Job opportunities,economic resources,and the postsecondary destinations of American youth

Using a nationally representative sample of graduates from the high school class of 2003-2004, I test the warehouse hypothesis, which contends that youth are more likely to leave school and enter the labor force when there are available job opportunities (and vice versa). Using two measures of job opportunities—local unemployment rates and the percentage of local workers employed in jobs that require a bachelor’s degree—I find support for the warehouse hypothesis. In areas where unemployment is low, with ample jobs that do not require a bachelor’s degree, youth have higher odds of entering the labor force. In areas where unemployment is high, with few jobs that require only a high school diploma, youth have higher odds of entering college. The effect of unemployment on enrollment is more pronounced for low-income youth than for high-income youth, with both low- and high-income youth turning to four-year schools rather than two-year schools when job opportunities are limited.     

The Migratory Response of Labor to Special Economic Zones in the Philippines, 1995–2005

In the mid 1990s the Filipino government adopted a new export-led development policy in an attempt to attract new investments and lower the unemployment rates throughout the country. The central idea was to provide foreign investors more access to Filipino markets and labor by giving them investor tax breaks and lowering trade tariffs. In return, the government hoped that investors would bring large amounts of capital into designated areas thereby creating new jobs and stimulating the domestic economy. The Filipino created the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) and Base Conversion Development Authority (BCDA) to manage the operation of the Special Economic Zones (SEZ) throughout the country. Between 1995 and 2005 PEZA and BCDA approved over 200 new SEZ that have created over four million jobs throughout the country. However, these jobs are concentrated in a small number of regions. This research uses a modified Harris-Todaro model and GIS techniques to examine the inter-regional migration response to the PEZA and BCDA programs’ geographically targeted investments. We show that areas with the highest job growth have high rates of in-migration while regions with low SEZ related investments have become migration-sending areas. In addition, our analysis shows that in-migration to SEZ affected areas has tended to surpass available jobs resulting in high unemployment. We show how the Harris-Todaro model in combination with GIS might be used to identify locations for future PEZA and BCDA investments that are less likely to result in regional population loss or growth in unemployment.     

Education,race/ethnicity and out-migration from a border city

Through a combination of high immigration rates and differential fertility, communities along the U.S.-Mexico border have become overwhelmingly Hispanic. El Paso, Texas, located across the border from Ciudad Juárez, forms part of the world’s largest urban center on a land border. El Paso ranks among the bottom 10 large U.S. metropolitan areas with the smallest proportion of college-educated adults, causing concerns among policy makers regarding its prospects for economic development. Local discourse suggests that low educational levels result from the out-migration of educated groups that find higher wages or better jobs elsewhere. Two sources of data are used to explore the association between education, race/ethnicity, and out-migration: the five percent 2000 PUMS and a survey conducted among students at the University of Texas at El Paso. We find that between 1995 and 2000 a large net outflow of non-Hispanic whites and blacks of all educational levels took place. Among Mexicans and Mexican Americans, college graduates were more likely to leave compared to high school graduates, but place of birth and language preference influenced these odds. Student data confirmed that non-Hispanics are significantly more likely to plan to leave compared to students of Mexican origin or descent. Among Mexicans and Mexican Americans, those who prefer English and mentioned jobs and lifestyle as the most important factors in choosing a place to live and work were more likely to have plans to leave upon graduation. Policy implications are discussed regarding the future of border communities.     

Self-Reported Satisfaction and the Economic Crisis of 2007–2010: Or How People in the UK and Germany Perceive a Severe Cyclical Downturn

Self-reported satisfaction measures respond to a great variety of socio-demographic characteristics as well as the job and living environment. In this paper we ask whether the recent financial market crisis has caused a deterioration of satisfaction not only for the unemployed but also for those out of the labour force and especially those in employment. The focus of our analyses is on the pattern of life, job and health satisfaction over time and the influence of unemployment rates, inflation rates and GDP growth. We compare the UK and Germany, two countries with different employment protection regulations and different consequences of the crisis for the labour market. For our analysis we use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and the British Household Panel Study for the period 1996–2010 and supplement this with annual information on macroeconomic indicators. We estimate Ordered Logit and OLS models, both with individual fixed effects. We find some limited psychological costs with respect to self-reported life satisfaction in the crisis years, and a considerable impact of regional and national unemployment rates. Looking at job and health satisfaction we get similar though somewhat weaker results.     

Gender, Job Searching, and Employment Outcomes among Mexican Immigrants

Past quantitative research has typically disregarded the effect of gender on the relationship between social capital and immigrant adaptation. However, recent theory and qualitative evidence suggest that gender is a significant factor moderating this association. I use Mexican Migration Project (MMP) data regarding Mexican immigrant experiences in the U.S. to examine quantitatively how the process of job searching, and the effects of network-based job searching, vary by gender. Results show no evidence of overall sex differences in the likelihood of using network (i.e., family-based or friend-based) or individual (i.e., non-network) job search methods, but there are sex differences in the processes affecting job search method used. Settlement increases women’s use of their friend networks to obtain work, while for men, it decreases the use of networks of any kind. Contrary to conventional wisdom, women who use network-based job searches are less likely to obtain formal sector employment than women who find work without network assistance. Conversely, using network-based job searches increases the likelihood that men will find work in the formal sector. Since employment in the formal sector is correlated with wages, as well as nonwage benefits, this suggests that using networks in the job search has markedly different effects on the overall economic well-being of male and female Mexican immigrants in the U.S.     

Work and pay in flexible and regulated labor markets: A generalized perspective on institutional evolution and inequality trends in Europe and the U.S.

In recent years a “unified theory” has emerged out of labor economics, which argues that a combination of “macroeconomic shocks” and flexible labor market institutions in the U.S. has produced strong upward trends in wage inequality, while these same shocks have produced high unemployment and low employment growth in Europe as a side effect of the wage stability preserved by that continent's rigid labor market institutions. This paper takes issue with the common view that inequality trends are best explained by a model of stable institutions interacting with changing macroeconomic forces. It argues that European institutions in fact have changed, and that institutional changes which were triggered by the broader macroeconomic forces have affected the form as well as the size of inequality trends. While the U.S. has experienced rising strong skill-based wage inequality, institutional change in France has produced an upward trend in the density of insecure jobs and an increased concentration of low-skill workers in insecure jobs. These results challenge the view that low employment rates is the sole mechanism through which European labor markets have absorbed asymmetric shocks to their demand for labor.     

Do Immigrants Work In Riskier Jobs?

Recent media and government reports suggest that immigrants are more likely to hold jobs with poor working conditions than U.S.-born workers, perhaps because immigrants work in jobs that “ natives don’t want.” Despite this widespread view, earlier studies have not found immigrants to be in riskier jobs than natives. This study combines individual-level data from the 2003-2005 American Community Survey with Bureau of Labor Statistics data on work-related injuries and fatalities to take a fresh look at whether foreign-born workers are employed in more dangerous jobs. The results indicate that immigrants are in fact more likely to work in risky jobs than U.S.-born workers, partly due to differences in average characteristics, such as immigrants’ lower English-language ability and educational attainment.     

U.S. women at work

Women made up 43% of the U.S. labor force in 1980, up from 29% in 1950, and 52% of all women 16 and over were working or looking for work compared to 34% in 1950. The surge in women's employment is linked to more delayed marriage, divorce, and separation, women's increased education, lower fertility, rapid growth in clerical and service jobs, inflation, and changing attitudes toward "woman's place." Employment has risen fastest among married women, especially married mothers of children under 6, 45% of whom are now in the labor force. Some 44% of employed women now work fulltime the year round, but still average only $6 for every $10 earned by men working that amount. This is partly because most women remain segregated in low paying "women's jobs" with few chances for advancement. Among fulltime workers, women college graduates earn less than male high school dropouts. Working wives were still spending 6 times more time on housework than married men in 1975 and working mothers of preschool children are also hampered by a severe lack of daycare facilities. Children of working women, however, appear to develop normally. Equal employment opportunity and affirmative action measures have improved the climate for working women but not as much as for minorities. The federal income tax and social security systems still discriminate against 2 income families. Woman's position in the U.S. labor force should eventually improve with the inroads women are making in some male-dominated occupations and gains in job experience and seniority among younger women who now tend to stay in the labor force through the years of childbearing and early childrearing, unlike women in the 1950s and 1960s.     

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night: The Effect of Retirement on Subsequent Mortality of U.S. Supreme Court Justices, 1801–2006

Mortality hazard and length of time until death are widely used as health outcome measures and are themselves of fundamental demographic interest. Considerable research has asked whether labor force retirement reduces subsequent health and its mortality measures. Previous studies have reported positive, negative, and null effects of retirement on subsequent longevity and mortality hazard, but inconsistent findings are difficult to resolve because (1) nearly all data confound retirement with unemployment of older workers, and often, (2) endogeneity bias is rarely addressed analytically. To avoid these problems, albeit at loss of generalizability to the entire labor force, I examine data from an exceptional subgroup that is of interest in its own right: U.S. Supreme Court justices of 1801–2006. Using discrete-time event history methods, I estimate retirement effects on mortality hazard and years-left-alive. Some substantive and methodological considerations suggest models that specify endogenous effects estimated by instrumental variables (IV) probit, IV Tobit, and IV regression methods. Other considerations suggest estimation by endogenous switching (ES) probit and ES regression. Estimates by all these methods are consistent with the hypothesis that, on average, retirement decreases health, as indicated by elevated mortality hazard and diminished years-left-alive. These findings may apply to other occupational groups characterized by high levels of work autonomy, job satisfaction, and financial security.     

Migrant Selection and the Health of U.S. Immigrants From the Former Soviet Union

Few prior studies have investigated the health of U.S. immigrants from the former Soviet Union (FSU). Utilizing data from the 2000 U.S. census and the 2000–2007 National Health Interview Survey (NIHS), we compare levels of disability of FSU immigrants with U.S.-born whites (ages 50–84). Our findings suggest an “epidemiologic paradox” in that FSU immigrants possess higher levels of education compared with U.S.-born whites, but report considerably higher disability with and without adjustment for education. Nonetheless, FSU immigrants report lower levels of smoking and heavy alcohol use compared with U.S.-born whites. We further investigate disability by period of arrival among FSU immigrants. Changes in Soviet emigration policies conceivably altered the level of health selectivity among émigrés. We find evidence that FSU immigrants who emigrated during a period when a permission to emigrate was hard to obtain (1970–1986) displayed less disability compared with those who emigrated when these restrictions were less stringent (1987–2000). Finally, we compare disability among Russian-born U.S. immigrants with that of those residing in Russia as a direct test of health selectivity. We find that Russian immigrants report lower levels of disability compared with Russians in Russia, suggesting that they are positively selected for health despite their poor health relative to U.S.-born whites.     

The impact of labor market entry conditions on initial job assignment and wages

We estimate the effects of labor market entry conditions on wages for male individuals first entering the Austrian labor market between 1978 and 2000. We find a large negative effect of unfavorable entry conditions on starting wages and a sizable negative long-run effect. Our preferred estimates imply a decrease in starting wages by about 0.9 % and a lifetime loss in wages of about 1.3 % for an increase in the initial local unemployment rate by one percentage point. We show that poor entry conditions are associated with lower quality of a worker’s first employer and that the quality of workers’ first employer explains as much as three-quarters of the observed long-run wage effects resulting from poor entry conditions. Moreover, wage effects are much more persistent for blue-collar workers because some of them appear to be permanently locked in into low-paying jobs/tasks.     

Why are Children with Married Parents Healthier? The Case of Pediatric Asthma

Among a recent birth cohort in U.S. cities, young children were far more likely to be diagnosed with asthma and to experience an asthma-related emergency if their parents were unmarried. Using longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, I find that the child health benefits of marriage seem to stem from the benefits of parental coresidence and the demographic and socioeconomic correlates of marriage. Children whose parents live apart appear to be at heightened risk of asthma even after taking into account demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. The child health benefits of marriage are only weakly related to mothers’ health behaviors and are not related to father involvement. An analysis of relationship transitions suggests that marital disruption may be more harmful for children than the disruption of cohabiting unions. The results provide some cautions and considerations for the U.S. government’s Healthy Marriage Initiative.

Musical chairs: The occupational experience of migrants to Alberta, 1976–80

This research questions whether the economic benefits gained by Canada's interprovincial migrants justify the associated costs, even during an economic boom. A re-analysis of data collected by Statistics Canada as part of the December 1980 Labour Force Survey examines the experiences of recent migrants to Alberta and gives rise to a mixed assessment. On the one hand, migrants who came to Alberta and stayed did enjoy a solid reduction in their pre-migration unemployment, despite higher labour market participation. On the other hand, migrants who came and stayed changed their industry and occupation in large numbers, but most of this was just ‘musical chairs’: exchange mobility, rather than structural mobility. Women were more likely than men to experience structural mobility but they were primarily downgrading rather than upgrading their status. Neither for women nor for men do we find much evidence of upward mobility across the manual-non-manual line. Thus for the most part migrants are entering jobs that may require the learning of new skills but, since they exist within the same status level of pre-migration jobs, deliver no more apparent rewards than the jobs they left. The costs of migration and readjustment are not, according to these data fully justified by the available rewards. The paper ends by recognizing that additional information is needed on the characteristics of pre- and post-migration jobs, before we can judge conclusively that the migration costs outweighed the benefits.     

The ins and outs of unemployment and the assimilation of recent immigrants in Spain

We study the employment assimilation of the recent wave of immigration in Spain for the period 2002–2006. We differentiate the immigrants by their year of arrival in Spain. Following Shimer (Am Econ Rev 95(1):25–49, 2005) and using data from the Spanish Labor Force Survey, we calculate the job finding and the job exit rates. Throughout the period, immigrants show higher job finding and job exit rates. We also present a search and matching model with search intensity, where natives, new immigrants, and old immigrants compete in the labor market. The simulated model is able to reproduce the differences observed in their job finding and unemployment rates.     

Small Fish in a Big Pond or Big Fish in a Small Pond? The Effects of Educational Mismatch on Subjective Wellbeing

This paper analyzes the effects of educational mismatch on subjective wellbeing. We first analyze whether a discrepancy exists between the aspirations associated with the level of education acquired by the individuals and the opportunities found in the labor market. Consistent with education generating certain aspirations, we find that educational mismatch has a sizable significant negative impact on life satisfaction for over-educated individuals while the effect is positive for under-educated workers. Next, we focus on workers with different educational levels but who perform similar jobs. In this case we only find under-education to negatively affect life satisfaction levels, a result which is consistent either with the existence of an inferiority complex or a struggle to perform a job for which the individual is not adequately trained. The effects are economically relevant and amount between one-fifth and one-fourth of the impact produced by other negative life events such as unemployment.     

Region of Birth and Disability Among Recent U.S. Immigrants: Evidence from the 2000 Census

This study aimed to test the “healthy immigrant” hypothesis and assess health heterogeneity among newly arrived working-age immigrants (18–64 years) from various regions of origin. Using the 5% sample of the 2000 U.S. Census (PUMS), we found that, compared with their native-born counterparts, immigrants from all regions of the world were less likely to report mental disability and physical disability. Immigrants from selected regions of origin were, however, more likely to report work disability. Significant heterogeneity in disabilities exists among immigrants: Those from Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia reported the highest risk of mental and physical disability, and those from East Asia reported the lowest risk of physical disability. Furthermore, Mexican immigrants reported the lowest risk of mental disability, and Canadian immigrants reported the lowest risk of work disability. Socioeconomic status and English proficiency partially explained these differences. The health advantage of immigrants decreased with longer U.S. residence.     

A Multidimensional Approach to Precarious Employment Among Young Workers in EU-28 Countries

This article uses a new multidimensional indicator to measure precariousness among young workers across all EU-28 countries. This indicator measures both the incidence and intensity of precariousness. The analysis has involved five dimensions: wages, type of contract, type of working day, disempowerment, and job insecurity. Our database is the European Union Labour Force Survey for the period 2009–2016. The main indication of precariousness is low wages. We find high rates of precariousness for Mediterranean countries (because of low wages and temporary contracts), Denmark (low wages), and the Netherlands (expansion of involuntary part-time jobs). Central European countries have moderate rates, and most Continental and Eastern countries have low rates. We also find that a higher level of education is related to a lower probability of having a precarious job. Finally, we find a greater probability of having a precarious job among women in most countries, and non-statistically significant differences by country of birth.

     

Women’s Job Quality Across Family Life Stages: An Analysis of Female Employees Across 27 European Countries

There is little empirical evidence on how working conditions affect women’s employment and fertility choices, despite a number of studies on the impact of individual-level and institutional factors. The article addresses this gap by examining how family life stages are related to particular aspects of job quality among employed women in 27 European countries. The central argument of the analysis is that high-quality jobs are conducive to both transitions to motherhood and employment after childbirth as women select into these roles. Accordingly, mothers of young children, if employed, are expected to have relatively better quality jobs. Four dimensions of job quality are considered: job security, career progression, working time and intrinsic job quality. The results indicate that mothers with young children are more likely to hold high-quality jobs than women at other life stages with respect to working time quality and job security, but with some variation across countries for job security. The findings highlight the importance of high-quality jobs for women’s fertility decisions and labour market attachment after childbirth, with implications for European employment policy.     

Segregated jobs or ethnic niches?: The impact of racialized employment on earnings inequality

Using data from the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality (MCSUI), this study examines the extent to which the racial or ethnic composition of jobs affects racial and ethnic-linked earnings inequalities among whites, blacks and Hispanics. Four types of jobs are distinguished according to the racial/ethnic composition of jobs in work establishments: predominantly white, multi-racial or mixed, predominantly black, and predominantly Hispanic. We found considerable differences among the four types of jobs. Jobs composed predominantly of white workers are characterized by the highest earnings, the highest status occupations, and the highest levels of education. In contrast, jobs predominantly composed of Hispanic workers are characterized by the lowest salaries, the lowest status occupations, and the lowest levels of education. The data analysis supports the hypothesis that job segregation is responsible for earnings disparities in the case of blacks versus whites, but only partial support for this hypothesis is found in the case of Hispanics versus whites. The analysis also provides support for the “devaluation hypothesis” which suggests that all workers experience pay penalties in jobs in which minority workers are predominant. Further analysis reveals that had most workers been rewarded like whites employed in predominantly white jobs, their earnings would have increased considerably. The only groups of workers who “benefit” from job segregation are Hispanic workers employed in predominately Hispanic jobs. In the absence of competition with others, Hispanics employed in predominantly Hispanic jobs earn more than they would earn in other jobs. The differential effects of the ethnic composition of jobs on economic outcomes of minority populations are evaluated and discussed in light of the roles played by sheltered and protected ethnic economies.     

Training the nation’s elites: National–private sector differences in Japanese university education

I examine the relationship between university prestige and socioeconomic achievement in Japan. I generate a set of hypotheses based on human capital and screening models of education, and test these using a 1995 cross-sectional dataset. I find that university prestige significantly improves socioeconomic achievement among male university graduates in Japan. I also find that national university graduates have higher rates of return to their university education, and are more likely to be employed in higher prestige occupations than are private university graduates. My findings lend support to the ‘elite’ view of investments in human capital proposed by Becker (1993), under which higher ability individuals (in this case national university graduates) have more to gain from university education than do lower ability individuals. I find little support for the screening model of education.