Life Style Or Survival Strategy?

At the beginning of the 1990s, less than a half-percent of the Czech agricultural work force were private farmers having persisted through the period of forced collectivization. This tiny social group did not play an economically or socially significant role in Czech society. In the agricultural sector, privatization of the Czech economy after 1989 meant restitution of land to the original owners. State and co-operative farms were transformed either to joint enterprises, i.e. owner-run co-operatives, or to private farms. Initially, there was no great interest in private farming. However, employment opportunities in rural areas are limited. Today, private farmers comprise about 20% of the agricultural work force. Over half of them (54%) have less than one hectare arable land and private farming is not their main source of work income. The rest of the private farmers have different types of holdings ranging from 1 ha to well over 1000 ha. The average size of private holdings of this category is about 32 ha. Return to private farming means a large change of life style for both farmers and their families. Hard competition on the market is reflected in their attitudes and opinions. Of course, life cannot be reduced to solely the economic dimension. Freedom, personal independence, and decision-making responsibility appear as new major life values. Nevertheless, close interdependency of economic and social conditions is strongly felt. This contribution summarizes results of empirical research based on 385 Czech private farmers. Survey participants evaluated positive and negative effects of changes subsequent to 1989 on their economic and social life.     

Assessing immigrant policy options: Labor market conditions and postreform declines in immigrants’ receipt of welfare

Researchers infrequently have focused on assessing the degree to which the changes in welfare policy legislated during the 1990s have affected immigrants' receipt of welfare. Using data from the March Current Population Survey, we analyze the contribution of local labor market conditions to the explanation of relative declines in immigrants' receipt of welfare from 1994 to 2000. The results of a series of models that included labor market-area and state fixed effects indicate that employment and unemployment rates across metropolitan statistical areas and states account for at least one-third of the observed relative decrease among immigrants. The policy implications of the findings are discussed.     

Increasing Foreign Aid for Inclusive Human Development in Africa

In the light of evidence that poverty has been decreasing in all regions of the world with the exception of Africa, where about 45% of countries in sub-Saharan Africa did not achieve the Millennium development goal extreme poverty target, this study assesses whether increasing foreign aid improves inclusive human development. The investigation is on 53 African countries for the period 2005–2012. The empirical analysis is based on (1) the generalised method of moments (GMM) to control for persistence in inclusive human development, simultaneity and time-invariant omitted variables and (2) Instrumental Variable Tobit Regressions to control for simultaneity and the limited range in the dependent variable. The adopted foreign aid variables are: ‘humanitarian assistance’, ‘action on debt’ ‘aid for social infrastructure’, ‘aid to the productive sector’, ‘aid to the multi sector’, ‘aid for economic infrastructure’ and ‘programme assistance’. The following findings are established. From the GMM specifications, there are (1) synergy effects from ‘aid to the productive sector’ and a positive net effect from ‘programme assistance’ and (2) negative net impacts from ‘aid to social infrastructure’ and human assistance, albeit with positive marginal effects. From Instrumental Variable Tobit regressions (1) there is a synergy effect from ‘aid for economic infrastructure’ and (2) there are negative net impacts from ‘aid for social infrastructure’, ‘aid to the productive sector’ and human assistance, albeit with positive marginal effects. Policy implications are discussed.     

„Guten Tag, hier spricht Ihr Bürgerservice, was kann ich für Sie tun?“

The aim of this article is to examine a specific aspect of restructuring in the public sector: the implementation of call centres in customer service and its effects on job quality. The trend to organise customer service through call centres gained worldwide importance back in the 1990s. In the public sector it emerges only recently in connection to strategies of ‘new public management’. The article presents five international case study organisations from the public sector from Austria, Italy, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Sweden. The article concludes that the implementation of call centres or the outsourcing of customer service to private service providers has severe consequences for the quality of employment in the public sector and in the new — female dominated — service sector jobs. This concerns in particular the following three aspects: fragmentation of employment, qualification versus standardisation and interest representation.     

Population aging, health care, and growth

This paper constructs a small open two-sector (health care and non-health care) overlapping generations model and investigates how changes in the demand for health care induced by population aging influence the economy’s employment structure and per capita income growth rate. We show that population aging induces a shift in labor from the non-health care sector to the health care sector and lowers the per capita income growth rate. This paper also investigates public policy for child care and demonstrates the existence of an intergenerational conflict between current and future generations concerning public policy on child care.     

Relative Income,Race, and Fertility

If a white husband's income is higher than expected for men of his age, race, education, job characteristics, and region, economic theory predicts higher complete fertility for his wife. In the present study one per cent public use samples from the 1970 Census for California and Hawaii were used to examine the effect of relative income on Japanese, Chinese, and black fertility. Relative income was defined in two ways: (1) with regard to earnings of husbands of the same race, education, employment, and state; (2) with regard to earnings of white husbands of the same education, employment, and state. High relative incomes defined in each way were associated with increased completed fertility of Japanese and Chinese in Hawaii, where Orientals form a majority. Neither definition of high relative income was associated with the completed fertility of Japanese, Chinese, or blacks in California, where non-whites form a minority. The results suggest that the effect of relative income on fertility for a racial group will be positive only where there are few racial barriers to their attainment of high incomes.     

移民是否鸠占鹊巢?——来自迁入地公共品供给的经验证据

20世纪80年代中期以来,劳动力跨地区迁移为中国经济增长做出了突出贡献,但移民进入可能"挤占"迁入地居民享有的公共品也令许多人深感忧虑.事实上,移民进入对迁入地公共品供给的影响同时存在负向的竞争效应和正向的财政效应,而移民进入对迁入地公共品供给的净影响取决于竞争效应和财政效应规模的相对大小.使用2000-2012年地级市数据的研究发现,移民进入显著增加了迁入地医疗卫生、基础教育、道路交通、人居环境等公共品的供给,说明移民进入影响迁入地公共品供给的财政效应大于竞争效应.进一步基于回归的财政效应估计显示,在控制了财政支出及其他变量之后,移民人口占比每增加10%,迁入地财政收入占GDP的比重将会提高约1.01个百分点.     

Public Sector Employment Inequality in the United States and the Great Recession

Historically in the United States, the public sector has served as an equalizing institution through the expansion of job opportunities for minority workers. This study examines whether the public sector continues to serve as an equalizing institution in the aftermath of the Great Recession. Using data from the Current Population Survey, I investigate changes in public sector employment between 2003 and 2013. My results point to a post-recession double disadvantage for black public sector workers: they are concentrated in a shrinking sector of the economy, and they are more likely than white and Hispanic public sector workers to experience job loss. These two trends are a historical break for the public sector labor market. I find that race and ethnicity gaps in public sector employment cannot be explained by differences in education, occupation, or any of the other measurable factors that are typically associated with employment. Among unemployed workers who most recently worked for the public sector, black women are the least likely to transition into private sector employment.     

Veränderung öffentlicher Beschäftigung im Prozess der Liberalisierung und Privatisierung

The paper summarises the empirical results of a study on the impact of liberalisation and privatisation of public services on employment, working conditions and labour relations and links these results to a broader sociological debate on the current restructuring of work and employment in the emergence of a market-oriented accumulation regime. The consequences of liberalisation and privatisation include a massive cut in public sector jobs, an extension of atypical forms of employment, a reduction in wage costs and a substantial deterioration of working conditions. Another result is the decentralisation and fragmentation of bargaining structures in public services. Privatisation and liberalisation, hence, do not only alter public ownership and governance structures of public sector firms, but also change the character and function of the public employment regime that played a decisive role in the post-war model of development. With privatisation and liberalisation the political character of employment standards in the public sector is increasingly questioned and subjected to supposedly non-political market mechanisms. The result is not only a marketisation of work and employment as indicated by the concept of the market-oriented accumulation regime, but also a far-reaching flexibilisation, precarisation and henceforth recommodification of labour.     

Time or Money: The Relationship Between Educational Attainment,Income Contribution,and Time with Children Among Korean Fathers

Korean parents’ enthusiasm for and financial investment in children’s education are well known. However, parental time with children, particularly fathers’ time, and how it differs by parental education and income are not fully explored. Using the 2009 Korean Time Use Survey data, this paper examines how much time Korean fathers spend with children, how it differs by their education and income contribution to household, and which aspect Korean fathers choose to prioritize: time or money. In order to investigate a cross-couple effect, this paper also considers mothers’ time with children and their level of education. The sample is limited to married couples with the youngest child aged between 0 and 12. The stepwise multivariate regression analysis indicates that fathers’ education consistently shows a positive relationship with childcare time. Although fathers’ income contribution to household income has a negative effect on childcare time, positive effects of fathers’ education remain. Both mother’s education and childcare time increase fathers’ time with children. Korean fathers seem to juggle dual demands for money and time contribution and highly educated fathers tend to prioritize time over money. Given that time has become an important resource, different time investment in children by parental socioeconomic status may exacerbate social inequality.     

Der dreifache Bezug zur Arbeit – Transformation öffentlicher Dienste und berufliche Identität

During the last 2 decades the public administration and the public services have undergone far-reaching transformations that resulted in substantial changes in work and employment. This contribution discusses the question as to how workers perceive these upheavals and what consequences these have for their occupational identity. Based on empirical research on an Austrian town the authors show how local government employees, doctors and nurses at the community hospital and the post office’s deliverers and counter clerks interpret the transformations in particular from the perspective of their occupational self-conception. The article makes clear that using the concept of a threefold relationship to work makes it easier to understand workers’ perceptions, interpretations and reactions. Such a threefold relationship to work includes a labour power perspective, a subject perspective and the public sector ethos.     

Measuring Precarious Employment: A Proposal for Two Indicators of Precarious Employment Based on Set-Theory and Tested with Dutch Labor Market-Data

Scholars claim that precarious employment is rising. The precariously employed earn low wages, have little job- and income security and occupy jobs that can generally be deemed low quality. These employees are at a disproportionally high risk of poverty and are at risk of detrimental psychological effects. Despite the salience of the issue, precarious employment remains an elusive concept and has proven difficult to measure directly. Instead, measurement tends to rely on non-integrated indicators and proxies, thus introducing significant issues concerning the validity of found results. This paper proposes two integrated indicators for specific aspects of precarious employment. Indicator 1 focuses on income insecurity and is constructed using wage, supplementary income and unemployment benefit entitlements. Indicator 2 focuses on job insecurity and is constructed using contract type and unemployment duration. Additionally, to check for the coexistence of job- and income insecurity at the individual level and give a more holistic picture of precarious employment, Indicators 1 and 2 are integrated. First, previous research on precarious employment and job insecurity is reviewed to bolster the indicators’ validity. Second, the indicators are constructed using an approach grounded in crisp-set theory and data from the Dutch “Organisatie Strategisch Arbeidsmartkonderzoek” labor supply panel. Finally, the indicators are tested by assessing precarious employment over time, by educational level, sector and immigrant status.     

日本都道府县劳动力流动与区域经济集聚——基于空间计量经济学的实证研究

在"次贷危机"影响下,日本经济增长和集聚程度下降明显,以外向型发展模式为主的中心地区衰退迹象出现较早且遭受冲击严重,而以内向型发展模式为特征的外围地区所受影响相对较小或衰退迹象尚未完全显现。区域内长期从业流动劳动力及其净流入对经济增长和集聚具有促进作用,其中,后者作用突出,表现为中心和外围地区较大、次中心地区较小的"哑铃型"态势。区域内临时季节性从业流动劳动力及其净流入对经济增长和集聚具有阻碍作用,后者作用也很突出。相比长期从业流动劳动力,临时季节性从业流动劳动力对经济形势和就业预期变化的反应缺乏弹性,其变化主要在次经济中心和外围地区表现较为明显。以此为鉴,我国应积极消除阻碍劳动力区域自由流动的体制性障碍,以发挥劳动力流动对区域经济增长和均衡发展的重要推动作用。     

Demographic characteristics,work complexity and economic setting as social status determinants

Various aspects of social standing are significantly, though differently, determined by demographic characteristics, by employment in different economic sectors and industries, and by work complexity. Various sectors and industries influence differently status achievement, and are characterized by different configurations of status determinants of their workforces. The public (government) sector is more meritocratic than the private one, as far as income is concerned. Also, the male achievement pattern seems to be more meritocratic, while the female pattern is more sensitive to transient influences. The indicators of socio-economic status, occupational prestige and income reflect separate dimensions of social standing. The indicators of work complexity with data, people and things are good predictors of individual's social position.     

返乡劳动力的再迁移意愿和再迁移方向选择

部分流动人口回流迁移后仍会再次外出和继续迁移。研究发现,约三分之一的返乡劳动力具有再迁移意愿,县城及中心镇是他们再迁移的主要方向,呈现出就近城镇化的特点。就业机会与预期收入的驱动、家庭整体利益的权衡、社会网络的助推既决定他们的再迁移意愿,也决定再迁移方向的选择。(1)返乡劳动力的收入水平、就业稳定性和劳动技能培训经历显著影响其再迁移意愿,劳动技能培训提高了返乡劳动力选择县内再迁移的可能性。(2)家庭照护(居住)安排、土地耕种安排与子女教育安排也会影响其再迁移意愿,土地流转会增强返乡劳动力向省外的再迁移意愿,子女教育期望与入学机会是返乡劳动力向省内县外再迁移的重要因素。(3)返乡劳动力再迁移主要受其亲属网络的影响,而非地缘网络的影响。充分发挥返乡劳动力作用,有序引导其再次流动,对乡村振兴和中西部地区城镇化发展具有重要意义。     

A Deprivation Analysis for Andalusia (Spain): An Approach Based on Structural Equations

The study of deprivation, as a social indicator, is basic in the design and development of public policies because it allows decision makers to identify and analyse needy areas in order to improve their citizens’ well-being. The methodological approach proposed for the development of a new deprivation index is based on the Causal Theory whose conceptual model is analysed using Structural Equations. The domains selected for the deprivation index are: education, employment, income, housing, infrastructures and health. A structural equation model based on variance is the exploratory method used to obtain the indices pertaining to the above mentioned areas; the results obtained are seen to be quite reliable. There is a positive connection between the areas of education, employment and income while the relations between infrastructures and health are found to be negative. The results can be projected at a local level and show basic territorial deficiencies. The spatial units studied are the Andalusian (south of Spain) municipalities (770). The spatial projection of the indices obtained for the domains of deprivation highlights the existence of geographical areas which could be a potential target for public action.     

The Effects of the Informal Sector on Income of the Poor in Russia

This paper clarifies the social and economic effects of employment in the informal sector on the poor in Russia in recent years. The article describes the extent to which the figures for informal sector at large and unofficial employment in particular vary in different estimates and the effect they have on the average labor income of the poor. The major impact of the research consists of the development of a universal method for the estimation of the scales of labor income of the poor in the informal sector. Using the latest available data from Russian Federal State Statistics Service, this indicator is calculated for the poor and than compared with average wages in the formal sector and the subsistence minimum (official poverty line). The study concludes that the informal sector is a factor of social stability in a postsocialist transition economy, which, however, cannot alleviate poverty.     

Modern sector enlargement or traditional sector enrichment?

This paper considers how GNP would change if development resources are allocated in alternative ways, taking account of induced migration. The preferred allocation of development resources between sectors is shown to depend on the amounts of modern sector enlargement and traditional sector enrichment that could be achieved under alternative resource allocations and the labor market effects of each.The practical significance of these results is the following. Using additional development resources to expand modern sector exports and employment is most efficacious when the marginal product of capital in the modern sector is high and the amounts of induced migration and employment low. In other circumstances — namely, when the marginal product of capital is higher in the traditional sector than in the modern sector and search unemployment widespread — allocating the development fund for purposes of traditional sector enrichment might be better.     

延迟退休对职工效用最大化的影响——基于“S”型效用函数的分析

"十四五"规划提出"实施渐进式延迟法定退休年龄",如何使延迟退休政策被大众广泛接受是我国养老保险制度改革的重点问题。基于个人效用最大化原理,结合我国现行养老保险制度和前景价值函数中的"S"型效用函数,构建关于工资收入、养老保险缴纳费用、养老金财富和闲暇时间的综合效用模型,从性别、闲暇偏好、工资收入水平、利率、参保年龄、养老金个人缴费率六个方面确定个人效用最大化的退休年龄,并结合我国当前国情,对延迟退休政策提出针对性的建议。研究结果表明:不同退休年龄下的个人效用函数是关于退休年龄的"先大幅上升,后缓慢下降"曲线。男性参保职工于63岁退休获得效用最大值,而女性参保职工于60岁退休获得效用最大值,且二者最优退休年龄并不会随工资收入水平的改变而改变,工资收入水平只会对参保职工获得的效用绝对值产生影响,工资收入水平越高,参保职工获得效用值越大。此外,若闲暇偏好越低、利率越低、参保年龄越大、养老保险个人缴费率越低,则参保职工的最优退休年龄就越大。总体而言,只有考虑性别因素、给予延迟退休政策适当的弹性操作空间、改进养老保险计发办法、创造更好的老年就业环境,才能使延迟退休政策更好地推行。     

土地要素对农户就业行为及农户收入影响研究——基于甘肃省青城镇344家农户调查

基于甘肃省青城镇344家农户调查数据,运用二项分类Logistic回归模型与多元线性回归模型,对土地要素对农户就业行为及农户收入的影响进行了实证分析。研究结果表明：土地要素条件与农户家庭劳动力外出务工的概率成反比,与农户经营设施农业的概率成正比,而对农户收入的影响不显著。