Gender and Race Differences in Company Training

Using recent data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, it is found that among young workers from 1986 to 1991, there were no gender or race differentials in the likelihood of receiving training, in participation in multiple training events, or in hours of training received. White women, however, were more likely to receive more training per hour worked than white men. This gender differential appears to occur because white women are more likely to work fewer hours and to be employed in entry-level positions that are associated with greater training intensity.     

A Note on Racial Differences in Employed Male Job Search

This article examines why black males are more likely to engage in employed job search than are their white counterparts. We focus primarily on the roles that expected wages, wage growth, and job characteristics have on explaining the observed differential. Using a sample of young men from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), the results indicate that the greater propensity of blacks to engage in employed job search is the result of their desire to obtain better jobs with more agreeable working conditions.     

Gender and Piece Rates, Commissions, and Bonuses

Previous work shows that establishments with higher proportions of women are more likely to use piece rates but that individual women are less likely to receive performance pay. We present a model in which lower expected tenure and labor force attachment are positively associated with piece rates but are negatively associated with other forms of performance pay. Analysis of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) confirms that women are more likely to be paid piece rates and simultaneously less likely to be paid commissions and bonuses.     

The Health Consequences of Adverse Labor Market Events: Evidence from Panel Data

This study investigates the associations between self‐assessed adverse labor market events (experiencing problems with coworkers, employment changes, financial strain) and health. Longitudinal data are obtained from the National Epidemiological Survey of Alcohol and Related Conditions. Our findings suggest problems with coworkers, employment changes, and financial strain are associated, respectively, with a 3.1 percent (3.3 percent), 0.9 percent (0.2 percent), and 4.5 percent (5.1 percent) reduction in mental health among men (women). Associations are smaller in magnitude and less significant for physical health.     

Black Female Clerical Workers: Movement toward Equality with White Women?

This article examines the occupational mobility patterns of black and white female clerical workers from 1972 to 1980. Black women were initially concentrated in the lower-paying clerical positions and were less likely than white women to leave for better jobs in other areas. Those black women who had relatively good clerical jobs tended not to rise any further and even experienced some difficulty in maintaining their occupational status. Education and training aided occupational mobility less for black women than for white women.     

Homeownership and Child Welfare

Recent studies have concluded that homeownership is beneficial to children. This result is important because it is used to justify large government subsidies that encourage homeownership. We reexamine the results of two of the most prominent of these studies using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, Public Use Microsample, and National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data. We extend this research by controlling for residential mobility, wealth, dwelling type and vehicle ownership, as well as by using a "differences in differences" methodology to deal with possible treatment effects bias. We find that the beneficial effects of homeownership previously measured are substantially reduced or eliminated by controlling for these factors. We confirm these results using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study.     

The Impact of Post-School Joblessness on Male Black-White Wage Differentials

This study examines the employment undercurrents of the divergence in black-white wages for young males in the 1980s. By integrating school-to-work transition literature with black-white research on earnings differences, we establish a framework for linking employment during the school-to-work transition and subsequent wage differentials. We empirically confirm this link using the youth cohort of the National Longitudinal Surveys. Results suggest that the higher rates of joblessness among a subset of black youth directly translate into lower earnings for blacks and produce black-white wage divergence. Young black males with extremely high levels of joblessness during the school-to-work period face the greatest reduction in relative wages.     

Atypical Work and Employment Continuity

Atypical employment arrangements have long been criticized as offering more precarious and unstable work than regular employment. Using data from the Contingent and Alternative Employment Arrangement Supplement and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 Cohort, we determine whether workers who take such jobs rather than regular employment, or the alternative of continued job search, experience greater or lesser employment continuity. Controlling for unobserved individual heterogeneity, the advantage of regular work over atypical work and atypical work over continued joblessness dissipates.     

Earnings Growth Among Young Less-Educated Business Owners

Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), I examine the earnings patterns of young less-educated business owners and make comparisons with young less-educated wage/salary workers. Estimates from fixed-effects earnings regressions indicate that the self-employed experience faster earnings growth on average than wage/salary workers after a few initial years of slower growth. I also find some evidence suggesting that a relatively high percentage of less-educated business owners, especially men, experience either rapid earnings growth or large annual losses.     

Food consumption in Mexico: demographic and economic effects

Disaggregated demand analysis is beginning to receive increased importance in food policies for developing countries. Using household data from the 1977 Mexican Income and Expenditure Household Survey, the authors estimate the income and demographic effects on expenditures for 9 aggregate food categories. In addition, they use a probit model to explore the effect of these variables on the purchase decision for 5 high protein supplying goods. The results indicate that demographic variables, as well as income, have important effects in determining food expenditures. The authors analyze these effects and indicate the role they might play in food policy programs such as PRONAL, the National Food Programme.     

Never Say Never? Uncovering the Never‐Unionized in the United States

This paper analyses individuals who never hold a unionized job and are never represented by a union ('never-unionized'). Using 21 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 data to track individuals starting at age 15 or 16, we show that by the time workers are 40 or 41 years old, one-third of them are never-unionized, and a convex never-unionization trajectory suggests that most of them will remain never-unionized. An analysis of the demographic and labour market characteristics of the never-unionized further suggests two types of never-unionized workers — those who lack opportunities for obtaining unionized jobs and those who lack the desire to obtain unionized jobs.     

The Effects of Homeownership on Children's Outcomes: Real Effects or Self‐Selection?

This article examines whether there is a “homeownership effect” for lower‐income racial and ethnic groups who have been the target of public policies to expand homeownership. We use two different methods to account for selection, statistical matching and instrumental variable analysis; test direct and indirect (mediator) effects of homeownership on children's cognitive achievement, behavior problems and health using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and its Child Development Supplement; and replicate the main effects tests using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. We find little evidence of beneficial homeownership effects and suggest that previous analyses may have mistaken selection differences for the effect of homeownership itself.     

Unions as Facilitators of Employment Rights: An Analysis of Individuals’ Awareness of Parental Leave in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth

This study considers the role of unions and individual characteristics as facilitators of knowledge among employees concerning labor rights. Labor policy by itself is often meaningless without mechanisms that allow implementation of such policy. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), individuals that are entitled to parental leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act but are ignorant of their right were identified. Using longitudinal data from 1992 to 2002, we find that union members’ knowledge regarding their rights is better than that of nonunion members. Other individual and work characteristics are also associated with knowledge regarding parental leave rights.     

Job Mobility in Europe,Japan and the United States

Evidence about job mobility outside the United States is scarce and difficult to compare cross‐nationally because of non‐uniform data. We document job mobility patterns of college graduates in their first three years in the labour market, using unique uniform data covering 11 European countries and Japan. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we replicate the information in this survey to compare the results with the United States. We find that (a) US graduates hold more jobs than European graduates, (b) contrasting conventional wisdom, job mobility in Japan is only somewhat lower than the European average, and (c) there are large differences in job mobility within Europe.     

Are Employers Omniscient? Employer Learning About Cognitive and Noncognitive Skills

Do employers recognize noncognitive skills at the beginning of a career or is there a learning process? Does learning transfer perfectly across employers or is there a degree to which learning resets as employees change jobs throughout their careers? This paper uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 to incorporate measures of noncognitive skills into a model of symmetric employer learning described originally by Altonji and Pierret ( 2001 ) and nested in a model of asymmetric employer learning as in Schönberg ( 2007 ). I find evidence that employers reward self‐esteem, internal control, and schooling initially, while rewarding cognitive skills and motivation over time.     

Changes in the propensity of overweight US women to under-assess their body weight status

National data indicate that there was almost no change in the accuracy of body weight assessments of overweight women over the past 20 years. The accuracy in weight assessment is influenced by a number of social-demographic and economic factors; many of them have opposite effects and cancel out each other. This paper examines changes in misperception of body weight among overweight women in the United States, using data from the 1988–1994 and 1999–2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Changes in characteristics of the population, such as the increased share of Hispanics in the US population, between these two time periods explain only a small portion of the changes in the accuracy of body weight assessment. Most of the differences come from changes in the association between population characteristics and the likelihood an overweight woman underestimates her weight status. Results also indicate that overweight women who receive benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly Food Stamp Program) are consistently more likely to misperceive themselves as healthy weight or underweight than higher income overweight women.     

The Importance of Sex for the Propensity to Unionize

The paper aims to determine whether or not ceteris paribus women workers are less interested in joining trade unions than male employees by an analysis of the importance of sex for the individuaľs union membership decision. Cross-tabulations and discriminant analyses are used to examine the Work Attitudes and Histories Survey of the Social Change and Economic Life Initiative of1986. An employee's sex is revealed to be related to propensity to unionize, a finding attributable mainly to women's concentration in low-paid occupations and to the significantly lower favourability to trade unions expressed by female workers, compared with male employees.     

Teacher Unions and Black Students' Scores on College Entrance Exams

Using data from the National Assessment of Economic Education survey, this paper examines the influence of teachers' unions and students' race on college entrance examination scores. An "education production function" is estimated for a sample of white and black high school seniors. The model accounts for variations in school distrits and student inputs and controls for the self-selection nature of taking an entrance exam. The results indicate that students in unionized schools score higher on the SAT than like students in nonunion schools, ceteris paribus. Black students who attend unionized schools are estimated to score 13.11 percent above the black SAT mean. These findings suggest a positive productivity effect of collective bargaining for teachers which significantly benefits minority students.     

The Effects of Global Competition on Total Factor Productivity in U.S. Manufacturing

This paper utilizes an instrumental variables approach to investigate the relationship between growth in total factor productivity and growth in imports and exports. Empirical models are based on a sample of Census years covering the period 1977–1992, with 1986 substituted for Census year 1987. The most important finding is that export growth positively impacts growth in total factor productivity for the pooled model and for every year of the sample. Growth in imports has a positive impact on TFP for the pooled model and in two of four sample years.