Determinants of recent immigrants’ location choices: quasi-experimental evidence

This paper exploits a Danish spatial dispersal policy on refugees, which can be regarded as a natural experiment to investigate the influence of regional factors on recent immigrants’ location choices. The main push factors are lack of co-nationals and immigrants. Additional push factors are lack of rental, including social, housing and lack of institutions for qualifying education, which explain why recent immigrants are attracted to large cities. Finally, placed refugees tend to leave locations with relatively high regional unemployment, and there is indirect evidence of welfare seeking.

Fertility, child care outside the home, and pay-as-you-go social security

We examine the long-run effects of the pay-as-you-go (PAYG) social security scheme on fertility and welfare of individuals in an overlapping generations model, assuming that child-care services are available in the market. We show that the impact of a tax increase on fertility depends on the relative magnitudes of the standard intergenerational redistribution effect through the social security system, the (implicit) subsidy effect through tax-exemption of child rearing at home, and the price effect through changes in the relative price of market child care, and that if parental child-rearing time is inelastic, a tax cut could bring about a Pareto-improving allocation.

Large,But Adaptable? A Successful Population Policy and Its Long Term Effects

A restrictive population policy led to almost doubling the number of newborns from one year to another in Romania in the 1960s. Twenty years later, this large generation (of women) enters a marriage market with few eligible older mates, in a society where marriage is a must. In this article, I analyze this social experiment within the broader frame of the marriage squeeze/two sex models. Using various data from censuses and surveys, I argue that the marriage market is flexible even when is confronted with disproportionately large cohorts. If the social pressure toward marriage is strong, the marriage rates do not necessarily fall, but the mating age patterns change.

Relatively Different? How do Gender Differences in Well-Being Depend on Paid and Unpaid Work in Europe?

Absolute as well as relative hours of paid and unpaid work may influence well-being. This study investigates whether absolute hours spent on paid work and housework account for the lower well-being among women as compared to men in Europe, and whether the associations between well-being and hours of paid work and housework differ by gender attitudes and social context. Attitudes towards women’s and men’s paid work and housework obligations may influence how beneficial or detrimental it is to spend time on these activities, as may social comparison of one’s own hours to the number of hours commonly spent among similar others. A group of 13,425 women and men from 25 European countries are analysed using country fixed-effects models. The results suggest that while men’s well-being appears to be unaffected by hours of paid work and housework, women’s well-being increases with increased paid working hours and decreases with increasing housework hours. Gender differences in time spent on paid work and housework account for a third of the European gender difference in well-being and are thus one reason that women have lower well-being than men have. Gender attitudes do not appear to modify the associations between hours and well-being, but there is a tendency for women’s well-being to be higher the less housework they do compared to other women in the same family situation and country. However, absolute hours of paid work and housework appear to be more important to women’s well-being than relative hours.

Earnings mobility among Italian low-paid workers

This paper uses Italian panel data to analyse low pay transitions since the early 1990s. Results indicate that having more human capital reduces the probability of falling into low pay, but there is little impact on raising exit rates from low pay. Human capital effects are found to be larger for women than for men. There is considerable state dependence: the experience of low pay raises the probability of subsequent low pay episodes. Also, there is substantial unobserved heterogeneity associated with factors such as initial conditions, mobility out of the earnings distribution and educational attainment.

A dynamic general equilibrium analysis of the political economy of public education

The primary objective of this paper is to highlight the distinct roles of altruism and of self-interest in the political determination of a public education policy. I assess the relative importance of three factors in the determination of the equilibrium level of this policy: altruism, the impact of public funding of education on social security benefits, and its impact on factor prices. I then focus on the impact of implementing a social security system on the equilibrium levels of education funding and on welfare. I find that although in the benchmark economy, the presence of social security might generate support for public funding of education, its overall effect on the well-being of individuals is negative for any level of social security taxation.

Parental time and working schedules

This paper investigates the effects of working schedules and of other characteristics (including family composition) on the time devoted by mothers and fathers to different activities with children in Canadian households, by using 1992 and 1998 Canadian Time Use Surveys. Switching regression models and models with selection allow us to simultaneously model labour market participation, type of work schedules and allocation of parental time. Working time has a negative and very significant effect on parental time. Hours worked during the day or at night exert a similar effect on parental time, but the impact of hours worked in the evening is by far larger. Time worked in the evening mainly decreases leisure and social activities with children.

The Differentiation of Social Demands in Europe. The Social Basis of the European Models of Capitalism

This paper tests the impact of various determinants of the preference for two key elements of the European social models: redistribution and trade unions, using individual data from the first round of the European Social Survey. The basic hypothesis is that the main determinant of an individual’s support for these elements of the European models is the social position of the individual in terms of income, status and risks attached to their labour market insertion. The paper also considers the relative importance of less ‘materialist’ influences such as religion or other cultural determinants. The estimations show that ‘materialist’ determinants are by far the most important influences on individual preferences, contrary to what most social theories of modernisation contend.

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Personality traits and gender-specific income expectations in Dutch higher education

In this article we examine gender differences in income expectations of students in higher education. We found quite large gender differences. Men and women differ significantly in the income they expect to earn at the top of their career. We examined how much personality traits contribute to explain gender differences in income expectations, and to what extent personality typologies can add to insights about earnings potential derived from human capital theory. The research shows that personality does affect expected income, that impact goes beyond personality’s indirect effects, which are conveyed largely through gender differences and students’ choice of study subject.

Population Density is a Key Factor in Declining Human Fertility

In studying the complex determinants of human fertility, social scientists have given little attention to population density, although reproduction has been shown to be density-dependent for a wide variety of other species. Using fixed effects models on the time series of 145 countries and controlling for key social and economic variables, we find a consistent and significant negative relationship between human fertility and population density. Moreover, we find that individual fertility preferences also decline with population density. These findings suggest that population density should be included as a variable in future studies of fertility determinants.

Measuring Housework Participation: The Gap between “Stylised” Questionnaire Estimates and Diary-based Estimates

This article compares stylised (questionnaire-based) estimates and diary-based estimates of housework time collected from the same respondents. Data come from the Home On-line Study (1999–2001), a British national household survey that contains both types of estimates (sample size = 632 men and 666 women). It shows that the gap between the two types of estimate is generally smaller in the case of women. But the gap between the estimates in the case of women is associated with the amount of housework performed as secondary activities and the level of irregularity in housework hours. Presence of dependent children, on the other hand, inflates the gap for both men and women. Men holding traditional gender-role attitudes tend to report more housework time in surveys than in diaries, but the tendency is reversed when they undertake long hours of housework. The overall results suggest that there are systematic errors in stylised housework time estimates.

Measuring Changes in Family Wellbeing in New Zealand 1981–2001

Since the mid-1980s, New Zealand has experienced extensive economic, social and political reforms. The economic impact of these changes has been closely monitored and much commented upon. However, the social impacts of the reforms on different family types are less well understood. This paper outlines a project designed to monitor how the reforms impacted upon specific family types via the use of indicators of family wellbeing constructed from census data. These indicators show that for a range of family types, the reforms of the 1980s and 1990s varied in their impact, with single-parent families faring worst.

Household demographic change and land use/land cover change in the Brazilian Amazon

Demographic interest in population and environment has grown in recent decades. One of the most prominent research areas in this tradition addresses the impact of population on land use and land cover change. Building on this tradition, we examine the effects of household demographic composition on land use and land cover on small farms in two study areas in the Brazilian Amazon. Fixed effects regression models of used area and forested area show few consistent effects of changes in household demography on land use and land cover change. Effects are inconsistent with the household life cycle model that currently dominates the literature on household demographic effects in frontiers. Changes in the number of children and women, particularly young women, have the most significant effects on land use and land cover change. We conclude by arguing that households strategically access cash for investment in agriculture and that specific strategies are determined by economic and institutional context.

Extremism within the family

This paper considers an economic analysis of intergenerational transition of ethnic and social trait. We consider the level of social traits chosen by parents and its effect on their children’s choice of ethnic and social traits when reaching adulthood. We develop a theory that suggests that parents will chose extreme ethnic and social traits to increase the cost that their children will pay if they wish to deviate from their parents’ “ideal.” The extreme choice of the ethnic social traits of parents has an effect on the segregation of minorities and migrants.

Shifts in attitudes and labor market discrimination: Swedish experiences after 9-11

We present longitudinal survey data suggesting that the terrorist attacks in the USA on September 11, 2001, changed attitudes toward certain minorities in Sweden. This finding is consistent with results in previous studies. To investigate whether this change in attitudes also affected the labor market situation of these minorities, we study unemployment exit around 9-11 using detailed data on the entire Swedish working-age population. Contrary to what may be expected from many theories of labor market discrimination, the time pattern of exits and entries for different ethnic groups, as well as difference-in-differences analyses, shows no sign of increased discrimination toward these minorities. A possible explanation for this result is that employers act rationally in their hiring decisions and do not respond to changes in attitudes toward immigrants as a group.

Welfare Policy and Subjective Well-Being Across Nations: An Individual-Level Assessment

In the vast and diverse literature on determinants of life-satisfaction and happiness, there is a relative dearth of empirical research on the role of specifically political factors. We identify one such possible factor, the industrial welfare state, and assess its impact on how individuals perceive their well-being. The voluminous literature on the welfare state highlights its position as one of the most profound chapters in the latter-day human experience, but focuses on its indirect effects on well-being through economic and social conditions. We contend that the welfare state exerts a more direct effect to the extent that individuals experience very real impacts on their quality of life. Considering individual responses in 18 industrial democracies from 1981 to 2000, we find that welfare state generosity exerts a positive and significant impact on life-satisfaction and happiness. We discuss implications for further research generated by these findings.

Cohort Differences in Women’s Educational Attainment and the Transition to First Marriage in Ghana

This study explores the effects of educational attainment on the transition to first marriage across successive generations of women in Ghana. Considering the significant improvements in women educational attainment and career opportunities in recent decades, the paper questions the tacit assumption of prior research on the time-invariant effect of women’s educational attainment on marriage timing. Using discrete time frailty models with pooled data from the 1988, 1993, 1998 and 2003 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey, women with higher educational attainment were found to have longer transition to first marriage than their less educated counterparts. More importantly, the effect of higher education on the transition to first marriage was larger among younger women even after controlling for other factors. The stronger effect among contemporary women has been discussed in relation to ideational changes on family formation and the enhanced career opportunities for contemporary educated women.

Birth and Fortune Revisited: A Cohort Analysis of Underemployment, 1974–2004

The cohort is a key concept in the study of social demography and social change. The enduring influence of cohort membership can arise from history-based and/or size-based effects. The most prominent proponent of size-based cohort effects is Easterlin (Birth and fortune: The impact of numbers on personal welfare, 1980) who argues that individuals hailing from unusually large cohorts will experience adverse labor market conditions relative to the members of the smaller cohorts that bracket them. Drawing on data from the March Current Population Survey for the period spanning 1974–2004, we examine the influence of relative cohort size on underemployment. The results provide modest support for the Easterlin thesis, showing the odds of underemployment to be greatest among members of relatively large cohorts, net of other significant predictors. The results also show that the impact of relative cohort size differs by educational level, suggesting that adverse economic conditions produced by large cohort size can be offset by broader changes in the labor market and other social institutions.

Blacks and the family cap: pregnancy, abortion, and spillovers

While reducing out-of-wedlock childbearing is a central goal of welfare reform, most policymakers prefer achieving this objective via a reduction in nonmarital pregnancy rates rather than through an increase in the incidence of abortion. Using aggregate state-level data from 1984 to 1998, I estimate fixed effects models that allow for autocorrelated and heteroskedastic disturbances to examine the association between the family cap and nonmarital birth, pregnancy, and abortion rates. I find robust evidence that the family cap is associated with a reduction in nonmarital birth rates, particularly among black women. This reduction is driven by a reduction in nonmarital pregnancy rates rather than through an increase in abortion or marriage rates. These findings suggest that that the stigmatizing effect of the family cap may influence the nonmarital pregnancy decisions of black women.

Before,Now, and After: Assessing Hurricane Katrina Relief

We assess governmental and non-governmental responses to disasters using primary data of Hurricane Katrina survivors along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Non-governmental sources include nonprofit relief groups, faith-based organizations, and survivors’ self-identified social networks. We assess the impact of these governmental and non-governmental relief efforts on survivors’ economic, psychological, physical, and social effects from the disaster. Our results show that social isolation significantly increases perceptions of disaster disturbance and decreases perceived rates of disaster relief. Additionally, survivors perceive that social networks provide greater sources of psychological, financial and social disaster relief than government sources. However, survivors’ social networks decay sharply in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, and they do not appear to fully recover a year from the disaster. These social networks themselves are not fully resilient to a disaster.