Union Worker Wage Effect in the Public Sector

This study examines union wage premiums in the public sector for the 1998–2004 period. Unlike previous studies, our approach estimates union wage premiums considering differences in the rewards to education, experience, and other personal characteristics for union and non-union workers. The approach provides a larger estimated wage gap than the traditional approach, and allows for simulations of union–nonunion wage gaps for different types of workers. Moreover, we use an Oaxaca decomposition to explain the larger union–nonunion wage gap in the private sector in comparison to that in the public sector. We find that between 50% and 60% of the difference in union wage premiums between the private and public sectors is due to differences in the way unionized workers are rewarded in the private and public sectors, while the remaining portion is due to differences in personal characteristics of private and public sector workers.

“Family-Friendly” Fringe Benefits and the Gender Wage Gap

Evidence suggests a large portion of the gender wage gap is explained by gender occupational segregation. A common hypothesis is that gender differences in preferences or abilities explain this segregation; women may prefer jobs that provide more “family-friendly” fringe benefits. Much of the research provides no direct evidence on gender differences in access to fringe benefits, nor how provision affects wages. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, we find that women are more likely to receive family-friendly benefits, but not other types of fringe benefits. We find no evidence that the differences in fringe benefits explain the gender wage gap.

The working spouse penalty/premium and married women’s labor supply

Using data drawn from the Current Population Surveys, this paper provides a consistent explanation for why the presence of a working wife reduces the husband’s wage among managers, but increases the husband’s wage among non-managers. It is not husband’s occupation per se but rather the distribution of husbands’ wage levels that underlies the working spouse penalty or premium. Positive correlations in earnings between married couples that arise from assortative mating make the cross-wage effects of the husbands’ wages on the wives’ hours of work first positive, then negative in cross-sectional data. The phenomenon of a working spouse penalty/premium is simply the flip side of this relationship.

How Living Wage Legislation Affects U.S. Poverty Rates

I investigate how living wage legislation affects poverty. I find evidence that living wage ordinances modestly reduce poverty rates where such ordinances are enacted. However, there is no evidence that state minimum wage laws do so. The difference in the impacts of the two types of legislation conceivably stems from a difference in the party responsible for bearing the burden of the cost.

Gender wage differences and human capital in the early twentieth century: the case of the paper box industry in New York

Women employed in the New York paper box industry in 1913–1914 earned about 60% of what men did. This paper employs the human capital framework to analyze the wage differential due to productivity related factors versus discriminatory nepotism towards men. Years of schooling, years of experience in the paper box trade, and legislative restrictions on working hours of women account for virtually all of the observed wage differential, both for all men and women in the paper box industry, and between the skilled occupations of cutters and strippers.

Does Public or Not-for-Profit Status Affect the Earnings of Hospital Workers?

This paper examines the earnings differentials among hospital workers in the public, private nonprofit, and private for-profit sectors. Utilizing data from the 1995 through 2007 Current Population Surveys, unadjusted earnings are highest in the private nonprofit sector and lowest in private for-profit firms. Once measurable characteristics are accounted for, health practitioners in for-profit and nonprofit hospitals earn similar wages while public sector workers earn small but significant wage penalties. Nonprofit hospitals tend to attract workers with higher levels of skill as measured by schooling and potential experience. This could be explained in part by worker sorting and lower cost containment incentives in nonprofit hospitals. Wage change analysis using pooled 2-year panels constructed from the CPS indicate no significant differences in earnings between the three sectors of employment. Whatever the role of the sector of employment on the overall earnings of hospital workers, there is sufficient worker mobility within the industry to largely eliminate systematic wage differences across type of hospital.

The response of household parental investment to child endowments

The theoretical and empirical literature on parental investment focuses on whether child-specific parental investments reinforce or compensate for a child’s initial endowments. However, many parental investments, such as neighborhood quality and family size and structure, are shared wholly or in part among all children in a household. The empirical results of this paper imply that such household parental investments compensate for low endowments, as proxied by low birth weight.

Marriage,partnership and sexual orientation: a study of British university academics and administrators

Using a unique data source on marital status, partnership and sexual orientation of academics and administrators at British universities, we estimate the impact of personal relationships upon earnings for men and women. While university data cover a relatively homogeneous group of workers, the two sides of the university are very different, with administrative jobs being more like the general job market in the economy. We find a large and significant married male premium, but only on the administrative side of the university. There is no female marriage premium, and no partnership return to gay men or to either heterosexual or homosexual women.

Educational Attainment and the Lesbian Wage Premium

This paper provides insight into the wage gap between lesbians and heterosexual women. Using data from the 2000 Decennial Census, we find a lesbian premium that equals approximately 10% for women without a bachelor’s degree, and is nearly non-existent for women with higher levels of education. These findings are consistent with proposition that the gap between lesbians’ and heterosexual women’s commitment to the labor market narrows at higher levels of education. We also find that controls for industry and occupation exert only a small effect on the gap between lesbian and heterosexual women’s wages.

How Wage Compression Affects Job Turnover

I use Swedish establishment-level panel data to test the hypothesis of Bertola and Rogerson (Eur Econ Rev 41:1147–1171 1997) of a positive relation between the degree of wage compression and job reallocation. Results indicate that the effect of wage compression on job turnover is positive and significant in the manufacturing sector. The wage compression effect is stronger on job destruction than on job creation, consistent with downward wage rigidity. Further results include a strong positive relationship between the fraction of temporary employees and job turnover and a negative relationship between the amount of working-time flexibility and job reallocation.

Testing Fair Wage Theory

Fairness considerations often are invoked to explain wage differences that appear unrelated to worker characteristics or job conditions, but non-experimental tests of fair wage models are rare because market data rarely permit researchers to measure individual workers’ productivity and its value. We use data from the baseball labor market to address this problem, and find no support for fair wage theory. We do find, however, that fairness premia can be illusory: Wages appear to incorporate fairness premia in regressions that control for variation in individuals’ physical output, but such premia evaporate when the value of that output is held constant.

The Evolution of Skill-Biased Effects on American Wages in the 1980s and 1990s

This study estimates the contributions of skill-biased technological change and international trade to the rise in the skill premium during the 1980s and 90s using the Feenstra and Hanson (Q J Econ 114(3):907–940, 1999) two-stage methodology. Newly available data on high-technology capital provide separate measures of computer and software investment. New estimates suggest that investment in software contributed to a substantial portion of the observed increase in the skill premium while investment in computers lead to a reduction in the rate of skill premium growth. Contrary to the findings of Feenstra and Hanson for the 1980s, neither software nor computers had a significant effect on wages during the 1980s. Foreign outsourcing does not appear to have significantly affected wages during the 1990s. The contribution to theory is that software is more complementary to increases in worker productivity due to human skills. Computers, on the other hand, reduced the growth of wage inequality by giving unskilled labor a more efficient set of tools with which to work.

The economics of gay and lesbian couples: Introduction to a special issue on gay and lesbian households

This article presents a simple conceptual framework integrating three couple-related outcomes analyzed in this volume: wage differentials in earnings related to couple formation, household formation (including cohabitation and registration as Registered Domestic Partnership), and intra-household allocation of income. It also discusses some of the articles’ main findings.

Effects of Minimum Wages on Youth Employment: the Importance of Accounting for Spatial Correlation

The relationship between minimum wage increases and youth employment is investigated using county-level data and spatial econometric techniques. Results that account for spatial correlation indicate that a 10% increase in the effective minimum wage is associated with a 3.2% decrease in youth employment, a result that is 28% higher than the corresponding estimate that does not control for spatial correlation. Thus, estimates that do not take into account spatial correlation may significantly underestimate the negative effect of the minimum wage on teenage employment. Improperly controlling for factors that vary systematically over space can lead to incorrect inferences and misinform policy.

Making Sense of Organizational Change: Voices of Older Volunteers

The role of voluntary and community sector organizations in the delivery of public services is increasing and these changes bring new responsibilities and benefits to organizations that have the capacity to participate. There are concerns within the sector about the implications for citizenship and participation. The sector is highly dependent on volunteers yet little is known about how organizational change in response to new relationships with the statutory sector impact upon the commitment and well-being of people who volunteer. This paper addresses that gap in knowledge for older volunteers. Drawing upon collaborative research with a voluntary organization in the north of England, the authors explore the meanings and aspirations of volunteering for older people, and explain how and why changes associated with closer engagement with public service delivery and less grant dependency can be disempowering for them.

The Politics of Space and Culture in Santiago, Chile’s Street Markets

Recent discussions of contentious politics have focused on struggles in and over space and place. This article builds upon these concerns by using ethnographic, interview, and documentary data to analyze the spatial politics of street market vendors in Santiago, Chile. Drawing upon Lefebvre’s concepts of perceived, conceived, and lived space as well as ideas drawn from research on space and protest, I show how street market vendors build upon spatial routines, a sense of place, political alliances, and scale jumping in their self-defense strategies at the local, national, and international scales. The findings illustrate Lefebvre’s argument that the advance of abstract space (constructed by dominant economic and political elites) provokes resistance by groups who defend and seek to reconstruct lived space.

The Effects of Minimum Wage Increases on Retail Employment and Hours: New Evidence from Monthly CPS Data

Proponents of state and federal minimum wage increases argue that past minimum wage hikes have not adversely affected retail employment. However, the existing empirical evidence is mixed. This study uses monthly data from the 1979–2004 Current Population Survey to provide new estimates of the effect of minimum wage increases on retail employment and hours worked. The findings suggest evidence of modest adverse effects. A 10% increase in the minimum wage is associated with a 1% decline in retail trade employment and usual weekly hours worked. Larger negative employment and hours effects are observed for the least experienced workers in the retail sector. These results are robust across a number of specifications, but are sensitive to controls for state time trends.

The Non-Existence of the Labor Demand/Supply Diagram,and other Theorems of Institutional Economics

The most famous and influential diagram in modern (neoclassical) labor economics is the model of wage determination by supply and demand. Using concepts and ideas from institutional economics, I argue that the theory of a perfectly competitive labor market is logically contradictory and, hence, the demand/supply diagram cannot exist on the plane of pure theory. Four other fundamental theorems concerning labor markets are also derived, as are implications about the theoretical foundation of the field of industrial relations and the economic evaluation of labor and employment policy.

Marriage migration: just another case of positive assortative matching?

It is a stylized fact that marriage formation involves positive assortative matching on education. We also find this in the case of immigrants, even when they tend to “import” their spouses and potentially trade off education for other favorable characteristics. For Pakistanis, we find positive compensating differentials in terms of high education to youth having adopted host country norms, when marrying a marriage migrant. This indicates that Pakistani marriage migrants pay a premium to be able to marry and live in Denmark. For Turks, individuals having source country norms pay a premium in order to import a partner, indicating that unspoiled traditional norms are traded off for education.

Is there a ‘marriage premium’ for gay men?

It is well-known that married men earn more than comparable single men, with typical estimates of the male marriage premium in the range of 10–20%. Some research also finds that cohabiting men earn more than men not living with a female partner. This study uses data from the General Social Survey and the National Health and Social Life Survey to examine whether a similar premium accrues to gay men who live with a male partner and whether cohabiting gay men have different observable characteristics than non-cohabiting gay men. Controlling for observable characteristics, cohabiting gay men do not earn significantly more than other gay men or more than unmarried heterosexual men. Cohabiting heterosexual men also do not earn more than non-cohabiting heterosexual men.