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.     

The ‘digital glimpse’ as imagining home

This paper proposes the concept of the ‘digital glimpse’, which develops the existing framing of imaginative travel. Here it articulates the experiences of mobile workers digitally connecting into family life and everyday rituals when physically absent with work. The recent embedding of digital communication technologies into personal relationships and family life is reconfiguring how absence is experienced and practiced by workers on the move, and through this, new digital paradigms for life on-the-move are emerging. This paper explores how such social relationships are maintained at-a-distance through digital technology – using evidence from qualitative interviews with mobile workers and their families. Digital technology now enables expressive forms of ‘virtual travel’, including video calling, picture sharing, and instant messaging. This has implications for the ways in which families can manage the social and relational pressures of being apart. Experiences of imaginative travel created through novel media can enrich the experience and give a greater sense of connection for both those who are at home and those who are away. While technology is limited in its ability to replicate a sense of co-presence, ‘digital glimpses’ are an emergent set of sociotechnical practices that can reduce the negative impact of absence on family relationships.     

新生代农民工住房需求特征与政策回应研究—基于重庆的调查

新生代农民工是我国城市化进程中需要面对的新群体,其住房问题是现阶段城镇住房保障领域的主要问题之一,事关我国城市化质量的提升和可持续发展。本文通过问卷调查和深入访谈的形式,对新生代农民工在城市居住现状、需求特征和住房意愿等问题进行了调查研究。结果显示,新生代农民工群体居住拥挤、条件简陋、教育医疗配套少,住房问题十分严峻。文章最后从户籍制度调整、阶梯型住房政策以及建立有针对性的保障措施等方面提出了提升新生代农民工住房保障的对策。     

The problems of eligibility and endogenous confounders when assessing the mortality impact of a nationwide disease-prevention programme: the case of insecticide-treated nets in Togo

Evaluation of the mortality impact of nationwide disease-prevention efforts is complicated by potential endogeneity: programme recipients may have unobserved characteristics that simultaneously make them both more likely to become recipients and more likely to survive as a result of other health practices. This population-based study assesses the mortality impact of a nationwide programme that distributed insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) to mothers of children aged 9-59 months in Togo. By comparing mortality rates before and after the programme according to households' eligibility status, we demonstrate that a one-time programme that restricts eligibility to households with a surviving child excludes some households with a high risk of child mortality. We then apply simultaneous estimation models to untangle the mortality impact of ITNs from the effects of unobserved confounders and show that among eligible households, living in a household with ITNs significantly reduces mortality for children aged 20-59 months, even after controlling for endogeneity.     

Worker Satisfaction Following Employment Restructuring: Effects of Nonstandard Workers and Downsizing on Job Satisfaction in Taiwan

Since the 1980s, many employment relationships in Taiwan have evolved from regular and long-term to contingent and short-term, with widespread downsizing adding a considerable amount of instability. Since these changes are part of a global trend, there is a growing literature concerning their influences on worker attitudes and work life quality. Here we analyze the impacts of changing employment practices on the quality of work life among Taiwanese workers, specifically analyzing the effects of nonstandard work arrangements and downsizing on job satisfaction. Data are from the 2005 Taiwan Social Change Survey, First Wave of the Fifth Phase: Work and Life Module. Our two main findings are (a) degree of use of nonstandard workers exerts a range of negative impacts on job satisfaction among regular workers, and (b) degree of downsizing exerts similar negative effects. We also discuss the moderating impacts of using nonstandard workers as part of a downsizing strategy.     

中国老年人的居住方式与其婚姻状况的关系分析

基于追踪调查数据,运用随机效应Probit模型分析老年人的居住方式与其婚姻状况的关系及其在不同性别和不同年龄段上的差异。研究发现,丧偶对老年人的居住方式存在显著影响,老年人在丧偶后更可能与子女同住。然而,在控制配偶照顾因素后,丧偶对老年人居住方式的影响却大幅下降。从性别和年龄上来看,丧偶对女性老年人居住方式的影响大于男性老年人,对高龄老年人的影响大于低龄老年人。同时,研究还发现,在控制人口特征、社会经济以及健康状况变量之后,未观测到的个体异质性对老年人居住方式存在显著影响。     

Stress Coping Strategies,Perceived Organizational Support and Marital Status as Predictors of Work–Life Balance among Nigerian Bank Employees

The study examined stress coping strategies, perceived organizational support and marital status as predictors of work–life balance. Two hundred and fifty-four bank workers participated in the study. Results of the regression analyses showed that stress coping strategies was a significant predictor of work–life balance (β = .34, p = .000) and contributed 11 % variance in work–life balance after controlling for the effects of gender, age and education. The result further revealed that perceived organizational support significantly predicted workers’ work–life balance (β = .22, p = .001) and contributed additional 4 % variance in work–life balance after the effects of gender, age, education and coping strategies have been controlled. Marital status was not related to work–life balance. The findings of the study were discussed based on Nigerian socio-economic realities. The implications of the findings to work–life policies and practices were discussed.     

Accounting for dynamic selection bias in educational transitions: The Cameron-Heckman latent class estimator and its generalizations

The sequential logit model of educational transitions has long been the dominant modeling framework for the study of inequality of educational opportunity ever since the seminal works of [Mare, 1980] and [Mare, 1981]. But conventional applications of the model are known to be biased by the ubiquitous presence of unobserved heterogeneity. Cameron and Heckman (1998) propose a logit model that allows for two or three latent classes if the selection bias is solely generated by a person-specific component of stable unobserved heterogeneity. To evaluate the latent class logit regression estimator, this study makes use of simulated data to eliminate the influences of other problems of transition modeling. The simulation is based on five independent pairs of large samples generated from standard distributional assumptions of transition modeling. The new estimator appears to be an effective way to adjust for dynamic selection bias when family background effects are transition-invariant and sample size is in the order of ten thousand or above. By contrast, the conventional sequential logit model produces results that are very different from the data generating models. This study also considers two alternative ways to improve statistical efficiency: (1) incorporate a crude indicator of stable unobserved heterogeneity; (2) pool the effect estimates across transitions, background variables, and alternative estimators to smooth out noise under the null hypothesis of transition invariance. In addition, this study examines the impact of indicator reliability and sample size on the performance of the latent class regression models and suggests practical guidelines.     

How do family planning workers’ visits affect women’s contraceptive behavior in bangladesh?

In Bangladesh, family planning workers' visits reduce the costs of contraception and may increase the demand. If visits increase demand or if workers are targeting their visits, past visits by family planning workers should have a positive and significant effect on later probabilities of adopting contraceptive methods. Longitudinal data show that past visits are not significant in hazard models for adoption of contraceptive methods, whereas visits in the current round are significant. Therefore family planning workers' visits affect women's contraceptive behavior by decreasing the costs of contraception. Results of contraceptive discontinuation hazard models further support this hypothesis.     

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.     

Gesundheitsf?rdernde Faktoren f��r Selbst?ndige in der Kreativwirtschaft

For political and economic decision makers, the Creative Industries are a major future market. The social situation many of the mostly self-employed creative workers find themselves in, however, is far from secure. Financial problems, precarious employment conditions, long working hours and high burn-out rates are typical of this ??class of the new?? (Barbrook 2009). This paper addresses the question of which variables that creative workers themselves have the power to influence have an impact on psychological health syndromes. It shows that compensation strategies such as ??brief periods of relaxation even during work intensive phases??, the quality of creative workers?? interpersonal relationships with peers and colleagues, ??being confident about one??s abilities??, enjoying work and ??taking holidays??have a positive impact on psychological health syndromes. Conversely, conflicts with colleagues or customers, turning a blind eye to problems and dependency on a single major customer impact negatively on psychological health syndromes. The paper is based on research carried out for the project ??Balancing creative workers dilemmas: value-based business and networking practices of self-employed working in the Creative Industries??, funded by the Translational Research Programme of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). It was developed as a thesis for the SOQUA postgraduate training programme (http://www.soqua. net), which provides further professional qualification for workers in the social sciences.     

农民工对失业保险的潜在需求研究——基于河北省的社会调查

在市场经济和社会化大生产的背景下,农民工面临失业风险大、生活保障弱、再就业难等问题,导致农民工群体对失业保险制度存在潜在需求。现行失业保险制度由于给付条件过于严格、保障水平低以及就业促进功能缺位等原因,不能与农民工对失业保险制度的潜在需求匹配。应以农民工实际工资为缴费基数,采用灵活的缴费率机制,并将缴费金额、缴费时间与支付水平相挂钩,为农民工建立既有别于正规就业,又能与正规就业的失业保险制度接轨的弹性失业保险制度。     

The Impact of the Earned Income Tax Credit on Marriage and Divorce: Evidence from Flow Data

While considerable research focuses on the anti-poverty and labor supply effects of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), relatively little is known about the program’s influence on marriage and divorce decisions. Furthermore, nearly all work in this area uses stock measures of marital status derived from survey data. In this paper, I draw upon Vital Statistics data between 1977 and 2004 to construct a transition-based measure of marriage and divorce rates. Flows into and out of marriage are advantageous because they are more likely to capture the immediate impact of policy changes. Controlling for state-level characteristics and sources of unobserved heterogeneity, I find that increases in the EITC are associated with reductions in new marriages, although the estimated effect is economically small. I find no relationship between the EITC and new divorces. These results are robust to alternative estimation strategies, data restrictions, and the inclusion of additional policy and demographic controls.     

人力资本、社会资本对新生代农民工创业意愿影响研究--基于四川省1109份调查数据

本文利用四川省1109名新生代农民工的调查数据,运用有序Probit模型重点探讨人力资本和社会资本对新生代农民工创业意愿的影响。研究结果表明,人力资本和社会资本对新生代农民工的创业意愿存在积极影响。其中,人力资本方面,除了文化程度与新生代农民工创业意愿没有显著关系外,健康状况、技能水平、培训次数及工作经验对新生代农民工的创业意愿均有显著影响。社会资本方面,朋友圈范围和从政或从商亲戚数量对新生代农民工的创业意愿有显著影响。     

The impact of family structure transitions on youth achievement: Evidence from the children of the NlSY79

We investigated the sensitivity of measures of cognitive ability and socioemotional development to changes in parents' marital status using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979. We used several scores for each assessment, taken at different times relative to parents' marital transitions, which allowed us to trace the effects starting up to five years before a parent's change in marital status and continuing for up to six years afterward. It also allowed us to correct for the unobserved heterogeneity of the transition and nontransition samples by controlling for the child's fixed effect in estimating the time path of his or her response to the transition. We found that children from families with both biological parents scored significantly better on the BPI and the PIAT-math and PIAT-reading assessments than did children from nonintact families. However, much of the difference disappeared when we controlled for background variables. Furthermore, when we controlled for child fixed effects, we did not find significant longitudinal variation in these scores over long periods that encompass the marital transition. This finding suggests that most of the variation is due to cross-sectional differences and is not a result of marital transitions per se.     

Social networks and HIV/AIDS risk perceptions

Understanding the determinants of individuals' perceptions of their risk of becoming infected with HIV and their perceptions of acceptable strategies of prevention is an essential step toward curtailing the spread of this disease. We focus in this article on learning and decision-making about AIDS in the context of high uncertainty about the disease and appropriate behavioral responses. We argue that social interactions are important for both. Using longitudinal survey data from rural Kenya and Malawi, we test this hypothesis. We investigate whether social interactions--and especially the extent to which social network partners perceive themselves to be at risk--exert causal influences on respondents' risk perceptions and on one approach to prevention, spousal communication about the threat of AIDS to the couple and their children. The study explicitly allows for the possibility that important characteristics, such as unobserved preferences or community characteristics, determine not only the outcomes of interest but also the size and composition of networks. The most important empirical result is that social networks have significant and substantial effects on risk perceptions and the adoption of new behaviors even after we control for unobserved factors.     

Barrieren, Brücken und Balancen

The present paper discusses conceptions of appropriate distance relations in present day service jobs. We show how employees manage their emotions in order to comply with these largely ideological conceptions. In two comparative case studies of a call center and of community care for elderly people we demonstrate that the conceptions of appropriate distance are diametrically opposed to the objective spatial distance of the interactants. Thus, Customer Relations Management suggests an emotionalised relation between customers and call center agents who are located hundreds or even thousands of kilometres away from customers. This emotional closeness supposedly maximises the economic exploitation of the commercial interaction. In the service of elderly care which involves close body contact, however, the conception of a professional relation between carer and client is based on the carer’s ability to distance herself in order not to ‘burn out’. We show that the effects of rationalisation, bureaucratisation and new technologies in service jobs of both capitalist service economies and welfare states create dilemmas between the feeling rules and the working conditions. Service workers try to solve these dilemmas by more or less improvised practices of manipulating their feelings and sensations.     

An Interview-Based Exploration of the Motivations and Occupational Aspirations of Chronic Care workers

A shortage of nurses' aides at a time of dramatically increasing demand for nursing home care makes it imperative to study the occupational motivations and aspirations of those aides who currently work in long-term care. Motivations for choosing this type of work were found to be related to aides' commitment to continue or leave the job at one year, or to combine part-time work and education. Recommendations are made for improved recruitment and retention of workers in long-term care.     

The consequences of unobserved heterogeneity in a sequential logit model

Cameron and Heckman (1998) established that a sequential logit model is more sensitive than many other models to the possible biasing influence of unobserved heterogeneity. This article proposes a method which allows researchers to find out how large this potential problem is for their data, their model, and their hypothesis of interest. This is done by proposing a set of scenarios for this unobserved heterogeneity, and showing how to estimate the effects of interest given these scenarios. The set of results from these scenarios give an indication of how sensitive the results are to assumptions regarding unobserved heterogeneity. This sensitivity analysis has been applied to a study of educational attainment in the Netherlands, and it showed that that the finding that the effect of father's education declined over transitions is quite sensitive to the assumptions made about unobserved heterogeneity, but that the finding that the effect of father's education declined over birth cohorts is more robust than is often feared.     

中国劳动供求态势变化、问题与对策

本文分析了劳动供给和需求态势的变化,认为我国无限劳动供给时代已经结束,"招工难"具体地反映了劳动供求形势所发生的根本性变化,这一变化虽然并不意味着劳动力数量绝对短缺,但意味着劳动者工资只有实现合理增长才能保持劳动力资源充分供给。综合劳动供求变化,本文进一步探讨了当前劳动力市场的形势和问题,认为虽然从统计数字来看我国城镇失业率继续保持较低水平,但劳动力市场形势并不令人乐观,实际失业率水平仍然较高,同时就业的结构性矛盾越来越突出。为实现充分就业,我国仍然需要保持经济适度快速增长,同时需要改善就业质量,让劳动者更加公平地分享经济增长成果。