Has the Canadian labour market polarized?

We use Census and Labour Force Survey (LFS) data for the period from 1971 to 2012 to investigate whether the Canadian wage and employment structures have polarized, that is, whether wages and employment have grown more in high‐ and low‐ than in middle‐paying occupations. We find that there has been faster growth in employment in both high‐ and low‐paying occupations than those in the middle since 1981. However, up to 2005, the wage pattern reflects a simple increase in inequality with greater growth in high‐paid than middle‐paid occupations and greater growth in middle than low‐paid occupations. Since 2005, there has been some polarization but this is present only in some parts of the country and seems to be related more to the resource boom than technological change. We present results for the US to provide a benchmark. The Canadian patterns fit with those in the US and other countries apart from the 1990s when the US undergoes wage polarization not seen elsewhere. We argue that the Canadian data do not fit with the standard technological change model of polarization developed for the US.     

How and Why Has Teacher Quality Changed in Australia?

International research suggests that differences in teacher performance can explain a large portion of student achievement. Yet little is known about how the quality of the Australian teaching profession has changed over time. Using consistent data on the academic aptitude of new teachers, we compare those who have entered the teaching profession in Australia over the past two decades. We find that the aptitude of new teachers has fallen considerably. Between 1983 and 2003, the average percentile rank of those entering teacher education fell from 74 to 61, while the average rank of new teachers fell from 70 to 62. We find that two factors account for much of the decline: a fall in average teacher pay (relative to other occupations) and a rise in pay differentials in non‐teaching occupations.     

IT‐Based Technical Change and Job Instability

We investigate the impact of IT diffusion on the stability of employment. We document the evolution of different components of job instability over a panel of 348 cities in France, from the mid‐1970s to the early 2000s. The evidence goes against the view that the diffusion of IT has spurred job instability. Yet, analysing long‐term differences in the occupational structure, we find that IT diffusion has increased the share of high‐skill occupations at the expense of low‐skill occupations. This is consistent with French firms' reliance on their internal labour market to meet the new skill requirements associated with IT diffusion.     

Wish you were here? Quasi-experimental evidence on the effect of education on self-reported attitude toward immigrants

We use European Social Survey and Labour Force Survey data from 2002 to 2012 to estimate the causal effect of years of education on European natives׳ opinion toward immigration, by exploiting the exogenous discontinuity generated by reforms in compulsory education in Europe in the 1940s through the 1990s. Our findings show that higher levels of education lead to a more positive reported attitude toward immigrants. We also investigate the mechanisms behind the effect of education on reported attitudes by evaluating both economic and non-economic channels. We find that higher levels of education place individuals in occupations that are less exposed to the negative effects of migration, although not in sectors/occupations where the share of migrants is necessarily smaller, suggesting that migrants and low-educated natives may be complementary rather than substitutes in the labour market. In addition, education alters values and the cognitive assessment of the role of immigration in host societies, with a positive effect on reported attitude toward diversity and on the assessment of immigration׳s role in host countries. Our findings suggest that education as a policy instrument can increase social cohesion in societies that are subject to large immigration flows.     

Regional unemployment and human capital in transition economies1

Differences in regional unemployment in post‐communist economies are large and persistent. We show that within‐country regional variation in inherited human capital in four such economies explains the bulk of regional variation in unemployment; we explore potential explanations. Our evidence suggests that internal skill‐biased migration and the flow of foreign direct investment are not working as adjustment mechanisms but rather help explain the lack of convergence in regional unemployment rates. Although this capital and labour mobility pattern is consistent with the presence of regional skill spillovers, we find little support for this hypothesis. Instead, the observed migration pattern appears to arise from different skill‐specific adjustments to regional shocks brought about in part by labour‐market institutions such as guaranteed welfare income.     

Continuing Progress? Trends in Occupational Segregation in the United States over the 1970s and 1980s

This study uses comparable data on 470 detailed occupations from the 1970, 1980, and 1990 Censuses to analyze trends in occupational segregation in the United States in the 1980s and compare them in detail to the 1970s experience of declining segregation. We find that the trend towards reduced segregation did indeed continue into the 1980s at only a slightly slower pace. In both decades, changes in sex composition within occupations accounted for the major share of the decline in segregation (compared to changes in the mix of occupations in the economy). We also find that the pattern of changes in the sex composition of occupations and in the employment distribution of workers that produced the observed reductions in segregation were remarkably similar in each of these two periods. This similarity potentially poses some problems for the future. As women continue to enter the same areas, resegregation, which we found to have relatively moderate effects in the 1970s and 1980s, becomes an increasing possibility. Continued progress towards reducing occupational segregation requires that women succeed in entering a broader range of traditionally male occupations and/or a greater flow of men into traditionally female occupations.     

地理距离与城市间溢出效应——基于空间面板模型的经验研究

本文基于中国268个城市2003-2008年的数据,采用空间面板模型考察了地理距离因素对城市间溢出效应的影响。结果表明:城市间溢出效应随距离的增加呈现先升后降的倒U形曲线过程,最优的溢出距离出现在50公里左右;城市间的外溢效应在180公里范围内表现得最为显著,200公里以外明显减弱。这一结论为我国当前经济圈域的划分提供了依据。研究还证实了科技投入、公共服务水平、金融条件和产业结构的优化是推动中国城市体系演变的关键因素。     

Occupational and Job Mobility in the US*

We propose a new methodology to measure worker mobility across occupations and jobs in the US, building on the limited longitudinal dimension of monthly CPS data. For the period 1979–2006, we find that about 3.5% of male workers employed in two consecutive months report different three‐digit occupations. This rate is procyclical, mildly rising in the 1980s and falling after 1995. We also revise upward current estimates of aggregate job‐to‐job mobility since 1994, from 2.7% to 3.2% of employment per month. Despite extreme similarity of average levels and time‐series behavior, occupational and job mobility are only weakly correlated.     

Effect of Parental Migration on Children's Health in Rural China

Using 2003–2006 RCRE (Research Center for Rural Economy) panel data, we estimate the effect of parental migration on the health of children left behind, with a difference‐in‐differences and propensity score matching combined model. On average we do not find any significant effect on children's health; however, the effect varies among different groups. Children's health may improve as a result of parental migration in families with lower income in the base year and families with higher‐income growth rates. Furthermore, children's health may deteriorate with maternal migration but improve with longer distance of paternal migration and longer time of paternal migration. We argue that parental migration affects children's health through complex mechanisms: income increase may have a positive impact while decreased parental care may have a negative effect. The two effects seem to offset each other in rural China.     

Afro‐descendants in Peru: Do beauty and race matter in the labor market?

This is a first study about labor discrimination against Afro‐descendants in Peru. We randomly assigned Afro‐Peruvian and white surnames and photographs (subjectively beautiful, homely looking, or not photos) to 3,828 fictitious résumés, sent for unskilled, technical, and professional occupations. We find an unprecedented, sizeable beauty premium in unskilled occupations (232.5 percent), no effect of looks in technical occupations, and a beauty penalty in professional occupations (–71.3 percent). Overall, whites receive 19.37 percent more callbacks than similarly qualified Afro‐Peruvians; this racial discrimination affects only Afro‐Peruvian females, and particularly those employed in technical occupations. These results remain unaltered when we restrict the sample to those markedly “Afro” surnames. Our findings unveil different dynamics of discrimination across job categories, which tend to be overlooked by the existing literature.     

The Sources of Changes in the Occupational Segregation of Australian Women*

Earlier studies have shown that Australian women are concentrated in a narrow range of occupations and that although occupational segregation has declined during the 20th century, the rate of decline is diminishing. This study uses census data from 1891 to 1981 to analyze the sources of changes in the Duncan and Duncan segregational index. It distinguishes changes in the index due to shifts in the occupational mix of the economy, and shifts in the sex composition within specific occupations. Both effects contributed to the general decline in segregation although the composition effect was quantitatively more important.     

The selection of migrants and returnees in Romania

This paper uses census and survey data to identify the wage earning ability and the selection of recent Romanian migrants and returnees on observable characteristics. We construct measures of selection across skill groups and estimate the average and the skill‐specific premium for migration and return for three typical destinations of Romanian migrants after 1990. Once we account for migration costs, we find evidence that the selection and sorting of migrants are driven by different returns to skills in countries of destination. Our identification strategy for the effects of work experience abroad permits a cautious causal interpretation of the premium to return migration. This premium increases with migrants' skills and drives the positive selection of returnees relative to non‐migrants. Based on the compatibility of the results with rationality in the migration decisions, we simulate a rational‐agent model of education, migration and return. Our results suggest that for a source country like Romania relatively high rates of temporary migration might have positive long‐run effects on average skills and wages.     

Climatic Factors as Determinants of International Migration

We examine natural disasters and long‐run climatic factors as potential determinants of international migration, implementing a panel dataset of bilateral migration flows from 1960 to 2000. We find no direct effect of long‐run climatic factors on international migration across our entire sample. These results are robust when conditioning on origin‐country characteristics, when considering migrants returning home, and when accounting for the potential endogeneity of migrant networks. Rather, we find evidence of indirect effects of environmental factors operating through wages. We find that epidemics and miscellaneous incidents spur international migration, and there is strong evidence that natural disasters beget greater flows of migrants to urban environs.     

THE DECLINE IN MALE EMPLOYMENT IN AUSTRALIA: A COHORT ANALYSIS

We use Census data to investigate the sources of the decline in the level of employment of working age males in Australia in recent decades. Alternative measures of the male employment rate are considered before settling on two complementary measures: the full‐time employment rate and the full‐time equivalent employment rate. The latter measure weights part‐time jobs according to the fraction of a full‐time job they represent. Models of the determinants of these two employment rates are estimated using data from the Censuses conducted between 1971 and 2001. We construct a pseudo panel by ‘stacking’ the seven Census data sets ( Deaton, 1997 ; Kapteyn, et al., 2005 ). This facilitates the tracing of birth cohorts over time, in turn making it possible to control for cohort unobserved heterogeneity that may bias cross‐sectional estimates of effects of other characteristics, in particular age and year/time period. We produce evidence that a number of factors have contributed to the decline in male employment, including the decline in couple households with dependent children, growth in income taxes and welfare replacement rates and changes in the structure of labour demand away from traditionally male‐dominated industries. We also find that, all else (observable) constant, more recent birth cohorts have no lower – and possibly higher – employment rates than earlier birth cohorts.     

农民工的社会网络与职业阶层和收入:来自深圳调查的发现

本文利用2005年"深圳外来农村流动人口调查"数据,定量研究了社会网络对农民工职业阶层和收入的影响.研究发现,求职关系网络的规模、关系构成对农民工职业阶层的提升和收入的提高有正向影响,而求职网成员的职业阶层趋同性则有负向影响.本研究表明,尽管个体因素和流动因素对农民工求职结果有重要影响,但是社会网络在中国社会转型期对农民工求职具有不可忽视的作用.     

Changes in Occupational Tasks and Their Association with Individual Wages and Occupational Mobility

This study provides novel evidence on the relevance of task content changes between and within occupations to wage dynamics of occupational changers and stayers. I use individual‐level, cross‐sectional data featuring tasks performed on the job to compute a measure of proximity of job contents. Then, I merge this measure to a large‐scale panel survey to show that occupational changers experience a wage growth that is declining when the accompanying alterations in task contents are big. For occupational stayers, alterations in task contents generate a positive wage component, beyond tenure effect. However, the results are not robust with respect to the choice of proximity measure and over time.     

OCCUPATIONAL AND INDUSTRY SPECIFICITY OF HUMAN CAPITAL IN THE BRITISH LABOUR MARKET

This paper builds on the recent literature on the importance of occupational and industry experience on wages and extends Kambourov and Manovskii's (2002) study using British data. Occupational experience is estimated to make a significant contribution to wage growth, while the evidence on industry specificity is not very supportive. The second contribution of the paper is that it assesses whether there is heterogeneity in the estimated returns to work experience across one-digit industries and occupations. The findings suggest that industry and occupational experience is important for individuals in professional and managerial jobs or jobs in the banking and finance sector.     

Occupational choice and development

The rise in world trade since 1970 has been accompanied by a rise in the geographic span of control of management and, hence, also a rise in the effective international mobility of labor services. We study the effect of such a globalization of the world?s labor markets. The world?s welfare gains depend positively on the skill-heterogeneity of the world?s labor force. We find that when people can choose between wage work and managerial work, the worldwide labor market raises output by more in the rich and the poor countries, and by less in the middle-income countries. This is because the middle-income countries experience the smallest change in the factor-price ratio, and where the option to choose between wage work and managerial work has the least value in the integrated economy. Our theory also establishes that after economic integration, the high skill countries see a disproportionate increase in managerial occupations. Using aggregate data on GDP, openness and occupations from 115 countries, we find evidence for these patterns of occupational choice.     

FACTORS AFFECTING FEMALE EMPLOYMENT IN MALE‐DOMINATED OCCUPATIONS: EVIDENCE FROM THE 1990 AND 2000 CENSUS DATA

This article investigates the effects of age, marital status, number of children, and education on the probability of female presence in traditionally male‐dominated occupations using the PUMS 1990 and PUMS 2000 data. The results indicate that being married with husband present decreases the probability of female presence in traditionally male‐dominated occupations, whereas college education has changed from having a positive effect in the 1990 data to a negative effect in the 2000 data. The analysis also finds that there are significant regional variations with regard to the effects of these factors. (JEL J71, J31)     

Regional culture and adaptive behavior of physicians

We examine the possibility that regional differentiation of occupations may shed light on how professional behavior adapts to environmental change. Based on the relative prevalence of occupational categories, we defined five geographic regions within the 48 contiguous United States. 77 psychometric, demographic and cultural metrics that covaried significantly with geographic regions by ANOVA were subjected to principal component analysis (PCA), from which three primary clusters emerged. A panel of judges scored the occupations in these clusters for three primary characteristics: generation of variance (Va), reconciliation of variance with institutional procedures (Re) or implementation of standard institutional practice (Pr). By plotting composites of the clustered elements in a 3-dimensional (Va, Re, Pr) matrix, substantially overlapping regional composites emerged for psychological, cultural and occupational metrics. Based on this putative psychological and cultural differentiation of geographic regions, we asked whether adaptive change in physician??and, by extension, of other professional??behavior might be more strongly correlated with intrinsic (e.g. psychological) or extrinsic (e.g. cultural) factors. Based on significant regional differences in patient behavior and minimal regional differences in physician psychology, we suggest that extrinsic factors may play a more direct role in changing professional behavior than intrinsic factors.