The missing bridge: How immigrant networks keep Americans out of dirty jobs

Immigrants are over half of the new entrants in occupations in southwestern labor markets that range from farmworker to janitor to engineering professor. This paper explains how the availability of immigrant workers changes employment practices in ways that push and pull Americans out of jobs which remain "dirty" or unattractive to U.S. workers. An immigrant network that eventually takes over an enterprise's jobs can begin by accident or design. Accidental immigrant takeovers begin with pioneer workers who persist in high turnover jobs such as seasonal farmworker. These workers offer to bring their friends and relatives to fill vacancies as they occur. Takeovers by design sometimes follow a strike in which immigrants are recruited to be strikebreakers. After immigrants dominate the workforce, the language and culture of the workplace change in ways that make American workers feel out-of-place. Employers feel under no compulsion to upgrade dirty jobs as long as immigrant workers are available, so the technology and productivity of immigrant-enclave jobs tend to be frozen, guaranteeing that dirty jobs get less and less attractive to Americans. Indeed, industries dependent on immigrant workers often turn protectionist when they realize that even low immigrant wages are not sufficient to ensure their survival in the global marketplace. In this way, Americans lose out in several ways: They must compete directly with immigrant workers in the labor market, and then pay higher prices for the goods produced by immigrant workers because the industries preserved by them demand protection from imports. This paper will explore the manner in which immigrant networks displace Americans from dirty jobs and how the availability of immigrant workers can preserve sunset industries which turn protectionist. Examples from fruit and vegetable agriculture, garments, and shoes will be discussed.     

Age structure of the workforce in growing and declining industries: evidence from Hong Kong

Industry-specific human capital reduces the incentive for older workers to leave declining industries and raises the incentive for younger workers to join growing industries. Using the industry restructuring experience of Hong Kong, we find that a 1% increase in employment share of an industry is associated with a 0.60-year decrease in the average age of its workforce. The relationship is more pronounced among less educated workers, who have less general human capital, and male workers, who are more committed to the labor force, than among well educated workers and female workers.     

Endogenous age discrimination

This paper shows that hiring discrimination against old workers occurs in imperfect labour markets even if individual productivity does not decrease with age and in the absence of a taste for discrimination. Search and informational frictions generate unemployment, with less productive workers facing higher risks of unemployment. Therefore, the employment status provides a signal for expected productivity. This stigma of unemployment becomes stronger with individual age and reduces the hiring opportunities of older workers. Political measures such as a reduction in dismissal protection can help to restore efficiency.     

Quality of Life Satisfaction among Workers and Non-Workers in Uruguay

In this paper we use data from a population survey on quality of life dimensions conducted in Uruguay to analyze the self reported well-being among workers and non workers. Along with the literature, we find that the probability of being happy is greater for workers than non-workers. Specifically, we find evidence that workers tend to be more satisfied with their economic situation and heath, but less content with their leisure time. A number of personal and family characteristics were identified to play a role in explaining the differences in reported satisfaction between the two groups: age, gender, family size, having a life partner. Although, the self reported satisfaction with the family situation seems to be similar for workers and non-workers.     

老龄化背景下基于个人效用最大化的

我国进入老龄化社会后,又以较快的速度即将进入超老龄化社会,社会保障基金的支付压力持续加剧,从而不得不采取有效的应对措施.本文基于个人效用最大化原理,通过考虑工资回报率、劳动者区分因子等变量,建立三状态的最优退休年龄模型.在此基础上,对比脑力劳动者与体力劳动者的不同退休倾向,并依据中国人口平均预期寿命的变化,从各省市的角度对1990年、2000年、2010年的最优退休年龄分布特点进行比较分析.结果表明:脑力劳动者的最优退休年龄应以高于体力劳动者1-2年为宜;北京、上海等经济强省可率先推行延迟退休年龄的政策,贵州、云南等地可较小幅度延迟或滞后延迟.     

An instance of reverse heaping of ages

This note reports on an interesting example of reverse heaping of ages for data from the Saudi Arabian social insurance system. Peaks occur for the number of workers at ages corresponding to years of birth ending in zeroes and fives, while there are troughs at such ages for the average monthly wages. Such troughs almost certainly are the result of workers with less education using a rounded year of birth, and, correspondingly, such workers would tend to have lower earnings.     

Effects of sexual preferences on earnings in the Netherlands

A small literature suggests that bisexual and homosexual workers earn less than their heterosexual fellow workers and that a discriminating labormarket is partly to blame. In this paper we examine whether sexual preferences affect earnings at the beginning of working careers in the Netherlands. Using an alternative, and quite possibly a better, measure of sexual identity, we find (i) that young and highly educated gay male workers earn about 3% less than heterosexual men; (ii) that similarly qualified lesbian workers earn about 3% more than their heterosexual female co-workers; and (iii) that among homosexual workers the gender gap is not observed. From this we conclude that the Dutch labor market does not discriminate on the basis of both sexual orientation and gender in entry-level jobs.All correspondence to Erik Plug. Both authors would like to thank Jim Albrecht, Mikael Lindahl, Hessel Oosterbeek, Susan Vroman and an anonymous referee for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Responsible editor: Daniel S. Hamermesh.     

外来务工人员工作搜寻时间代际差异分析——兼论对收入的影响

本文利用持续期模型分析了外来务工人员“再次流动”的工作搜寻时间的代际差异，同时进一步分析了工作搜寻时间对外来务工人员流动后的工资的影响。本文发现，老一代外来务工人员“再次流动”的工作搜寻时间整体高于新生代外来务工人员。老一代外来务工人员中，女性的工作搜寻时间高于男性，而在新生代外来务工人员中。男性的工作搜寻时间高于女性。但工作搜寻时间的延长并没有增加新生代外来务工人员的工资水平。但对老一代外来务工人员的工资变动存在倒U型的影响。     

Male sex workers in three Australian cities: socio-demographic and sex work characteristics

This article describes the socio-demographic and sex work characteristics of sex workers in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. A total of 185 male sex workers completed the questionnaire component of the study. The results of this study serve to debunk many of the myths surrounding the popular view of the male sex worker (MSW). The respondents in this study were on average 27 years old, and the majority had completed secondary education, with 30% having gained some form of tertiary qualification. Interestingly, those MSWs who had not completed secondary education were mostly street workers and were generally aged under 25 years. The majority of sex workers lived in rented accommodation, with only 6% reporting to be homeless. Half of all respondents identified as being "gay," 31% as "bisexual" and 5.5% as "straight." More than half of the respondents were in a permanent relationship. Only 7.3% of this group reported using heroin daily, although the majority consumed alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and ecstasy. The majority of sex workers had been in the profession for less than six months, although some had been working in the industry for more than ten years. Most of the sex workers reported having taken an HIV test and a preference to offer safer sex. The article highlights ways in which the work context of MSW can be better understood and supported by education and public policy programs.     

Hiring older workers and employing older workers: German evidence

Using German establishment data, we examine the relationship between delayed compensation, training, and hiring of older workers. Both those establishments that delay compensation and those with greater human capital requirements are less likely to hire older workers. We demonstrate that the routinely used control for the age of existing workers is endogenous and that instrumenting provides stronger evidence for the role of delayed compensation. Specifically, delayed compensation is simultaneously a negative determinant of hiring older workers but a positive determinant of employing older workers and, thus, more clearly associated with “employing older workers but not hiring them.”     

The Impact of Overeducation and its Measurement

The central focus of this article is the influence of the applied measure when the impact of overeducation is analyzed. For a database of Flemish school leavers, four alternative measures of overeducation are related to job satisfaction, mobility, training participation and wages. The magnitude and significance of the effects diverge between these measures. When attained education is controlled for, overeducated workers are less satisfied, more mobile, participate less in training and earn less than adequately educated workers. When required education is controlled for, no robust results are found for job satisfaction and training participation. Overeducated workers earn more than adequately educated colleagues, but have a higher turnover rate. We have little clear results with respect to undereducation. Caution is thus recommended for the interpretation of empirical results with respect to the impact of over- and undereducation.     

Firm-level social returns to education

Do workers benefit from the education of their co-workers? We examine this question first by introducing a model of learning, which argues that educated workers may transfer part of their general skills to uneducated workers, and then by examining detailed matched employer–employee panel data from Portugal. We find evidence of large firm-level social returns (between 14% and 23%), much larger than standard estimates of private returns, and of significant returns accruing to less educated workers but not to their more educated colleagues.     

Socio-Economic Inequalities in Happiness in China and U.S.

Our paper studies the determinants of happiness in China and U.S. and provides a better understanding of the issue of inequalities in happiness beyond income inequality. Based on the two waves of nation-wide survey data on happiness collected by World Values Survey in 1995 and 2007, Probit and ordinary least square methods are used to estimate effects of various factors on happiness. Our findings show that socio-economic inequalities increase inequalities in happiness in China. The poor are the least happy even though the income effect flats out at the high end. Individuals with below high school education attainment are less happy than those with more education. Agricultural workers are the most unhappy and are becoming even more unhappy over time. However, in U.S., there is no systematic difference in happiness across income and education groups and between agricultural and non-agricultural workers. In both countries health is a major factor contributing to happiness. Our study implies that adequate provision of national health care services should be an effective way to improve social welfare. Besides, since the probability of being happy for agricultural workers is still considerably less after controlling for income in China, policies to improve their welfare should not be limited to enhancing current income.     

The effects of job displacement on job quality: Findings from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study

This study examines the extent to which job displacement divides the career experiences for a cohort of workers. Previous studies of job displacement find nontrivial economic losses for displaced workers, but the effects of displacement on “non-economic” properties of jobs have been largely overlooked. Results using the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study indicate that workers who were displaced have lower levels of occupational status, job authority, and employer-offered pension and health insurance than they would have had had they not been displaced. Difference-in-differences estimates, which control for temporally-invariant unobserved heterogeneity, are generally larger than cross-sectional estimates; still, there is a close correspondence of estimates across a range of methodological approaches attesting to the robustness of the estimates in the face of various technical assumptions and model specifications. Effects of displacement on job quality also exhibit conditioning by gender, education, occupation, and industry: while less educated, blue collar and manufacturing workers experience significant losses for employer-offered benefits, more educated, upper white collar and non-manufacturing workers experience significant losses for occupational status, job autonomy, and job authority.     

Immigration and free trade with Mexico: protecting American workers against double jeopardy

Free trade may well increase immigration from Mexico to the United States before ultimately slowing it down. Rapid population growth, unemployment or underemployment of half the labor force, and vast ethnic and kinship links to the United States have given Mexican migration a stubborn momentum. Increased prosperity from free trade will give many would-be migrants the means to resettle in the U. S. Foreign competition will displace Mexican workers in small farms, state-owned enterprises, and less competitive industries, forcing some to migrate. The noneconomic incentives and expectations driving migration will also remain strong. Mexicans may see free trade as making the border a mere formality or as conferring an entitlement to live in the United States. On the U. S. side, free trade may well deepen the government's traditional complacency about border controls. Over the long-term, however, a successful free trade agreement could reduce immigration by improving Mexico's democracy and the quality of life, diminishing the prospects of mass asylum movements from Mexico, creating a better climate for effective family planning, and luring marginal, immigration-magnet industries from the U. S. to Mexico. In the United States, less- skilled American workers in some industries and regions can expect job displacement and other disruptions from free trade. Particularly vulnerable will be workers in perishable crop agriculture, border retail trade, construction, apparel, and light manufacturing such as furniture, auto parts and glass. Continued heavy immigration of Mexican and other foreign workers into those industries and communities will further impede the adjustment of resident workers by competing for jobs and consuming public resources needed for retraining and job search. To ease the adjustment of displaced workers, the U. S. must make Mexico's cooperation in restraining immigration a condition for free trade. Mexico's cooperation should include enforcement of its own laws against clandestine border crossing; action against alien smugglers, document forgers and transiting illegal aliens from Central America; and curbs on the reentry of aliens deported from the United States. U.S. initiatives that would cushion vulnerable American workers against the added disruption of immigration would be: better identification and screening of applicants for public assistance; tightened enforcement of safety and labor standards in immigrant-impacted firms and provision of legal workers to such firms; protection of public assistance resources through better screening and identification of applicants; and curbs on imports of temporary foreign workers for firms that will now have access to Mexican labor in Mexico. Finally, the United States must consistently press Mexico for higher safety, environmental and labor standards at the workplace to improve the job satisfaction and quality of life of working Mexicans who might otherwise migrate, as well as to narrow Mexico's labor cost advantages over the United States.     

城市农民工主观生活质量及其影响因素研究——基于上海浦东新区农民工调查数据的分析

本文基于2006年上海浦东新区农民工生活质量调查数据,对农民工的主观生活质量及其影响因素进行了研究。分析结果表明,1/3以上农民工对自己的总体生活质量表示满意;农民工的婚姻状况、月平均收入、居住类型和健康状况因素对其生活质量总体满意度有显著的影响,性别、年龄、受教育程度和居住时间因素对其生活质量总体满意度的影响不显著;通过因子分析得到的"工作和保障满意度"和"生活环境满意度"对农民工的生活质量总体满意度的影响最为显著。     

农民工非正规就业选择研究

本文利用2001年中国社会科学院进行的中国城市劳动力市场研究调查数据,对农民工非正规就业的进入条件、就业影响因素以及就业效果进行了研究,结果显示:从事非正规就业的农民工相对具有更狭窄的社会资本和更少的工作初始投入;教育显著提高了农民工从事非正规就业的概率,滞后一期的市场状态对农民工非正规就业选择不会产生显著影响;就业分流并没有导致农民工就业市场出现内部分层,农民工非正规就业存在着强的自选择。     

子女随迁是否有助于改善进城农民工的营养摄入?

从"只身外出"到"举家迁徙"的农民工流动趋势转变,子女是否随迁逐渐成为进城农民工家庭面临的重要选择.本文利用"城镇外来务工人员就业和食品需求"调查数据,考察了子女随迁对进城农民工营养摄入量的影响.结果表明:在控制了收入和劳动强度等因素后,与子女未随迁的农民工相比,有子女随迁农民工的热量摄入量显著增加了4.9％,从营养摄...     

Changes in inequality and unemployment over the 1980s: comparative cross-national responses

This paper reviews the research evidence regarding high and persistent unemployment in the western European nations and widening inequality in the United States and selected European countries. It has been suggested that both of these problems are due to fundamental economic shifts in labor demand within the more industrialized world that have led to declines in the demand for less skilled workers: The effect on countries with more regulated labor markets was rising unemployment, while in less regulated labor markets it was rising wage inequality. The paper considers the evidence for this hypothesis, as well as the research questions and policy issues that it raises.The author thanks Rebecca London and Leslie Moscow for research assistance.     

犯罪农民工的人口学特征及其分析——以天津为例

农民工犯罪呈现不断增长的趋势,其犯罪农民工的性别结构严重失衡,犯罪年龄与文化程度低于城市居民的犯罪人口。犯罪农民工的经济生活水平处于较低的状态。