Immigration and unemployment in Australia

"This article is presented in two parts. The first contains a discussion of Australia's migration programme, its different categories and changes in intakes. It also deals with the contribution made by immigration to the size of the labour force.... The second part deals with the effect of immigration on the unemployment rate and concludes that its effect is negligible or, at best, slightly positive.... Against this background the paper discusses factors contributing to the employment and unemployment experience of migrants, for whom English language proficiency and the possession of recognized skills and qualifications are important in determining employability." (SUMMARY IN FRE AND SPA)     

Job security, unionisation, wages and privatisation: a case study in the Turkish cement industry

In the recent years, many studies have dealt with the economic aspects of privatisation both in developing and developed countries. There is, however, a lack of systematic enquiries into employees’ opinions about privatisation, albeit a number of claims have been advanced about the impact of privatisation upon the political attitudes of employees, and about its effects on employment relations. This article aims to contribute to filling this gap by analysing employees’ attitudes towards the effects of privatisation on their job security, unionisation and wages. The study is based upon field-work conducted in the Turkish cement industry in 1996, and the research covers 150 employees. The findings of the research hardly support the idea put forward by the new right that privatisation would undermine the class contradictions between bourgeoisie and proletariat (Heller, 1984; Vickers and Yarrow, 1988).     

Ideology, domination and unemployment

Criticisms of the neo-Marxist dominant ideology thesis tend to under-emphasize the role which ideology plays in legitimating and sustaining systems of inequality, and instead to privilege explanations based on the ‘iron cage’ of economic and political relationships. A serious problem with some neo-Marxist analyses is the rather crude conceptualization of ideology which makes them susceptible to attack. Using material collected in Belfast amongst Protestant and Catholic working class, employed and unemployed, married men, this article seeks both to recast the notion of ideology, in particular to suggest that ideology would be better conceived not as a coherent, self-consistent system of ideas, but rather as a possibly contradictory set of themes whose primary importance lies in their specific, changing and tactical relationships to typical forms of practice, and also thereby to demonstrate how powerful and pervasive is the ideological dimension of domination.     

Parental unemployment and child health in China

This paper studies the causal effect of maternal and paternal unemployment on child health in China, analyzing panel data for the period 1997–2004, when the country underwent economic reforms leading to massive layoffs. Using a FE-IV strategy, we find that paternal unemployment reduces child health, while maternal unemployment has beneficial child health impacts. Analysis of channels shows that paternal and maternal unemployment have different effects on income, time use, and children’s diets. Though many estimates are imprecise, a key finding is that paternal unemployment significantly reduces children’s fat intake and dietary diversity. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first evidence on the causal effect of parental unemployment on the nutrient intake of children aged 0–17. In all, our estimates are consistent with the notion that traditional gender roles can explain why mothers’ and fathers’ unemployment affect child health differently.

     

Disguised unemployment in British agriculture

This paper highlights some important changes that are taking place in the composition of the agricultural and horticultural workforce in England and Wales. It suggests that the regular whole-time hired worker has been increasingly replaced on the one hand by the casual or contract worker and on the other by the family worker. There is also some evidence, at present anecdotal or at best circumstantial, that the children of farmers may be using the farm as an employment ‘refuge’ in a period in which employment opportunities in the economy as a whole are severely limited. This raises the question of whether the phenomenon of ‘disguised unemployment’ hitherto regarded as a feature of many less developed countries may be found among family-worked farms in England and Wales. It is important that future empirical investigations should attempt to establish whether this is indeed the case.     

American unemployment in historical perspective

During the twentieth century, the annual average unemployment rate reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics data has varied between 1.2 and 24.9 percent. This article, derived from our recent book,Out of Work: Unemployment and Government in 20th Century America, examines and explains variations in unemployment over time. These large fluctuations in unemployment probably account for this century’s obsession with joblessness. Alfred Marshall’sPrinciples of Economics, published in 1890, barely mentions unemployment. Only two short generations later, unemployment was the dominant topic of interest among economists, and the most influential economics book of this century, Keynes’sGeneral Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, was concerned largely with explaining its existence.     

Employment and labour productivity in high unemployment countries

Contemporary development strategies emphasize labour productivity growth because it has historically underpinned rising living standards. Today, however, poverty reduction and inclusive development in those developing countries with high unemployment require increasing the employment rate even if this means lower average labour productivity. We critique the International Labour Organization (ILO) for its overly universalizing advocacy of high‐productivity growth strategies and for failing to confront the trade‐off between more and better‐quality jobs. This is particularly problematic in high unemployment contexts in Southern Africa, where labour productivity growth between 2000 and 2013 came at the cost of a falling employment rate.     

The effect of immigration on aggregate native unemployment: an across-city estimation

This study investigates the relationship between the rate of immigration into various cities in various years and the level and change in unemployment. In pooled regressions, immigration lagged one year does not show a statistically significant effect either by itself or when other lags are added. Individual regressions using the difference in unemployment rates over time show a slight, but statistically insignificant, positive displacement effect over two-year periods. The evidence indicates that there is little or no observed increase in aggregate native unemployment due to immigration, even in the relatively short run during which adjustment frictions should be most severe. We are grateful to Bryan Boulier, Charles Brown, Glen Cain, Robert Goldfarb, Allen Kelley, Mitchell Kellman, Wallace Oates, Albert Rees, and Edward Reubens for reading earlier drafts and generously giving us their criticism and ideas.     

Youth unemployment and labour market withdrawal

There is much concern that today's unemployed youth, particularly those belonging to ethnic minorities, are in danger of withdrawing from the labour market. However, there have been few attempts to test this assumption or to examine the social-psychological processes which may be involved. The literature on attitude-behaviour relationships and on human motivation implies that attitudes towards job seeking, expectations of obtaining a job, and the value placed on employment may all predict job-seeking behaviour. This hypothesis was tested with a sample of 1,150 unemployed 17-year-olds obtained from 11 urban areas in England. The hypotheses that lower values of all three variables will be associated with longer spells of unemployment and with ethnic minority status were also tested. Results provided support for these hypotheses. Multiple regression analyses suggested that these three variables had a mediating role in the relationship between reports of job-seeking behaviour and both length of unemployment and ethnic minority status.     

Experience rating and the generosity of unemployment insurance: Effects on county and metropolitan unemployment rates

I find that state policies affect county and metropolitan area unemployment rates, particularly their policies with respect to unemployment compensation. A generous compensation system is associated with higher unemployment rates, and greater experience rating is associated with lower rates. I also find that greater unionization is associated with higher unemployment rates. Secular manufacturing growth has a weak negative association with unemployment rates in nonmetropolitan counties, but no association in metropolitan areas.     

The real East Asian Aid model: Development assistance as an instrument of comprehensive security in Japan,South Korea and Taiwan

Discussion of East Asian aid modes has remained superficial. And one donor, Taiwan, has been overlooked. This article reconsiders East Asian donorship, and places Taiwan within this category. It argues that East Asian donors are insecure, and see aid as part of a wider security policy. Aid policy pursues two main goals: economic strength and international influence. The aid apparatus is insulated from legislative and public pressure. Due to the nature of the goals pursued, relations with recipient governments in general are good, and recipient publics bad, relative to other Development Assistance Committee (DAC) donors. Relations with other donors are ambivalent; good relations are important, but can interfere with other goals. As such, Taiwan is a quintessential East Asian donor.     

The measurement of unemployment using completed durations: evidence on the gender gap in unemployment in France

This paper examines how unemployment can be measured in a normative fashion - taking into account the mean and inequality of spell lengths - and how the extent of unemployment can be estimated from cross section data of the type found in labour force surveys. The issue is not straightforward since in these surveys completed durations of unemployed individuals are not observed yet they constitute the basis for calculating the kind of index that has been proposed to measure the extent of unemployment in a way that goes beyond the unemployment rate. The index proposed by Shorrocks has robust normative foundations and has an equivalent representation in terms of average complete duration and the density of completed durations. Building upon earlier work applied in the United States for estimating the average completed duration, we present a method that enables the index to be calculated based on an estimate of the density of completed durations. The approach is illustrated in the context of comparing male-female unemployment differences in France, where historically female unemployment has been higher than that of males.     

Unemployment duration and the measurement of unemployment

We propose a framework in which the welfare bases of various unemployment measures available in the literature can be analyzed and a decomposition of these measures can be made into aggregate unemployment and the concentration of its distribution. A set of axioms for an unemployment measure is then introduced, which relate to the sensitivity of an unemployment measure to the inequality in the distribution of the unemployment. An unemployment measure is derived on the basis of these axioms that captures the distributional considerations in the measurement of unemployment.      

The psychological impact of unemployment and joblessness

Economists have identified two principal adverse effects of unemployment. One is the output foregone that could have been produced if unemployed workers had been productively employed. The second is the psychological damage suffered by unemployed workers and their families. Psychologists have offered theories to explain how experiences such as Joblessness may lead to a deterioration in mental health. They also have designed and validated survey instruments capable of measuring various aspects of emotional health. Unfortunately, their efforts to document the psychological impact of unemployment have been plagued by data limitations, while economists largely have ignored this task. The purpose of this study is three-fold. First, we discuss why unemployment and Joblessness are likely to influence an individual's perception of personal efficacy, locus of control, and hence psychological well-being. Second, we discuss and critique existing efforts to examine the relationship between labor force experiences and locus of control. Third, we investigate the relationship between Joblessness and its component parts—unemployment and dropping out of the labor force—on personal locus of control, using observations from the NLSY and an alternative methodological framework. The NLSY is a longitudinal data set that contains detailed information on the personal characteristics of individuals in the sample, their labor force experiences and a specific personal locus of control. In discussing the results we also attempt to shed some new light on the debate between Clark and Summers (1979) and Flinn and Heckman (1982, 1983) over the question of whether being out of the labor force and being unemployed should be thought of as distinct states. We add further insight into this issue by examining whether there are psychological differences, as measured by locus of control, between otherwise comparable members of these two groups. Finally, we reconsider the Ellwood and Ruhm exchange over whether joblessness and unemployment lead to “psychological” scarring. We find that labor force experiences fail to influence personal locus of control for male youths. There is evidence, however, that perception of personal efficacy is altered by joblessness among young women. As the duration of a current unemployment spell lengthens, the likelihood of holding beliefs of personal efficacy decline for young women. There is also some evidence of scarring among women. For females who in the past have spent time both unemployed and out of the labor force, the greater the duration of their joblessness the more likely is a reduction in feelings of personal efficacy and more aggravated one's self-perception of helplessness. We also offer psychological evidence on the relative emotional well-being of the unemployed and labor force drop outs that largely supports the position of Clark and Summers that these conditions are largely indistinguishable.     

Economic security for the elderly in India: an overview

The basic concept of social security is not new in India. Traditionally, a sort of moral economy existed to provide security to older destitute and other vulnerable groups in society. However, gradually, traditional support systems are disappearing, and state-based social security systems have come into existence. Under standardized economic security policies, government is covering retirement benefits for those in the organized sector; economic security benefits for those in the unorganized sector; and old-age pension for rural elderly. These are contributory as well as non-contributory programs. Besides life insurance approaches, savings-linked insurance and Annapurna (food security) are other important programs. However, in terms of coverage, program quality and effectiveness have been largely criticized by social security experts, suggesting immediate reforms to old-age programs.     

Coping with the unemployment crisis in Europe

Since the 1970s, Europe has been plagued by a chronic unemployment crisis, which has escalated with the current Great Recession. The author discusses a number of relevant elements in this regard, including the extent to which social dialogue and social pacts have been successful in reforming labour markets and pension systems, the effect of active labour market policies and the characteristics of “resilient” economies. She concludes with the need to rethink social dialogue, social safety nets, the granting of loans – especially to SMEs – and the coordination of macroeconomic policies to increase labour demand.