Half the power,half the income and half the glory,the use of microeconomic theory in women's emancipation research

Summary Major fields of economic research to understand the development of women's integration into the economy and women's economic independence can be categorized into three main groups. First, theories that attempt to explain wage and earnings differences according to gender; second, theories that attempt to explain the division of work within the family, and third, theories that attempt to explain the determination of fertility and the combination of work and motherhood. This paper offers a review of these three areas of neo-classical theory as well as an evaluation as to what extent the theories are adequate to answer the questions of women's emancipation research.This article is a revised version of my inaugural speech held on May 30th, 1990, at the official assumption of the chair of Labour market issues with special attention to women's emancipation, at the University of Amsterdam. Comments on earlier drafts have been received by Marga Bruyn-Hundt, Joop Hartog, Jan Hoem, Henriëtte Maassen van den Brink, Notburga Ott, Hettie Pott-Buter, Jolande Sap, Kea Tijdens, the participants of the demographic colloquium at Stockholm University, and the editor ofDe Economist.     

Fertility projection based on birth order data--a Swedish approach

"The decreasing fertility rates in Sweden during the 1970s can be explained as postponement of childbearing. An increasingly larger part of each generation has chosen to bear children at a late age, after education and some years of occupational work. As a consequence, the yearly age-specific rates will, in years to come, change systematically towards relatively high rates for women in the second half of the fertile period; changes which are important in population projections. To predict the future rates a model based on birth order data and assumptions about the final family size is used. The model and its application in the 1989 projection of the Swedish population is discussed in the paper. Alternative projections and the assumptions behind the alternatives are specified."     

A COMPARISON OF PERFORMANCE INDICATORS FOR TRAINING AND ENTERPRISE COUNCILS IN THE UK

ABSTRACT ** : The use of performance indicators for the evaluation and comparison of efficiency in service provision in the public and related sectors of the economy is continuously developing. While they often represent a step forward, to the extent that they focus attention on the objectives of the organization in question, it is frequently suspected that they fail to take into account non-controllable environmental factors. To do so requires multivariate techniques of analysis. This paper compares the results of three such methods with the raw performance indicators. It confirms the importance of non-controllable factors but also shows that different multivariate methods give results which do not always agree. Understanding the properties of different approaches is essential in drawing conclusions about performance.