Restructuring of the US Meat Processing Industry and New Hispanic Migrant Destinations

Findings from the 2000 US Census indicate high rates of Hispanic population increase beyond urban areas and traditional immigrant‐receiving states. The diversity of new destinations raises questions about forces attracting migrants to rural areas and links between economic structural change and Hispanic population growth. Our conceptual framework applies dual labor market theory to the meat processing industry, a sector whose growing Hispanic labor force offers an illustrative case study for analyzing how labor demand influences demographic change. We document the industry's consolidation, concentration, increased demand for low‐skilled labor, and changing labor force composition over three decades. We then position meat processing within a broader analysis that models nonmetropolitan county Hispanic population growth between 1980 and 2000 as a function of changes in industrial sector employment share and nonmetro county economic and demographic indicators. We find that growth in meat processing employment exhibits the largest positive coefficient increase in nonmetro Hispanic population growth over two decades and the largest impact of all sectors by 2000.     

U.S. women at work

Women made up 43% of the U.S. labor force in 1980, up from 29% in 1950, and 52% of all women 16 and over were working or looking for work compared to 34% in 1950. The surge in women's employment is linked to more delayed marriage, divorce, and separation, women's increased education, lower fertility, rapid growth in clerical and service jobs, inflation, and changing attitudes toward "woman's place." Employment has risen fastest among married women, especially married mothers of children under 6, 45% of whom are now in the labor force. Some 44% of employed women now work fulltime the year round, but still average only $6 for every $10 earned by men working that amount. This is partly because most women remain segregated in low paying "women's jobs" with few chances for advancement. Among fulltime workers, women college graduates earn less than male high school dropouts. Working wives were still spending 6 times more time on housework than married men in 1975 and working mothers of preschool children are also hampered by a severe lack of daycare facilities. Children of working women, however, appear to develop normally. Equal employment opportunity and affirmative action measures have improved the climate for working women but not as much as for minorities. The federal income tax and social security systems still discriminate against 2 income families. Woman's position in the U.S. labor force should eventually improve with the inroads women are making in some male-dominated occupations and gains in job experience and seniority among younger women who now tend to stay in the labor force through the years of childbearing and early childrearing, unlike women in the 1950s and 1960s.     

促进少数民族大学生公平就业的临时法律措施的探讨——以“社会排斥”理论为分析视角

用工偏好、文化差异、资源匮乏是影响少数民族大学生就业排斥的突出因素,保障既定政策实施所形成的制度排斥是影响其平等就业的法律障碍。宪法平等原则要求禁止基于不合理区别的就业歧视,在少数民族大学生面临社会资本缺乏、就业竞争力落后与社会固有偏见等客观事实的情况下,应当将保障该群体获得必要的公平就业岗位纳入巩固平等团结互助和谐的社会主义民族关系法律保障机制,并在国家公务员考录、事业单位和国企招聘中采取配额录取等临时法律措施。     

Changing educational inequalities in india in the context of affirmative action

Indian society suffers from substantial inequalities in education, employment, and income based on caste and ethnicity. Compensatory or positive discrimination policies reserve 15% of the seats in institutions of higher education and state and central government jobs for people of the lowest caste, the Scheduled Caste; 7.5% of the seats are reserved for the Scheduled Tribe. These programs have been strengthened by improved enforcement and increased funding in the 1990s. This positive discrimination has also generated popular backlash and on-the-ground sabotage of the programs. This paper examines the changes in educational attainment between various social groups for a period of nearly 20 years to see whether educational inequalities have declined over time. We use data from a large national sample survey of over 100,000 households for each of the four survey years--1983, 1987-1988, 1993-1994, and 1999-2000--and focus on the educational attainment of children and young adults aged 6-29. Our results show a declining gap between dalits, adivasis, and others in the odds of completing primary school. Such improvement is not seen for Muslims, a minority group that does not benefit from affirmative action. We find little improvement in inequality at the college level. Further, we do not find evidence that upper-income groups, the so-called creamy layer of dalits and adivasis, disproportionately benefit from the affirmative action programs at the expense of their lower-income counterparts.     

Underemployment and economic disparities among minority groups

This article examines the interracial/ethnic differences in the United States in labor force positions among Puerto Ricans, blacks, Mexicans, Cubans, Chinese, and Japanese. The analysis is based on the Labor Utilization Framework developed by Hauser, Sullivan, Clogg, and others and the 1980 US Census data. Our results show that these minority groups differ in the ways in which they are utilized in the labor Iorce and that differential economic consequences are associated with interracial/ethnic differences in labor force utilization. In general, over 40 percent of the members of each of the minority groups are underemployed in the labor market in one way or another, though the ways in which they are underemployed vary. In particular, blacks and Puerto Ricans are hardest hit by labor force nonparticipation and by high rates of sub-unemployment and unemployment. Mexicans do not seem to be particularly hard hit by joblessness, but they fall disproportionately in categories of partial or low-wage employment. Chinese are most disadvantaged in adequate employment, but this disadvantage seems to be offset by high rates of low-wage employment and occupational mismatch. Cubans and Japanese have a relatively higher rate of adequate employment than other groups, and, at the same time, they manage to bypass the disadvantages of joblessness through occupational mismatch. These patterns of interracial/ethnic disparities persist in the labor market even after controlling for education and age. Another significant finding is that some forms of underemployment offer fewer disadvantages than others. Occupational mismatch, for example, may be an effective way to bring about substantial positive economic consequences.     

Determinants of male labor mobility

This study is concerned with male labor mobility in 84 urban labor markets. Mobility studies have frequently used employment variables to approximate differential labor demands and to explain mobility. It would seem that supply factors, as well as demand factors, could exert an influence on mobility. To assess the influence of supply factors, new labor force entrants and withdrawals, along with labor demand variables, were regressed against gross in- and out-migration rates. The results confirmed the hypothesis that labor mobility is substantially influenced by the economic and demographic characteristics of the urban labor market. Higher rates of in-migration were found in regions with higher rates of new employment opportunities. Where the demographic characteristics of the labor market result in larger labor supplies, out-migration rates were found to be higher and in-migration rates lower. Labor seems quite sensitive to differential labor market conditions and would appear to flow toward markets where an economic advantage lies. One interesting interpretation of the negative association between in-migration and wages is that employment opportunities may expand more rapidly in low-wage sectors, perhaps in the nonmanufacturing sector, thereby providing job opportunities which attract labor into the region.     

Explaining changes in married mothers’ employment over time

Employment of married mothers with preschool children rose dramatically between 1971 and 1990. Using CPS data, we find that about one-fifth of the increase in labor supply can be attributed to changes in mothers’ demographic characteristics (age, education, and number of children). Changes in the earnings opportunities of new mothers and their husbands explain another one-fifth of the growth in employment. Over the two decades, infants up to three months old became less of a barrier to employment, while women’s labor supply became more sensitive to their own earnings opportunities and less sensitive to those of their husbands.     

Integrating Census Data to Support a Motion for Change of Venue

This applied demography case study illustrates the practical application of demographic concepts and methods to an issue facing the court. We show how census data can be used to support a legal motion for a change of venue. “Change of venue,” the legal term for moving a trial to a new location, usually is sought to avoid prejudice against one of the parties to a lawsuit. The case study will interest demographic practitioners, and it can be used as an instructional case in teaching applied demography: students can replicate it using data for any particular pair of populous metropolitan communities. By doing so, students would gain proficiency working with Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) household records—and the person records within household records—to identify and categorize family and nonfamily relationships among household members, and practical experience translating legal issues into questions that can be answered empirically using American Community Survey (ACS) data.     

中国农业“人口红利”正在消失——基于随机前沿模型的检验

本文运用了随机前沿分析方法,根据全国三十个省、直辖市和自治区1990—2009年的省级面板数据对中国农业劳动力的利用率进行了估算。主要估算结果包括：1、中国农业劳动力利用率增长显著,从1990年全国平均68．1％上升到2009年全国平均84％。这说明我国农业劳动力虽仍有剩余,但向其他产业转移空间已经不大。如果延续目前劳动力利用率的增长速度,“人口红利”对经济增长的推动作用将在几年内消失;2、各地区的劳动力利用率及其变动趋势有明显差异,表明不同地区对“人口红利”的贡献有所不同：3、在1990—2009年期间中国农业产出的平均就业弹性趋近于零。     

Efficiency and equity as goals for contemporary U.S. immigration policy

As the United States has entered its postindustrial stage of economic development, mass immigration has again become a distinguishing feature of the U.S. economy. In all of its diverse forms, immigration presently accounts for anywhere from one-quarter to one-third of the annual growth of the U.S. labor force. By the turn of the 21st century, it could conceivably comprise all of such growth.Immigration is the one aspect of population and labor force growth that public policy should be able to shape and control. Unfortunately, however, the extant public policies that govern the size and composition of the immigrant and refugee flows are largely unrelated to emerging economic considerations.The revival of mass immigration is not taking place in a vacuum. Indeed, it appears that the labor market is being radically transformed. The demand for labor is increasingly favoring those workers with skill and education. There are diminishing needs for job seekers without these human capital endowments. On the labor supply side, it is unfortunately the case that the United States already has a significant number of adults who are ill-prepared for many jobs that are being created.To assist in this effort to enhance efficiency, immigration policy should be flexible. It should be capable of responding to changing domestic economic conditions. Currently, the nation's immigration policy is dominated by political motivations that give priority to family reunification and humanitarian goals. Immigration can be a short run means to provide skilled and educated workers to fill critical worker shortages. But in the long run, equity considerations derived from the nation's multiracial and multicultural character of the labor force also come into play. It is imperative that citizen workers be prepared for the high quality jobs in the growth industries of its postindustrial economy. Immigration must not inhibit market pressures from encouraging employers to provide better opportunities for training and employment of citizens.The obverse is also true. It is essential that immigration does not provide only workers who can be employed in the declining occupations and industries. With a sizeable adult illiteracy problem already, the nation can ill-afford to increase the pool of unskilled and poorly educated workers, which increases the competition among such workers for the shrinking number of jobs available to them.     

基于人口红利视角的大学生就业问题研究

人口红利对我国经济增长起到了重要作用。本文从人口红利的视角对就业难与用工荒并存的现象进行了分析,从劳动力市场、产业结构、专业设置、就业理念等不同层面揭示出产生就业难与用工荒的影响因素,提出社会层面要打破劳动力市场分割、国家层面进行产业结构调整、学校层面进行专业调整、学生方面则要进行观念调整等多种措施。这些措施不仅可有效解决就业难与用工荒的问题,而且还可因制度变革获得内涵式人口红利,实现社会经济的增长。     

浅析中国人口红利及其兑现途径

本文介绍了人口红利的概念及其形成过程,并通过对中国人口出生率、死亡率及人口负担系数变化的分析,说明人口转变使中国从20世纪90年代开始享受人口红利,揭示了人口红利即将消失的趋势;通过分析我国自进入人口红利期以来的人口红利兑现状况,提出要最大化地兑现余下不多的人口红利,将潜在的机遇转换为现实的经济增长和财富积累,需要实现就业充分、就业结构的优化和劳动生产率的提高。     

二元经济结构下的人口红利及其实现

本文介绍了人口红利的概念及其实现条件。通过对中国人口年龄结构和经济环境变化的分析 ,论证了我国人口视窗开启的时间 ,分析了过去人口红利未能充分兑现的原因。在此基础上 ,提出了在我国二元经济结构下兑现人口红利的途径是通过转移农村剩余劳动力 ,一方面利用城镇经济发展机会解决农村就业问题 ,另一方面延缓城镇人口老龄化 ,延长人口视窗开放时间 ,实现经济再次飞跃发展。完成劳动力的顺利转移需要政府在建设城乡间统一公平的劳动力市场上发挥重要作用。     

民族地区农村公共产品供给与农村劳动力转移研究——以新疆为例

农村公共产品供给是影响农村劳动力就业、收入与转移的重要原因。新疆农村劳动力结构中少数民族居多且聚居。主要从事第一产业，剩余劳动力规模巨大。新疆农村劳动力收入水平普遍偏低，仅能维持基本生存，基本无法保障其发展权实现。新疆城乡居民收入差距不断扩大，2007年基尼系数则达到0．4604，突破了公认的警戒线。由于少数民族农村劳动力的素质低。其转移仍较为困难。本文从农村基础设施建设不足、教育投入不足等角度分析了农村公共产品供给不足对农村劳动力就业、收入与转移的制约。并提出了改善上述状况的若干思考。     

Employment gains and wage declines: The erosion of black women’s relative wages since 1980

Public policy initiatives in the 1950s and 1960s, including Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity law, helped mitigate explicit discrimination in pay, and the expansion of higher education and training programs have advanced the employment fortunes of many American women. By the early 1980s, some scholars proclaimed near equity in pay between black and white women, particularly among young and highly skilled workers. More recent policy initiatives and labor market conditions have been arguably less progressive for black women’s employment and earnings: through the 1980s, 1990s, and the first half of the 2000s, the wage gap between black and white women widened considerably. Using data from the Current Population Survey Merged Outgoing Rotation Group (CPS-MORG), this article documents the racial wage gap among women in the United States from 1979 to 2005. We investigate how demographic and labor market conditions influence employment and wage inequality among black and white women over the period. Although shifts in labor supply influence the magnitude of the black-white wage gap among women, structural disadvantages faced by black women help explain the growth in the racial wage gap.     

1991年以来俄罗斯的中国移民构成分析

苏联解体后,俄罗斯境内的中国移民规模逐渐增大,随着俄罗斯经济社会的变化,中国移民的构成也变得更加多样和复杂。对俄罗斯边境地区四个州的中国移民情况调查表明,中国移民群体在移民类型、目的、法律地位、地区来源和去向、技术水平和行业分布等构成方面呈现出一定的特点。虽然中国的劳动移民在整体上还没有对俄罗斯劳动力市场和人口就业领域产生关键性的影响,但在俄罗斯东部,特别是在贸易、建筑业和农业等领域,移民的作用日益重要。     

Veteran Status,Income, and Intergenerational Mobility Across Three Cohorts of American Men

Existing research linking prior military employment with labor market outcomes has focused on comparing the relative income of veterans and nonveterans. However, people who join the armed forces are uniquely selected from the broader population, and the form and direction of selectivity has shifted over time, with differential enlistment rates by race, region, and socioeconomic status. Understanding changes in the demographic composition of enlistees and veterans has significant import for the study of social mobility, particularly given changes in the occupational structure since the mid-twentieth century and wage stagnation well into the new millennium. Furthermore, labor market polarization and increases in educational attainment since WWII raise additional concerns about the social origins of military personnel and their occupational trajectories after discharge. Using data from the National Longitudinal Surveys, we investigate how social background is linked to both income and occupational mobility among veterans from three cohorts of American men: World War II, Vietnam, and the All-Volunteer Force. We find few benefits for veterans, for either income or intergenerational occupational mobility, once social background is controlled, suggesting that selection into the armed forces largely governs outcomes in the civilian labor market. Our findings have significant importance for understanding civilian labor market outcomes and trajectories of social mobility during distinct phases of military staffing.     

Gauging Hispanic voting strength

How a minority group's demographic presence in a district translates into a presence among the voters in that district is a matter of growing importance to political scientists and courts. This paper examines technical problems in measuring the concentration of Hispanic voting strength among the eligible voters in an election district. We document and analyze several limitations with existing demographic data in localities where a minority has a distinctive citizenship, ethnic, and age makeup. Our findings show how different measurement techniques may distort or clarify one's view of local Hispanic voting strength. County-wide measures of age and citizenship have a generic limitation: using such measures to infer the character of particular county sub-areas may falsely inflate the apparent voting strength of Hispanics. Other specific limitations relate to (1) the use of voting-age population (or self-reported voting-age citizens) in gauging the actual concentration of Hispanic registrants in an area and (2) the definition of Hispanic itself.     

Child poverty and changes in child poverty

This article offers a cross-country overview of child poverty, changes in child poverty, and the impact of public policy in North America and Europe. Levels and changes in child poverty rates in 12 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries during the 1990s are documented using data from the Luxembourg Income Study project, and a decomposition analysis is used to uncover the relative role of demographic factors, labor markets, and income transfers from the state in determining the magnitude and direction of the changes. Child poverty rates fell noticeably in only three countries and rose in three others. In no country were demographic factors a force for higher child poverty rates, but these factors were also limited in their ability to cushion children from adverse shocks originating in the labor market or the government sector. Increases in the labor market engagement of mothers consistently lowered child poverty rates, while decreases in the employment rates and earnings of fathers were a force for higher rates. Finally, there is no single road to lower child poverty rates. Reforms to income transfers intended to increase labor supply may or may not end up lowering the child poverty rate.     

Measuring Inequality of Opportunity for the Backward Communities: Regional Evidence from the Indian Labour Market

The affirmative action policy for socially and economically backward communities in employment has been a debated issue in India. In this context, this paper aims to analyze the level of inequality by distinguishing between ‘circumstance’ and ‘effort’ factors in the Roemer’s framework on equality of opportunity. We measure inequality of opportunities due to two circumstances: caste and religion. Our empirical analysis, at state-level, utilizes a recent household survey data, which provides information related to efforts as well as circumstances of workers. The paper estimated inequality in the labour market and then decomposed it to know the circumstances that cause income inequality. Our estimates indicated that inequality and inequality of opportunity is substantially higher in India. Specifically, the outcome of our analysis evidently indicated that the socially backward communities do have economically disadvantageous position in some of the Indian states. However, the degree of circumstances based on inequality varies to a great extent among the states. Therefore, we suggest that the country does not need a nation-level affirmative action policy instead a state-level policy could be more appropriate as the intensity of the problem differ significantly among the Indian states.