|
on Labour Economics |
| By: | Toman Barsbai; Andreas Steinmayr; Christoph Winter |
| Abstract: | We analyze how economic conditions at the time of arrival affect the economic integration of family-sponsored migrants in the U.S. Our identification strategy exploits long waiting times for family-sponsored immigration visas that decouple the migration decision from economic conditions at the time of arrival. A one pp higher unemployment rate at arrival decreases annual wage income by four percent in the short run and two percent in the longer run. The loss in wage income is the result of substantial occupational downgrading, lower hourly wages, and a reduction in working hours. Family migrants who immigrate into a recession draw on migrant and family networks to mitigate the negative labor market effects. As a result, they take up occupations with higher concentrations of fellow countrypeople. They are also more likely to reside with family members, potentially reducing their geographical mobility. |
| Keywords: | Immigrant integration, family reunification, migrant networks, labor market, business cycle |
| JEL: | E32 F22 J31 J61 |
| Date: | 2022–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:inn:wpaper:2022-01&r= |
| By: | John Carter Braxton; Kyle F. Herkenhoff; Jonathan Rothbaum; Lawrence Schmidt |
| Abstract: | For whom has earnings risk changed, and why? To answer these questions, we develop a filtering method that estimates parameters of an income process and recovers persistent and temporary earnings for every individual at every point in time. Our estimation flexibly allows for first and second moments of shocks to depend upon observables as well as spells of zero earnings (i.e., unemployment) and easily integrates into theoretical models. We apply our filter to a unique linkage of 23.5m SSA-CPS records. We first demonstrate that our earnings-based filter successfully captures observable shocks in the SSA-CPS data, such as job switching and layoffs. We then show that despite a decline in overall earnings risk since the 1980s, persistent earnings risk has risen for both employed and unemployed workers, while temporary earnings risk declined. Furthermore, the size of persistent earnings losses associated with full year unemployment has increased by 50%. Using geography, education, and occupation information in the SSA-CPS records, we refute hypotheses related to declining employment prospects among routine and low-skill workers as well as spatial theories related to the decline of the Rust-Belt. We show that rising persistent earnings risk is concentrated among high-skill workers and related to technology adoption. Lastly, we find that rising persistent earnings risk while employed (unemployed) leads to welfare losses equivalent to 1.8% (0.7%) of lifetime consumption, and larger persistent earnings losses while unemployed lead to a 3.3% welfare loss. |
| Keywords: | Earnings risk; Transitory risk; Persistent risk; Technology adoption; Unemployment |
| JEL: | E24 J30 J60 |
| Date: | 2021–12–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedmoi:93489&r= |
| By: | Gustafsson, Björn Anders (University of Gothenburg); Jakobsen, Vibeke (VIVE - The Danish Centre for Applied Social Science); Mac Innes, Hanna (University of Gothenburg); Pedersen, Peder J. (Aarhus University); Österberg, Torun (University of Gothenburg) |
| Abstract: | Many European high-income countries face a rapid increase in the number of immigrants from low- and middle-income countries reaching the normal pension age. Thus, it is increasingly relevant to ask: how are older migrants from such countries faring? Here we study poverty rates and determinants of poverty among natives and persons born in Bosnia, Iran, Iraq, Yugoslavia and Turkey living in Denmark or Sweden in 2010. Income data on all such persons aged 65 to 82 living in the two destination countries are analysed. In both Denmark and Sweden, we report much higher poverty rates among the immigrants studied than among natives. Estimated probability models show that being poor is related to a person's education, family status and age, as well as year of arrival in the destination country and the labour market and his or her residential status at the age of 55. However, the labour market in the destination country at the time of arrival also matter. Persons born in Yugoslavia or Turkey who had immigrated to Denmark during the '70s and '80s were more likely to be in poverty in 2010 that their counterparts with the same characteristics who had immigrated to Sweden. |
| Keywords: | Denmark, Sweden, poverty, older immigrants |
| JEL: | I32 J14 J15 J61 |
| Date: | 2021–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp14882&r= |
| By: | Friedrich, Benjamin (Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management.); Laun, Lisa (IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy); Meghir, Costas (Yale University) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes earnings inequality and earnings dynamics in Sweden over 1985–2016. The deep recession in the early 1990s marks a historic turning point with a massive increase in earnings inequality and earnings volatility, and the impact of the recession and the recovery from it lasted for decades. In the aftermath of the recession, we find steady growth in real earnings across the entire distribution for men and women and decreasing inequality over more than 20 years. Despite the positive trend, large gender differences in earnings dynamics persist. While earnings growth for men is more closely tied to the business cycle, women face much higher volatility overall. Earnings volatility is also substantially higher among foreign-born workers, reflecting weaker labor market attachment and high risk of large negative shocks for low-income immigrants. We document an important role of social benefits usage for the overall trends and for differences across sub-populations. Higher benefits enrollment, especially for women and immigrants, is associated with higher earnings volatility. As the generosity and usage of benefit programs declined over time, we find stronger earnings growth among low-income workers, consistent with higher self-sufficiency. |
| Keywords: | Earnings inequality; earnings volatility; immigration; social insurance |
| JEL: | D31 E24 J15 J31 J61 |
| Date: | 2021–11–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2021_015&r= |
| By: | Lidia Farré; Cristina Felfe; Libertad González Luna; Patrick Schneider |
| Abstract: | Direct exposure to counter-stereotypical behaviors early in life has been put forward as a promising way to change gender norms across generations. We ask to which extent public policy designed to promote counter-stereotypical behavior among parents influences gender norms for their children. Specifically, we combine the national-level introduction of paternity leave in Spain with a unique, large-scale lab-in-the-field experiment conducted with children born around the policy change. We provide causal evidence that, at age 12, children whose fathers were eligible for paternity leave exhibit more egalitarian attitudes towards gender roles and are more supportive of mothers and fathers being equally engaged in the labor market and in the home. They also engage more in counter-stereotypical day-to-day behaviors and expect to deviate from the male-breadwinner model in the future. |
| Keywords: | Gender role attitudes, paternity leave, social norms |
| JEL: | J08 J13 J16 J18 |
| Date: | 2022–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:upf:upfgen:1812&r= |
| By: | Simone MORICONI (IESEG School of Management, Univ. Lille, CNRS, UMR 9221 - LEM - Lille Économie Management, F-59000 Lille, France); Núria RODRIGUEZ-PLANAS (City University of New York, Queens College and The Graduate Center, and Barnard College at Columbia University) |
| Abstract: | Using individual-level data from the European Social Survey, we study the relevance of gender norms in accounting for the motherhood employment gap across 186 European NUTS2 regions (over 29 countries) for the 2002-2016 period. The gender norm variable is taken from a question on whether “men should have more right to a job than women when jobs are scarce” and represents the average extent of disagreement (on a scale 1 to 5) of women belonging to the “grandmothers” cohort. We address the potential endogeneity of our gender norms measure with an index of the degree of reproductive health liberalization when grandmothers were 20 years old. We also account for the endogeneity of motherhood with the level of reproductive health liberalization when mothers were 20 years old. We find a robust positive association between progressive beliefs among the grandmothers’ cohort and mothers’ likelihood to work while having a small child (0 to 5 years old) relative to similar women without children. No similar association is found among men. Our analysis underscores the role of gender norms and maternal employment, suggesting that non-traditional gender norms mediate on the employment gender gap mainly via motherhood. |
| Keywords: | : gender norms, motherhood employment gap, instrumenting for motherhood |
| JEL: | J16 J22 |
| Date: | 2021–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ies:wpaper:e202112&r= |
| By: | Eliason, Marcus (IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy) |
| Abstract: | The first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures enforced to combat it have led to a decline in economic activity unprecedented since the Great Depression. Worldwide, millions, and yet millions, of people have lost their jobs–either temporarily or permanently. At first, the COVID-19 pandemic was characterised as a leveller, but since then it has become increasingly clear that it is nothing of the sort. Using aggregated data on jobseekers registered with the Swedish Public Employment Service I document how the inflow, outflow, and stock of jobseekers evolved for various demographic groups during the first wave of the pandemic. Similar to previous studies, I find that already disadvantaged groups, such as the younger and to some extent also the foreign born were more adversely affected during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, that is not to say that other groups were not affected, and contrary to many of these same studies I do not find that women were disproportionally affected. |
| Keywords: | COVID-19; unemployment; jobseekers |
| JEL: | I12 I18 J63 J64 |
| Date: | 2021–10–29 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2021_014&r= |
| By: | Josep Amer-Mestre and Agnès Charpin |
| Abstract: | Empirical evidence shows that men and women hold different types of occupations. It is however difficult to disentangle the channels via which these differences come about because observed equilibrium outcomes arise from preferences of agents on both sides of the market, and from search and matching frictions. This paper relies on a unique labour market setting allowing to isolate the supply side factors driving gender-based occupational segregation. We find that female and male medical students facing the same pool of available positions make drastically different occupational decisions. Women prefer occupations characterised by lower expected earnings and time requirements, less competition, and a higher social contribution. Using individual data containing both revealed and stated preferences for residency positions, we find evidence suggesting that when constrained in their choices, women have a stronger preference for the location in which they are going to live than their male counterparts. |
| Keywords: | Occupational segregation, Gender, Labour market, Job attributes |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eui:euiwps:eco2022/01&r= |
| By: | Juan C. Córdoba; Anni T. Isojärvi; Haoran Li |
| Abstract: | U.S. labor markets are increasingly diverse and persistently unequal between genders, races and ethnicities, skill levels, and age groups. We use a structural model to decompose the observed differences in labor market outcomes across demographic groups in terms of underlying wedges in fundamentals. Of particular interest is the potential role of discrimination, either taste-based or statistical. Our model is a version of the Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides model extended to include a life cycle, learning by doing, a nonparticipation state, and informational frictions. The model exhibits group-specific wedges in initial human capital, returns to experience, matching efficiencies, and job separation rates. We use the model to reverse engineer group-specific wedges that we then feed back into the model to assess the fraction of various disparities they account for. Applying this methodology to 1998–2018 U.S. data, we show that differences in initial human capital, returns to experience, and job separation rates account for most of the demographic disparities; wedges in matching efficiencies play a secondary role. Our results suggest a minor aggregate impact of taste-based discrimination in hiring and an important role for statistical discrimination affecting particularly female groups and Black males. Our approach is macro, structural, unified, and comprehensive. |
| Keywords: | Search; Unemployment; Discrimination; Statistical Discrimination; Taste-Based Discrimination; Structural; Decomposition |
| JEL: | E20 J60 J70 |
| Date: | 2021–12–17 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2021-80&r= |
| By: | Frieling, Titus |
| Abstract: | This thesis employs novel datasets on patenting activity and TFP in the GDR to study the relationship between innovation and productivity. Patenting activity is chosen as a variable of interest due to its inherent link to the innovative process and high international and intertemporal comparability. No statistically significant relationship between patenting and future productivity growth is found in an analysis across 16 sectors of the GDR’s economy from 1950-1989. This result is unusual, and likely results out of the institutional framework of the GDR: firstly, it being a planned economy and the associated reduced productivity effects of innovations, and secondly, the GDR’s unique patent system which likely increased the number of patent applications while reducing their economic usefulness. By including the full breadth of the GDR’s patent stock, as well as robustly estimating the initial capital stock of the GDR, a more reliable account of both these variables can be made than was possible in previous studies. This thesis contributes to the literature through its use of new data and an adaptation of a proven empirical identification strategy to a new context. It also suggests avenues for further research on the relationship between patenting and innovation in the GDR and planned economies more widely. |
| JEL: | R14 J01 N0 |
| Date: | 2021–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:112938&r= |