Empirical evidence on intergenerational inequality of tax burdens in the U.S. and Japan

Aggregate data of tax burdens in the U.S. and Japan, classified by period and by age, are decomposed into age, period, and cohort effects using the Bayesian cohort models which were developed to overcome the identification problem in cohort analysis. Main findings are that in both countries the age effects are the largest and the cohort effects are obscure or negligible and that in both countries significant intergenerational inequality is not observed.     

Cohort-level sex ratio effects on women’s labor force participation

It follows from a number of theoretical models of marriage that the scarcer women are relative to men, i.e., the higher the sex ratio, the less married women are likely to participate in the labor force. Such sex ratio effects may be stronger among less educated women. These predictions are tested using individual data from Current Population Surveys for four regions of the U.S. (Northeast, Midwest, South and West), and for the U.S. as a whole, covering the period 1965–2005 at 5-year intervals. Within-region sex ratio variation results from variation in cohort size (due principally to large fluctuations in number of births) and limited fluctuations in the difference between male and female age at marriage. As hypothesized, we find that sex ratios are inversely related to women’s labor force participation, reflecting that ceteris paribus women born in years of peak baby-boom are more likely to be in the labor force than women born in years of peak baby-bust. Additionally, weaker sex ratio effects are found among educated women in two of the four regions of the United States.

Separate Spheres or Increasing Equality? Changing Gender Beliefs in Postwar Japan

This research investigates change in gender beliefs in Japan during a period of economic hard times in the late 1990s. Using data from the International Social Survey Programme on the Japanese population from 1994 (n = 1,054) and 2002 (n = 872), we examined how cohort replacement and intracohort change contributed to changes in gender beliefs. We found important differences from the patterns of change reported for many Western countries, namely, a decoupling between societal trends in the female labor force participation rate and beliefs about gender. Such differences may be attributable to factors such as the high societal valuation of the housewife role compared to that in other postindustrial countries and sanctions against full‐time employment for women in Japan.     

Marriage market imbalances and labor force participation of Canadian women

Several studies find a negative correlation between the ratio of males to females and measures of female labor supply in the US. This negative correlation has been interpreted as empirical support for the hypothesis that marriage market conditions influence intra-household allocation decisions. Given the similarity of cultures and of labor supply behavior of women in Canada and the United States, and the fact that they both experienced baby-booms at roughly the same time, any explanation for changes in female labor supply would be expected to hold for both countries. We test the prediction that marriage market conditions have explanatory power for Canadian female labor force participation (LFP) rates over the period 1971–2001. We find smaller marriage market effects for Canada than those found for the US but similar in magnitude to those found for the US Midwest.

For Better or For Worse? State-Level Marital Formation and Risk Sharing

Why do some U.S. states have higher levels of marital formation than others? This paper introduces an economic model wherein a state’s representative individual may choose to marry in order to diversify his or her idiosyncratic income risk. The paper demonstrates that such a diversification motive is enhanced for some utility functions when a state’s level of undiversifiable risk becomes larger, and when a state’s initial income is lower. A test of the model’s predictions, using cross-sectional data for the 50 U.S. states, provides some suggestive evidence for a risk sharing motive in marriage formation and joint spouse labor participation.     

A Tale of Two Contexts: U.S. Migration and the Labor Force Trajectories of Mexican Women

Even though women have long participated in Mexico–U.S. migration studies assessing the labor market implications of international mobility for women are rare. Especially lacking are studies that follow a life‐course approach and compare employment trajectories across contexts and in connection with other transitions. Using life‐history data collected in Mexico and the U.S., we explore the impact of migration on women's employment, focusing on how the determinants of employment vary across contexts. We show that U.S. residence eliminates or even reverses the employment returns to education found in Mexico and that the constraints imposed on women's work by marriage are actually stronger in the U.S. context. We also explicitly connect migration to other life‐course events, documenting how the impact of context varies not only by marital status but also by where women's unions were formed.     

WAR AND PESTILENCE AS LABOR MARKET SHOCKS: U.S. MANUFACTURING WAGE GROWTH 1914–1919

This paper explores the effect of mortalities from the 1918 influenza pandemic and World War I on wage growth in the manufacturing sector of U.S. states and cities from 1914–1919. The hypothesis is that both events decreased manufacturing labor supply, thereby initially increasing the marginal product of labor and wages. The results reveal that states and cities having had greater influenza mortalities experienced higher wage growth—roughly 2–3 percentage points for a 10% change in per capita mortalities. World War I combat mortalities also had a positive, but smaller, effect on wage growth. ( JEL N62, N32, N92, I12)     

THE ERA OF INCREASED VIOLENCE IN THE UNITED STATES: AGE,PERIOD, OR COHORT EFFECT?*

An age/period/cohort analysis is conducted for homicide rates during the years 1952–1976, a period during which rates of violent crimes escalated substantially in U. S. society. This increase is shown to be most effectively conceptualized as a cohort phenomenon, although the effects of age are also evident. Youth cohorts of the early 1960s display substantially higher rates of homicide than previous youth cohorts, and tend to maintain these relatively higher rates through their life cycle. Explanations for this finding are explored via economic factors, for which some empirical substantiation is provided.     

An Analysis of the U.S. Women's Rights Movements

This paper divides the move for women's rights in the U.S. into three historical phases: (1) the early women's rights movement (1848-1875); (2) the suffrage movement (1890-1920); and, (3) the two branches of contemporary women's rights movements. The authors then set out a hypothesis for the formation of the above women's rights movements. The causes of the three respective phases then are examined and the hypothesis tested. We conclude that the following elements are necessary to the initiation of a U.S. women's protest movement: (1) a sense of collective oppresion; (2) an extant organizational base; (3) a communications network; and, (4) a critical mobilizing event. The success of these movements, however, may be tempered by the simultaneous development of opposition organizations.     

Age and sex in the occupational structure: A United States-Japan comparison

Seniority and experience are more important in Japanese than American labor markets. This article examines the way that these factors are reflected in patterns of age and sex segregation in the occupational structures of the two countries. Occupationalage segregation is greater in Japan than in the United States: There are larger age differences among the incumbents of major occupational groups in Japan, and managerial and administrative occupations in particular are dominated by older males. In contrast, occupationalsex segregation is slightly lower in Japan than in the United States. This nonintuitive result is due to the greater apparent integration of Japanese women into low-status white-collar and blue-collar occupational groups, resulting from particular labor market processes in those groups.Earlier versions were presented at the International Sociological Association meetings in Madrid, Spain, July 1990, and at the American Sociological Association meetings in Washington, DC, August 1990.     

What Explains the Increasing Trend in African Emigration to the U.S.?

In this study, data from the U.S. State Department on visas issued abroad and information from other sources are used to examine trends in African emigration to the U.S. The results suggest that, on average, moderate increases in African Gross Domestic Product between 1992 and 2007 had a buffering effect on emigration trends. Yet, emigration to the U.S. increased much faster from the poorest than wealthiest countries in Africa. Contrary to expectations, larger emigration increases were found in Africa’s non‐English than English‐speaking countries. Despite the increasing overall trend, however, critical differences were observed in the impacts of specific types of flows. For example, overall trends were driven by increases in Diversity Visa migration, refugee movements, and the migration of immediate relatives. However, significant declines were observed in employment‐related emigration from Africa to the U.S. The results further suggest that impact of trends in African fertility, urbanization, and phone use are circumscribed to specific contexts and types of migration flows. The findings, therefore, provide an empirical basis for concluding that the dynamics of African migration to the U.S. are becoming increasingly more complex.     

Local Economic Opportunity and the Competing Risks of Internal and U.S. Migration in Zacatecas,Mexico1

This article uses a competing risks model to examine the effects of origin economic conditions on the probability of temporary U.S. and internal labor migration in the Mexican state of Zacatecas. We measure origin economic conditions with municipal‐level indices of employment and small‐scale investment opportunities that we constructed from population and economic census data. The results of our analysis demonstrate the important influence of local employment and investment opportunities on migration outcomes. Controlling for the prior municipal rate of U.S. return migration and other factors, positive opportunities for small‐scale investment are associated with a higher risk of temporary migration to the United States. This result is consistent with investment oriented migration predicted by the new economics of labor migration theory. We also find comparable social network effects for both internal and U.S. migration. Having social ties to active migrants of one type (U.S. or internal), encourages migration of the same type and discourages migration of the other type.     

Local implementation of disability policies for “high incidence” disabilities at public schools in Japan and the U.S.

This study examines educators' responses to the local implementation of national special education policy changes for children with “high-incidence,” (mild cognitive and behavioral) disabilities. Sensitized by a sociocultural, developmental perspective, we examined Japanese and U.S. national educational policies for the support of children with high incidence disabilities and their implementation in local public schools. Twenty-six Japanese and 18 U.S. elementary school educators participated in individual interviews and discussed their experiences and perceptions of special education policies and their local implementation. Educators in both countries expressed common challenges, specifically, balancing legal requirements with everyday practices, adjusting to policy shifts, and negotiating support for children within and outside of their classrooms. Yet their experiences were culturally nuanced reflecting 1) relatively flexible (Japan) or fixed (U.S.) legal requirements, 2) shifts to more specialized (Japan) or more classroom-based (U.S.) support, and 3) established practices of classroom-based support (Japan) or pull-out support (U.S.). These cultural differences are examined in historical and sociocultural contexts, and implications are discussed for educators, social work practitioners, and policy makers in both Japan and the U.S.     

Remarriage migration of women in Asia: The case of Japan

This study aims to confirm the diversity of intra-Asian female marriage migrants in Japan with comprehensive statistics. Methodologically, I used quantitative method, collecting appropriate data from local demographic and immigration statistics in Japan. Simultaneously, I reviewed related empirical studies on the various factors affecting marriage migration, including those written in the local language (Japanese). Results indicate that 42.9 per cent of intra-Asian female marriage migrants in Japan were middle-aged women whose marriages to Japanese men were their second. Beyond a simple development–migration nexus perspective on marriage migration in Asia, middle-aged women entering Japan for their second marriage often aim to escape social stigmatization and poverty and to overcome the difficulties of marrying late or remarrying in their own countries. A more complex intersectionality of gender–class–age stigmatization should be considered to understand marriage migration. The findings have important policy implications for both origin and destination countries.     

Changes in reproductive function among remarried women: the effects of spousal characteristics

"This paper examines the relationship between change in childbearing function from a woman's first to second marriage and the degree of similarity between her first and second husbands in age, education, and religion. Using data from the [U.S.] 1982 National Survey of Family Growth, the specific hypothesis tested is: where plans are similar, the second husband tends to resemble the first to a greater extent than where childbearing functions differ. Separate tests relating to age, education, and religion provide only limited support for this hypothesis. However, when the various tests are considered collectively as a system, the weight of the evidence provides general support for the hypotheses. The implications of these findings for understanding trends in marriage are discussed."     

The “Negative” Assimilation of Immigrants: a Counter-Example from the Canadian Labor Market

With Canadian data ranging from 1991 to 2011, this paper investigates the effects of the number of years since migration on the earnings of immigrants from the United States and the United Kingdom in Canada. The aim is to test whether the “negative assimilation” hypothesis proposed by Chiswick and Miller (Ind Labor Relat Rev 64(3):502–525, 2011) for immigrants to the United States is a universal finding for immigrants from countries with similar economic standing and skill transferability to those of the destination country. We also expand on Chiswick and Miller’s work by doing regressions for both males and females and by comparing to Chinese immigrants, a representative group from a less developed country. We find that the negative assimilation hypothesis does not hold for the Canadian labor market. Specifically, the assimilation rate is close to zero for U.K. immigrants and strictly positive for U.S. immigrants (although lower than that of a comparison group of Chinese immigrants). The assimilation rates are also higher for females than for males.     

Testing the immigrant assimilation hypothesis with longitudinal data

This paper is concerned with the comparison of alternative empirical techniques (cross section, synthetic cohort and panel data) for testing the immigrant assimilation hypothesis (IAH). The IAH specifies that immigrants acquire destination relevant human capital, but at a decreasing rate, with duration in the destination. Hence, ceteris paribus, earnings would be expected to increase, at a decreasing rate, with duration. The true assimilation effects may be obscured, however, in analyses of synthetic cohort or panel (longitudinal) data if there are period effects. That is, if the effect on earnings of duration in the destination varies over time. The empirical analysis uses a matched sample of adult male immigrants from the 1983 and 1995 Censuses of Israel. The matched data show that selective exit from the labor force (due to death, absence from the labor force, and inability to match, but not the remigration of immigrants) is associated with lower earnings in 1983. This biases upward the earnings assimilation estimated by the synthetic cohort method. The earnings data are also consistent with the hypothesis that the mass immigration to Israel from 1989 to 1995 raised the return (price) to Israeli-specific human capital among long-duration immigrants sufficiently to more than offset the greater increase in units of destination human capital acquired by more recent immigrants. As a result, long-duration immigrants experienced a steeper increase in earnings from 1983 to 1995. This annulled the true assimilation effects from 1983 to 1995. Longitudinal tests of IAH which assume that the returns to destination-specific skills remained constant (i.e., that there are no period effects) are biased against supporting the IAH if these returns increased.     

The labor supply of military wives in the US

Despite a slight increase in the labor force participation rate of women age 18–55 in the U.S. between 1990 and 2010, the labor force participation rate of military wives in this age cohort fell from 63 to 57?%. The goal of this paper is twofold: to document and analyze the labor force participation of military wives between 1990 and 2010, using the U.S. Census and American Community Survey data, and to compare the relationship between migration and labor force participation for military and non-military wives. We find that the primary suspects to explain the widening gap are the repeated migration for military wives, and the deepening of the recession.     

Intergenerational Mobility in East Asian Countries: A Comparative Study of Japan, Korea and China

Abstract:  There have been fewer cross-national comparative works on social mobility in East Asian countries than in Western countries. The present study aims to explore the similarities and differences of intergenerational social mobility in three East Asian countries and to examine whether the Featherman–Jones–Hauser (FJH) hypothesis would fit well into the mobility tables for Japan, Korea, and China. Log-linear and log-multiplicative models are applied to the mobility tables of respondents' occupations according to the father's occupation in the three countries. The analysis of relative rates of mobility did not completely support the FJH hypothesis in a strict sense, even though it reasonably accounts for the total association of origin and destination in the three countries. My analysis demonstrates that a level of social fluidity has been higher in Korea and China than in Japan. Focusing on how relative mobility patterns differ between the three countries, intergenerational mobility in Korea is characterized by lower rates of class inheritance compared to Japan, while there seems to be a similarity between the patterns of social fluidity in Japan and Korea, even though they are to a certain extent deviant from Erikson and Goldthorpe's core model. In contrast to Korea, class inheritance rates in China are almost as large as in Japan. However, the mobility pattern between classes appears to differ substantially between the post-socialist and two capitalist countries. In particular, both downward and upward mobility between the white collar bloc and the unskilled manual position are more pervasive in China than in Japan and Korea. These results imply that sociologists interested in cross-national comparison of the social mobility between the East Asian countries should pay attention to both political institutions and the local labor market situatuion which can substantially affect social mobility.