Labor market competitiveness and the size of the informal sector

This paper formalizes the dynamics of the informal sector with a special emphasis on the levels of labor market competitiveness in the formal and informal sectors. Specifically, it analyzes the effects of improved productivity and higher entry costs into the formal sector on the size of the informal sector for different degrees of competitiveness in the labor markets. We show that when the informal labor market is competitive while the formal labor market is not, lower production technology in the formal sector or a higher entry cost reduces the size of the informal sector in the long run.     

Patterns of Entry into Cohabitation and Marriage Among Mainland Puerto Rican Women*

This paper adds to our limited knowledge of racial and ethnic variation in union formation by describing and analyzing the first unions of mainland Puerto Rican women. Retrospective history data show that Puerto Ricans have shared in the post-1970 shift toward cohabitation. Puerto Rican women, however, are much more likely to enter informal first unions than the general population, and have a low propensity to transform informal unions into legal marriages. The paper examines the influence of family background and current activities on union timing and type. The relationship between partner attributes and the choice between formal and informal coupling is also considered.     

The labor supply of Latinas in the USA: Comparing labor force participation, wages, and hours worked with Anglo and Black women

This study explores the determinants of labor supply patterns among Latinas in the USA. We use recent microeconomic data from the Panel Study on Income Dynamics/Latino National Political Survey (PSID-LNPS) to estimate models of labor force participation, wages, and hours worked for a sample of Cuban, Mexican, and Puerto Rican women. We estimate the same models for Anglo and Black women in order to explore ethnic differences in the impact of characteristics affecting both the reservation and the market wage. We find that differences exist in the return to characteristics, such as education, but that there are also substantial differences in the levels of those characteristics across ethnic groups. The low wage rates and labor market activity of Latinas relative to Anglo and Black women are thus likely to be the combined result of lower investments in human capital and larger family size, the greater negative impact of macroeconomic conditions, and a stronger responsiveness to wages. Among Latinas, we find that there are differences in labor market outcomes between national origin and nativity groups. We also find that age at arrival and years in the USA play a role in labor supply, and that this is particularly true for Puerto Rican women.     

Childhood disadvantages and the timing of the onset of natural menopause in Latin America and the Caribbean

The aim of this study is to investigate the association of early life factors with the timing of the onset of natural menopause in Costa Rica and Puerto Rico. We use Cox proportional hazard models to estimate the risk of the onset of menopause. Our results suggest that socioeconomic disadvantages, as expressed by difficulties attending school due to economic hardships or parents never living together, increase the risk of the onset of natural menopause among Puerto Rican women. Among Costa Rican women, early life nutrition, estimated using anthropometric measures, is related to the timing of the onset of natural menopause.     

The Effects of the Informal Sector on Income of the Poor in Russia

This paper clarifies the social and economic effects of employment in the informal sector on the poor in Russia in recent years. The article describes the extent to which the figures for informal sector at large and unofficial employment in particular vary in different estimates and the effect they have on the average labor income of the poor. The major impact of the research consists of the development of a universal method for the estimation of the scales of labor income of the poor in the informal sector. Using the latest available data from Russian Federal State Statistics Service, this indicator is calculated for the poor and than compared with average wages in the formal sector and the subsistence minimum (official poverty line). The study concludes that the informal sector is a factor of social stability in a postsocialist transition economy, which, however, cannot alleviate poverty.     

Proletarianization with polarization: Industrialization, globalization, and social class in Turkey, 1980–2005

This paper analyzes the social class structure of Turkey during the latest wave of economic globalization in four dimensions: by sector of employment, with the Erikson–Goldthorpe–Portocarero (EGP) class schema, by occupational group, and in terms of informal employment. Since 1980, when Turkey opened to the global economy, the Turkish social class structure changed significantly. During this period, Turkey became a significant exporter of mostly low-technology, but also increasingly medium- and high-technology, manufactured goods. I contend that this economic globalization and industrialization contributed to a dual process of proletarianization and polarization. Proletarianization occurred through a transition from Turkey's agrarian tradition, a relative decline of the public sector, and an expansion of classes who sell their labor without workplace authority. Polarization entailed the growth of private-sector entrepreneurial, professional and managerial classes, and a simultaneous expansion of the informal sector. There were also differences between sexes. The share of manufacturing employment and the low-skilled labor classes expanded at rates much higher among women than among men, contributing to more rapid proletarianization.     

The impact of child care on fertility in urban Thailand

Women’s labor force participation in Thailand, particularly in the modem sector, recently has increased in conjunction with rapid declines in fertility. This paper examines whether a relationship exists between child care considerations and fertility decision making among Bangkok women. Although the two-child family has become the norm in recent years, and although most respondents said that ideally they would like to have two children, a high proportion of women surveyed said they planned to only have one child. Women’s work status and type of employment is found to strongly affect the likelihood of having a second birth: those who work at jobs that not only are low-paying but are located in a formal setting are least likely to have a second child. The type of child care for the first child also has an impact: those whose first child is in a less preferred situation are less likely to have a second. Variables measuring the need for and type of child care are found to have greater consequences for fertility than do usual measures of socioeconomic status.     

Public Sector Employment Inequality in the United States and the Great Recession

Historically in the United States, the public sector has served as an equalizing institution through the expansion of job opportunities for minority workers. This study examines whether the public sector continues to serve as an equalizing institution in the aftermath of the Great Recession. Using data from the Current Population Survey, I investigate changes in public sector employment between 2003 and 2013. My results point to a post-recession double disadvantage for black public sector workers: they are concentrated in a shrinking sector of the economy, and they are more likely than white and Hispanic public sector workers to experience job loss. These two trends are a historical break for the public sector labor market. I find that race and ethnicity gaps in public sector employment cannot be explained by differences in education, occupation, or any of the other measurable factors that are typically associated with employment. Among unemployed workers who most recently worked for the public sector, black women are the least likely to transition into private sector employment.     

The influence of human fertility on the economic conditions of the rural population in poland

Summary In 1970, Polish women in agricultural households reported larger numbers of children born alive than women in other occupations. When controlling for the influence of age at marriage and duration of marriage, the average number of children born per women among the farming population increased directly with the amount of privately owned agricultural land. Consistently, women whose principal source of livelihood was derived from non-agricultural sources even though they resided in villages, showed lower fertility than those in the agricultural sector, but significantly higher fertility than city women. This study is based on the five per cent sample of ever-married women between 15 and 70 years of age interviewed about their past reproductive histories in Poland during the 1970 Census of Population.The conclusions identify the high level of human fertility in rural populations as the main determinant of economic status among Polish peasants whose sources of support derive primarily from farming. Additional evidence supporting the hypothesis of dependence of the agricultural economy on the force of human reproduction is based on data for Slovakia and the Czech regions.     

How female education affects reproductive behavior in urban Pakistan

Although Pakistan remains in a pretransitional stage (contraceptive prevalence of only 11.9% among married women in 1992), urban women with post-primary levels of education are spearheading the gradual move toward fertility transition. Data collected in the city of Karachi in 1987 were used to determine whether the inverse association between fertility and female education is attributable to child supply variables, demand factors, or fertility regulation costs. Karachi, with its high concentration of women with secondary educations employed in professional occupations, has a contraceptive prevalence rate of 31%. Among women married for less than 20 years, a 10-year increment in education predicts that a woman will average two-fifths of a child less than other women in the previous 5 years. Regression analysis identified 4 significant intervening variables in the education-fertility relationship: marriage duration, net family income, formal sector employment, and age at first marriage. Education appears to affect fertility because it promotes a later age at marriage and thus reduces life-time exposure to the risk of childbearing, induces women to marry men with higher incomes (a phenomenon that either reduces the cost of fertility regulation or the demand for children), leads women to become employed in the formal sector (leading to a reduction in the demand for children), and has other unspecified effects on women's values or opportunities that are captured by their birth cohort. When these intervening variables are held constant, women's attitude toward family planning loses its impact on fertility, as do women's domestic autonomy and their expectations of self-support in old age. These findings lend support to increased investments in female education in urban Pakistan as a means of limiting the childbearing of married women. Although it is not clear if investment in female education would have the same effect in rural Pakistan, such action is important from a human and economic development perspective.     

Migration and the latino family: The union formation behavior of Puerto Rican women

This study examines the transition to first union among Puerto Rican women. I argue that understanding the behavior of mainland Puerto Ricans requires attention to family patterns in Puerto Rico and to the dynamics of migration between Puerto Rico and the United States. The study therefore is based on pooled data from comparable surveys undertaken in the two settings. These data allow for event history analyses that compare the union formation behavior of migrants with that of nonmigrants, and consider the role of migration in producing the observed union patterns. Multivariate models show that migrants are more likely than nonmigrants to form unions early and to enter informal unions. Additional analyses show that selective migration plays a role in producing this pattern. Overall the findings demonstrate the importance of using data from both origin and destination locales for understanding the behavior of migrant groups.     

The transition to parenthood in Puerto Rico: Occupational status and the timing of first births

This study examines the relationship between occupational status and fertility timing during a period of rapid development in Puerto Rico. Our fundamental hypothesis is that women with higher status occupations face greater opportunity costs than those with less valued jobs and therefore will be more likely to postpone parenthood until later ages than women without such high costs. We test this hypothesis using event history techniques with data from the 1982 Puerto Rico Fertility and Family Planning Assessment, an island-wide survey of women between the ages of 15 and 49. The analysis examines the effects of occupational status on the timing of first births, and finds strong support for the basic hypothesis, especially regarding the post-ponement of teen births. After the teen years, the effects are less pronounced. Overall, it appears that employment opportunities have played an important role in childbearing decisions in Puerto Rico.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America, Denver, Colorado, 30 April–2 May 1992.     

Fertility Timing of Unmarried and Married Mothers: Evidence on Variation Across U.S. Cities from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study

In this paper, we examine the determinants of fertility timing of unmarried and married mothers using a rich new birth cohort study, the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, drawn from 20 medium and large U.S. cities. We find considerable variation in the time to next birth among comparable mothers who live in different cities. Some of this variation is explained by variation in labor markets, housing costs and availability, and welfare policies. City variation is particularly important for unmarried women who already have two or more children, whose fertility is more sensitive to these contextual variables than is the fertility of married women, or unmarried women with just one child.     

On the Compatibility of Islam and Gender Equality

Although the Muslim world is sometimes depicted as a homogeneous civilization lacking democracy and gender equality, Muslim countries show tremendous economic, political and cultural variation. In this paper, this variation is used to gain insight into the determinants of women’s labor market participation (LMP) in the Muslim world. We use data on 45 Muslim countries and apply SEM models to determine effects of modernization, democracy, cultural background, and state Islamization on women’s participation in the formal economy (absolute LMP) and on the share of women in the labor force (relative LMP). Women’s absolute LMP is higher in Muslim countries with higher levels of economic development and in the oil-exporting countries. For women’s relative LMP, practical democracy (the degree to which people actively participate in the system) takes in a key position. It has a strong positive effect on women’s relative LMP and mediates the effects of economic development (positive), formal democratic structures (positive) and state Islamization (negative) on women’s relative LMP. Results indicate that in these countries modernization may lead to empowerment of women by increasing their absolute LMP, but that for attaining gender equality the political opportunity structures is most important.     

Marriage and divorce in twentieth century American cohorts

Marital status life tables have provided a basis for describing the marriage, divorce, and mortality experience of U.S. cohorts born 1888-1950. In brief, marriage occurred earlier and became more universal from the earliest cohorts to those of the late 1930s. More recent cohorts show declines in the proportion ever marrying and increases in the mean age at marriage. Period data for 1980 and cumulative cohort data by age suggest the likelihood of a continuing retreat from first marriage. Divorce has been rising steadily, with the latest cohorts indicating that 46 percent of male marriages and 42 percent of female marriages will end in divorce. Period data for males in 1980 raise the possibility that levels of divorce may have reached a peak, but cumulative cohort data by age show no such pattern. The present results are consistent with the view that a fundamental change in the traditional concept of marriage is underway. Traditional marriage involved the husband providing the wife with economic support and protection in return for her companionship and maternal services. Strong social pressures urged men and women to marry, and made the coveted services married persons provided each other difficult to obtain elsewhere. Recent economic changes have undermined the social and economic forces that maintained the institution of marriage. The U.S. economy has grown to include a large service sector in its labor force, and that growth has produced a dramatic increase in female labor force opportunities (Oppenheimer, 1970). The resultant large scale participation of women in economic activity blurs the traditional division of labor by sex, and goes to the very heart of the traditional marriage "bargain." At the same time, economic changes have weakened family ties by encouraging lower fertility, stressing achieved as opposed to ascribed characteristics, and fostering geographical mobility (Goode, 1970). The "marital union" of the past may be giving way to the "marital partnership" of the future, which will accommodate informal as well as formal marriages, less dependence between spouses, greater egalitarianism, lower fertility, and higher levels of divorce.     

The effect of child care and part time opportunities on participation and fertility decisions in Italy

Economic models of household behavior typically yield the prediction that increases in schooling levels and wage rates of married women lead to increases in their labor supply and reductions in fertility. In Italy, low labor market participation rates of married women are observed together with low birth rates. Our explanation involves the Italian institutional structure, particularly as reflected in rigidities and imperfections in the labor market and characteristics of the publicly-funded child care system. These rigidities tend to simultaneously increase the costs of having children and to discourage the labor market participation of married women. We analyze a model of labor supply and fertility, using panel data. The empirical results show that the availability of child care and part time work increase both the probability of working and having a child. Received: 14 February 2000/Accepted: 20 February 2001     

非正规就业者的境况得到改善了么?——来自1997-2011年CHNS数据的证据

为研究国有企业改革以来我国城镇非正规就业者的境遇变化,本文利用1997-2011年CHNS数据库,采用倾向得分匹配(PSM)方法,对城镇非正规就业者和正规就业者收入差距进行实证研究.结果发现,城镇非正规就业者与正规就业者收入存在显著差异,且呈现不断扩大的趋势,尤其是有雇工的非正规雇佣者、无雇工的非正规自雇者与正规就业者收入差距越来越大,表明我国城镇非正规就业者的生存境遇正不断恶化,劳动力市场向着不利于非正规就业的方向发展.这要求在劳动力市场改革中应充分考虑非正规就业者的生存空间,加大对非正规就业者的扶持力度的同时,注重非正规就业政策的差异性,减少劳动力市场扭曲对非正规就业者的影响.     

Another Child? Fertility Ideals,Resources and Opportunities

Low fertility in most developed countries has prompted policy concern in relation to labour market supply, pensions, and expenditure on health and welfare services as well as policy debate about both the cost of children and the opportunity costs of parenthood. The extent to which family policy interventions can be effective in slowing or reversing fertility decline is much debated. This paper, based on a fertility module of the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey 2005, examines the current fertility, and ideal and expected fertility of a nationally representative sample of 455 parents of reproductive age and focuses on whether they plan to have another child. It compares the characteristics of those who intend to have another child with those who do not, and how parents with one child differ from those with more children. It addresses three questions about family size: (1) fertility ideals, (2) resources and the economic implications of childbearing, and (3) opportunities for childbearing and the effects of a late start on fertility expectations. It concludes that, despite a sustained period of low fertility in Scotland, childbearing ideals are robust and explanations of low fertility must derive from difficulties in realising those ideals. Difficulties in realising fertility aspirations are associated less with resources than with opportunities for childbearing, especially the timing of first birth. Those who delay their first birth are less likely to realise their ideal family size, and their lower fertility is associated with the opportunity costs of childbearing in terms of foregone qualifications, careers and earnings.     

How Job Characteristics Affect International Migration: The Role of Informality in Mexico

Despite the importance given to employment opportunities as a primary motive for migration, previous studies have paid insufficient attention to the kinds of jobs that are more likely to retain workers in their countries of origin. We use information from a panel survey of Mexican adults to examine how job characteristics affect the risk of international migration. The sampling strategy and overall size of the survey allow us to analyze the effect of employment characteristics on migration from urban areas, which have much greater labor market diversity, and to separate our analysis by gender. We also distinguish migrants according to whether they migrate for work or for other reasons. We find informality to be a significant predictor of international migration. Even after controlling for individual factors including workers’ wages, as well as various household- and community-level predictors, we find that workers employed in the informal sector have significantly higher odds of migrating than their counterparts in the formal sector. The pervasive nature of informality in many developing countries from which a high proportion of international migrants originate may therefore create a constant supply of workers who are predisposed to migrate. Our findings thus have important implications for a proper understanding of the effects of economic development on migration.     

Is Local Social Development Associated with Workforce Composition? A Municipal Analysis of Mexico, 1990–2015

A critical development goal involves reducing subsistence farming and encouraging entrepreneurship and formal sector employment. A growing number of studies examine cross-national variation in the rates of subsistence farming, marginal self-employment, formal employment, and prosperous entrepreneurship by level of development. However, despite significant regional disparities in development within most low-to-middle-income countries, little is known about how development at the local level is associated with labor market patterns. Using a pooled cross section containing four waves of data from the Mexican Census (1990–2015), this study investigates the relationship between social development and municipal workforce composition. In the 1980s, Mexico initiated an ambitious and multipronged development agenda intended to reduce extreme regional disparities in educational attainment, housing quality, access to utilities, and poverty. This study measures social development using a multi-dimensional measure that captures educational attainment, housing quality, access to utilities, and poverty. Laborers are separated into employed, own-account workers, and employers, with each category divided into agricultural and non-agricultural. In a second set of analyses, non-agricultural own-account workers are categorized as high and low growth potential and non-agricultural wage workers are separated into informal and formal sector. Results from fixed effects regression models indicate that local development significantly reduces the rate of own-account agricultural work and increases non-agricultural wage labor and employer self-employment. As less developed areas advance, the largest initial increase in non-agricultural work is in the informal sector. But, in more developed communities, social development increasingly predicts growth in formal sector employment and more selective entry into non-agricultural own-account work. The findings suggest that investment in community-level social development has the potential to reduce subsistence self-employment, encourage formal sector work, and promote entrepreneurship. Yet, the greatest gains occur in communities that already have mid to high levels of social development.