPLACEMENT AND THE INTER‐TEMPORAL MOVEMENT OF WORKERS THROUGH THE EARNINGS AND INCOME DISTRIBUTIONS

This paper uses the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to examine how job displacement influences intragenerational earnings and income mobility. Job displacement increases the probability of downward labor earnings mobility for several years after separation occurs. Furthermore, the probability of being in the bottom half of the earnings distribution increases significantly, not only in the year of displacement, but also for several years afterwards. However, after considering additional measures of financial well‐being (income from other family members and government transfer payments), the short‐ and long‐term impact of displacement on movements throughout the distribution is reduced. (JEL J63, J65)     

A COHORT ANALYSIS OF US AGE–EARNINGS PROFILES

Aggregate data on US earnings, classified by period and by age, are decomposed into age, period and cohort effects, using the Bayesian cohort models, which were developed to overcome the identification problem in cohort analysis. The main findings, obtained by comparing college and high school graduates, are threefold. First, the age effects show a downward trend for the age group of 45–49 onwards for high school graduates but do not show any such trend for college graduates. Second, the period effects show a downward trend for high school graduates but reveal no such trend for college graduates. Third, the cohort effects are negligible for both college and high school graduates.     

TRENDS IN LONG-RUN VERSUS CROSS-SECTION EARNINGS INEQUALITY IN THE 1970s AND 1980s

This paper uses the PSID to assess the changes in earnings mobility and to compare the changes in cross-section and long-run inequality in the 1970s and 1980s. Previous inequality studies have primarily used measures of cross-section inequality. However, long-run inequality depends not only on cross-section inequality, but also on the degree of earnings mobility, which equalizes earnings over time. I find that earnings mobility increased during the 1970s, but fell during the 1980s. Consistent with this result, the increase in cross-section inequality overstated the true increase during the 1970s, but understated the true increase in inequality during the 1980s.     

ANALYSIS OF POVERTY AND EFFICIENCY: AN EARNINGS FRONTIER APPROACH

The paper introduces the concept of an earnings frontier in explaining monthly consumption expenditure (a proxy for income) in terms of human capital and endowments of a household. Individuals who translate their potential earning into actual earnings enjoy a fully efficient position. In contrast, individuals who earn less than their potential earnings suffer from some kind of earnings inefficiency. The paper estimates an earnings frontier using the Corrected Ordinary Least Square (COLS) method and classifies households in terms of efficiency scores. Splitting the sample into an efficient and an inefficient part based on the estimated frontier and a bench mark efficiency score, the status of poverty in the two parts (groups) is studied. The poverty gap between the groups is then decomposed into a characteristics effect and a coefficients effect using the familiar Oaxaca decomposition methodology. The paper also tries to establish a link between the notion of efficiency and the coefficients effect in the Oaxaca decomposition methodology. The results obtained are interpreted in light of the poor but efficient hypothesis.     

IMPACT OF CHILD QUALITY ON EARNINGS: THE PRODUCTIVITY-OF-SCHOOLING HYPOTHESIS

This paper investigates the relationship between average earnings, education (measured by years of schooling), and rates of return to education for major racial/ethnic groups in the United States. It considers the effect of including previously omitted "productivity-of-schooling" (also referred to here as "child quality") variables. An upward-sloping average education, rate-of-return-to-education profile exists for His-panics, blacks, and whites. Productivity-of-schooling (i.e., child quality) measures– including family size, family composition, ability, and parental inputs–significantly affect earnings and rates of return to education. The results here are consistent with Chiswick (1988). Conditions within the family play a larger role in determining the value of education for minority males than for white males, a conclusion of obvious interest to policymakers.     

THE EFFECTS OF SECONDARY SCHOOL QUALITY ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF EARNINGS

A number of researchers have investigated the effects of school quality on average earnings in the postschooling years. In this article we broaden the discussion to investigate whether school quality has a measurable impact at other points in the conditional earnings distribution. We find that in specifications that do not control for individual and family background characteristics there are differential effects of school resources on earnings. The most significant effects occur in the top half of the conditional earnings distribution. However, after controlling for a variety of demographic variables, much of the impact of school resources on earnings is diminished. Exceptions to this seem to be school enrollment levels and, to a lesser degree, expenditures: higher enrollments tend to raise the upper tail of the earnings distribution without a similar increase in the bottom of the distribution; the effect of expenditures is positive and significant for the 0.25 quantile and the median.     

北京市下岗职工的再就业分析

该文利用独自收集到的有关北京市下岗职工的样本数据,分析了影响下岗职工失业持续时间的原因,探讨了影响下岗职工再就业前后收入变化的原因.通过分析得出以下主要结论:第一,下岗政策虽然在一定程度上促进了劳动力市场的形成,但随着下岗职工失业持续时间的延长,下岗政策已成为阻碍劳动力市场化的因素,同时也妨碍了市场经济体制下社会失业保障体制的建立和完善.第二,为了使更多的有在传统体制下工作经历的下岗职工,尤其是大量从事过企业管理工作的下岗职工尽快地实现再就业,不仅需要对他们进行各种技能的培训,而且更需要对他们进行如何适应新的经济环境的再教育.第三,"下岗"不仅是中国经济体制转型过程中的一个特殊时期的政策,实际上也是结构性失业在中国特有经济体制中表现出来的一种特有的现象.对于这种由于产业结构变化带来的失业问题,政府有必要制定更多的积极性的失业政策.     

THE DETERMINANTS OF LATENESS: EVIDENCE FROM BRITISH WORKERS

Using a sample of male and female workers from the 1992 Employment in Britain survey, we estimate a generalised grouped zero‐inflated Poisson regression model of employees' self‐reported lateness. Lateness is higher for males, private sector workers and in service industries. Reflecting theoretical predictions from both psychology and economics, we model lateness as a function of incentives, the monitoring of, and sanctions for, lateness within the workplace, job satisfaction and attitudes to work. Various aspects of workplace incentive and disciplinary policies turn out to affect lateness; however, controlling for these, an important role for job satisfaction remains.     

OCCUPATIONAL EARNINGS BEHAVIOR AND THE INEQUALITY OF EARNINGS BY SEX AND RACE IN THE UNITED STATES*

This paper examines differences in earnings by occupations, and within occupations by sex and by race, on the basis of the 1/100 Public Use Samples of the 1960 and 1970 U.S. Population Censuses. It employs interval analysis to establish 32 categories of occupations with similar characteristics. Little relation was found between mean earnings of occupational groups and the degree of earnings inequality within them. When the figures are examined by sex, it was found that men, on average, earned over twice as much as women in both years, but women's earnings were more unequally distributed (as measured by the Gini coefficient). Women are concentrated in the traditional “female” occupations, which tend to be those at the bottom of the earnings scale, and men have a monopoly of the higher paid occupations. But mean earnings for men exceeded those for women in all occupational groups except one, even in the primarily female occupations. Standardizing first for occupational distribution and then for earnings by occupation, it was found that earnings differences between males and females within occupation had a greater impact on the overall male-female earnings ratio than did differences in occupational distribution by sex. In contrast, when the figures are examined by race, the change in occupational distribution (primarily the movement of blacks out of farming and of blacks and Spanish speakers out of personal services) was the major factor. There was also a considerable degree of earnings inequality within demographic groups. The degree of inequality was in the main reduced when the demographic groups were subdivided into occupations, but it was still substantial. Additional factors like time worked, schooling, and experience must be taken into consideration in understanding this phenomenon.