Smoking,seat belts,and other risky consumer decisions: Differences by gender and race

Using data from a large national survey, this paper documents substantial differences by gender and race in smoking behavior, seat belt use, preventative dental care measured by teeth brushing and flossing, exercise, and whether the individual checks his or her blood pressure. White women are the most protective of their health, while black males are the least likely to take health-enhancing actions. However, the racial gap in safety behavior narrows considerably or reverses after controlling for demographic, human capital, and labor market characteristics that affect safety choices. On the other hand, the safety gap by gender increases after controlling for characteristics.     

Analyzing the gender pay gap

Empirical research on gender pay gaps has traditionally focused on the role of gender-specific factors, particularly gender differences in qualifications and differences in the treatment of otherwise equally qualified male and female workers (i.e., labor market discrimination). This paper explores the determinants of the gender pay gap and argues for the importance of an additional factor, wage structure, the array of prices set for labor market skills and the rewards received for employment in favored sectors. Drawing on our previous work we illustrate the impact of wage structure by presenting empirical results analyzing its effect on international differences in the gender gap and trends over time in the gender differential in the U.S.     

The Return on Women''s Human Capital and the Role of Male Attitudes Toward Working Wives

A BSTRACT . This study empirically investigates women's work interruption behavior in Taiwan and this behavior's influence on women's earnings. The most striking finding from our analysis of women's work history patterns is that a husband's negative attitude toward a working wife will more greatly discourage his wife from attaching to the labor market than will the presence of young children in the family. Thus, it is critical to educate men to give up their traditional attitudes toward gender roles in order to raise the female labor force participation rate in Taiwan. As to the effect of work interruption on earnings, a depreciation rate of 2.8% is found for women with at least a high-school level of education, while no penalty of foregone experience is shown for less-educated women. Since this depreciation effect may discourage women from re-entering the labor market, government programs encouraging self-employment should be helpful, as self-employed women find it easier to overcome the conflict between family obligations and work needs.     

Why is an elite undergraduate education valuable? Evidence from Israel

In this paper we compare the labor market performance of Israeli students who graduated from one of the leading universities, Hebrew University (HU), with those who graduated from a professional undergraduate college, College of Management Academic Studies (COMAS). Our results support a model in which employers have good information about the quality of HU graduates and pay them according to their ability, but in which the market has relatively little information about COMAS graduates. Hence, high-skill COMAS graduates are initially treated as if they were the average COMAS graduate, who is weaker than a HU graduate, and consequently earn less than HU graduates. However, over time the market differentiates among them so that after several years of experience, COMAS and HU graduates with similar entry scores have similar earnings. Our results are therefore consistent with the view that employers use education information to screen workers but that the market acquires information fairly rapidly.     

The effect of match quality and specific experience on career decisions and wage growth

This paper constructs and estimates a career decision model where individuals search for both careers and firms that are a good match for their idiosyncratic skills using the NLSY79. It departs from previous papers in that career mobility decisions and participation decisions are explicitly modeled. I find substantial returns to career-specific experience. However, college graduates' wage grows little through career-match upgrading, which results in a lower incidence of career changes than high school graduates. The finding suggests that college graduates learn about their suitable careers before they enter a labor market.     

TRADE LIBERALIZATION,LABOR DEMAND SHIFTS AND EARNINGS INEQUALITY IN SINGAPORE

This article investigates the relative wage between skilled and low skilled labor in a small open economy with traditionally few labor market rigidities. It looks at the role of relative skills demand and supply in determining skills premium and explores the extent to which trade liberalization affects the skills wage gap. Indications are that greater openness is linked to higher labor demand elasticity and/or technological progress. The evidence also suggests that rapid acceleration in labor demand for skills and trade liberalization has widened the wage gap between skilled and low skilled labor. This result persists regardless of industry type.     

The long-term labor market consequences of graduating from college in a bad economy

This paper studies the labor market experiences of white-male college graduates as a function of economic conditions at time of college graduation. I use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth whose respondents graduated from college between 1979 and 1989. I estimate the effects of both national and state economic conditions at time of college graduation on labor market outcomes for the first two decades of a career. Because timing and location of college graduation could potentially be affected by economic conditions, I also instrument for the college unemployment rate using year of birth (state of residence at an early age for the state analysis). I find large, negative wage effects of graduating in a worse economy which persist for the entire period studied. I also find that cohorts who graduate in worse national economies are in lower-level occupations, have slightly higher tenure and higher educational attainment, while labor supply is unaffected. Taken as a whole, the results suggest that the labor market consequences of graduating from college in a bad economy are large, negative and persistent.     

Heterogeneous effects of child disability on maternal labor supply: Evidence from the 2000 US Census

Previous research has documented a negative relationship between child disability and maternal labor supply. Because of data limitations, most studies in this literature use broad measures of disability, which may obscure important differences among children with limiting health conditions. This paper presents new evidence on the labor supply of women with disabled children, exploiting disability information provided by 2000 US Census. This large nationally representative sample allows us to test for differences across different types of disabling conditions. We find that accounting for this heterogeneity in conditions is important. Using a broad definition of disability results in small differences between women with and without a disabled child. When we use a more detailed classification, we find larger labor supply reductions for mothers of children with physical disabilities or limitations in their ability to care for themselves. There is less evidence that having a child with either mental or emotional limitations or a sensory impairment is negatively related to employment or weekly hours. We also test for heterogeneous effects related to child age and maternal education. We find no clear pattern with respect to age and some evidence that the relationship between child disability and maternal labor supply is stronger for less educated mothers.     

Can educational expansion improve income inequality? Evidences from the CHNS 1997 and 2006 data

Rapid education expansion and rising income inequality are two striking phenomena occurring in China during the transitional period. Using the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) data collected in 1997 and 2006, this paper studies how education affects individual earnings during the transitional process. We find that education accounts for only a small fraction of the personal earnings and income gap between different groups. We analyze the underlying mechanism of the impact of education on earning. More educated people tend to enter state-owned sectors, have a low probability of changing jobs in the labor market and work less time; all of these will have a pronounced impact on earning and income inequality. Quantile regression analysis shows that the low-income group's education return rate is lower, which helps little in narrowing the income gap. We decompose the earning gap into four factors: population effect, price effect, labor choice effect and unobservable effect. In explaining the earning gap in China, the price effect is more important than the population effect. The labor choice effect is also significant. We conclude that increasing educational expenditure with no complementary measures such as reforming the education system and establishing a competitive labor market helps less in reducing income inequality.     

Accounting for labor demand effects in structural labor supply models

When assessing the effects of policy reforms on the labor market, most studies only focus on labor supply. The interaction of supply and demand is not explicitly modeled, which might lead to biased estimates of potential labor market outcomes. This paper proposes a straightforward method to remedy this shortcoming. We use information on firms' labor demand behavior and feed them into a structural labor supply model, completing the partial analysis of the labor market on the microdata level. We show the performance and relevance of our extension by introducing a pure labor supply side reform, the workfare concept, in Germany and simulating the labor market outcome of the reform. We find that demand effects offset about 25% of the positive labor supply effect of the policy reform.     

企业员工流动的讨价还价模型研究

目前,针对于企业员工的流动行为争议比较多,主要的观点是认为企业员工的流动会给雇主造成损失,违反了契约合意,所以应该加以限制。本文的分析表明,流动行为是企业员工在劳动力市场上的理性选择行为,是受到多种因素影响下的权衡过程。企业员工的流动行为能促进劳动力市场的效率,增强人职匹配质量,是一种互惠行为。所以,促进由市场机制自行调节的企业员工流动,对于整个社会及企业员工本身都是有利的。     

The dynamic effects of health on the labor force transitions of older workers

This paper addresses the interplay between health and labor market behavior in the later part of the working life. We use the longitudinal Health and Retirement Survey to analyze the dynamic relationship between health and alternative labor force transitions, including labor force exit, job change and application for disability insurance. Specifically, we examine how the timing of health shocks affects labor force behavior. Controlling for lagged values of health, poor contemporaneous health is strongly associated with labor force exit in general and with application for disability insurance in particular. At the same time, our evidence suggests that controlling for contemporaneous health, poor lagged health is associated with continued participation. Thus, it appears that not just poor health, but declines in health help explain retirement behavior. We conclude that modeling health in a dynamic, longitudinal framework offers important new insights into the effects of poor health on the labor force behavior of older workers.     

Unobserved selection heterogeneity and the gender wage gap

Selection correction methods usually make assumptions about selection itself. In the case of gender wage gap estimation, those assumptions are especially tenuous because of high female nonparticipation and because selection could be different in different parts of the labor market. This paper proposes an estimator for the wage gap that allows for arbitrary and unobserved heterogeneity in selection. It applies to the subpopulation of “always employed” women, which is similar to men in labor force characteristics. Using CPS data from 1976 to 2005, I show that the gap has narrowed substantially from a ?0.521 to a ?0.263 log wage point differential for this population.     

The effect of benefits on single motherhood in Europe

This paper uses data from the eight waves of the European Community Household Panel (1994–2001) to estimate the impact of welfare benefits on the incidence of single motherhood and headship among young women across European countries. The regressions include country fixed effects as well as time trends that are allowed to vary by country, to account for fixed and trending unmeasured factors that could influence both benefit levels and family formation. The analysis also accounts for individual characteristics and labor market conditions. The results suggest that benefit levels have a small but significant positive effect on the prevalence of single mothers. An increase in yearly benefits of 1000 euros is estimated to increase the incidence of single mother families by about 2 percent.     

Catching up to girls: Understanding the gender imbalance in educational attainment within race

We estimate a sequential model of schooling to assess the major contributing factors to the large gender imbalance in educational attainment within racial groups. First, we find that differences between males and females in measures of early behavior account for the majority of the gender gap for each racial group. Second, we show that black males have the largest response to improvements in family background characteristics, such that equalizing the distribution of family background characteristics for black and white youths reduces the gender gap in college enrollment among black youth by 50%.     

Balancing family and work: The effect of cash benefits for working mothers

The aim of this paper is to measure the potential effect of a family policy introduced in Spain in 2003 that provides working mothers with a monthly cash benefit of 100 euros per child aged under 3 years. We explore the effect of the policy on eligible women's labour market participation. In the tradition of the policy evaluation literature we use a difference-in-differences-in-differences (DDD) estimation approach. Our results support a small but significant positive effect of the policy. We find that since the implementation of the policy the labour market participation rate for mothers of children aged under 3 has risen by 3 percentage points compared to the rate for non-policy-eligible females. This represents 5% of their average labour market participation in 2002, the year before the policy was implemented. This overall policy effect is dominated by the effect of the policy among high school educated females.     

Signaling and strategically delayed promotion

The paper highlights a link between signaling behavior and strategically delayed promotion. It is argued that the presence of a signaling device has a critical impact on the pace of promotion. In an equilibrium with signaling behavior, the labor market is more segmented and the pace of promotion is faster; in the other with no signaling behavior, the labor market is less segmented and the pace of promotion is slower. We argue that the former situation corresponds to the US economy while the latter corresponds to the Japanese economy.     

Effects of Care Leave and Family Social Policy: Spotlight on the United States

Consistent with Pope Francis's efforts to eradicate social exclusion, most countries in the world have already adopted care leave policies in an effort to reduce the conflict between being an employee and being a caregiver. Care leave policies allow workers time off for family or for self‐care. Historically, care leave policies such as maternity leave are viewed as an employee benefit akin to short‐term disability leave, providing job‐protected time off for new mothers. This study reviews the literature of the short‐ and long‐run economic and societal effects of care leave policies globally, with a specific focus on care leave policies in the United States. Care leave produces positive labor market and health outcomes, including increases in leave taking, improvement in replacement wages, improvements to profitability and employee morale, increases in female workforce participation and continuity, increases in birth weight, and decreases in infant mortality. Despite positive effects, labor market inequalities such as decreases in female labor market participation rates, gender wage gaps, and occupational segregation are often promoted by care leave policies. The conflicted findings in care leave research muddle the anticipated effects of paid care leave but allow room for alternative policy recommendations.     

Education and early career outcomes of second-generation immigrants in France

We estimate a flexible reduced form dynamic model of schooling choices and labor market outcomes in France. Our analysis focuses on the comparison between second-generation immigrants and their French-natives counterparts. We show that the gap in higher education attainments between those two sub-populations is mainly explained by parents' background, and that schooling investment is the main determinant of the gap in permanent employment. After conditioning on schooling and observed characteristics, we find that ethnic origin explains less than 6% of the gap in access to permanent employment. A test of equality of counterfactual probabilities of accessing permanent employment across ethnic groups (measured at identical individual characteristics) typically fails to be rejected.     

Migration of young labor force entrants

The analysis focuses on what factors encourage or discourage migration among recent high school graduates. Youth represent an important group to study because they have the highest rates of both job and location mobility in the U.S. population. Of interest to policy-makers is the role of migration in the school-to-work transition and its more general role as a manpower allocation mechanism.

The empirical specification is based on a theoretical model of individual decision-making in Black [1]. A logit model of the probability of migration is estimated separately by elapsed time since graduation, sex, and marital status. The data source consists of the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 that has been merged with local labor market data from the 1970 decennial census. The analysis yields several insights into the determinants of migration: local labor market conditions, an individual's employment success, migration experience before and after high school graduation, and personal characteristics such as aptitude, sex, family status, school experience, and family background.