Sexual Orientation and Wage Discrimination in France: The Hidden Side of the Rainbow

This article is the first study to present an econometric evaluation of wage discrimination based on sexual orientation in the French labor market. Having identified same-sex couples using the French Employment Survey, we estimate the wage gap related to sexual orientation in the private and public sectors, in order to analyze whether or not lesbians and gays suffer a wage penalty. The results obtained show the existence of a wage penalty for homosexual male workers, as compared with their heterosexual counterparts, in both the private and public sectors; the magnitude of this discrimination varies from about ?6.5?% in the private sector, to ?5.5?% in the public sector. In the private sector, the wage penalty suffered by gay employees is higher for skilled workers than for the unskilled, and??in both sectors??the wage penalty is higher for older workers than for younger ones. As with many other countries, we do not find any evidence of the existence of a wage discrimination against lesbians.     

Lesbian,Gay, Bisexual,and Transgender Families

This article reviews new scholarship on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender families. The past decade witnessed rapid expansion of data and strong research designs. The most notable advance was in studies on variation among mostly planned lesbian comother families. Cumulative evidence suggests that although many of these families have comparatively high levels of shared labor and parental investment, they may not be as “genderless” as previously depicted. Gay men's diverse paths to family formation and planned parenthood have also been explored, but almost no research studies their children's experiences. Conceptualizations of sexual orientation expanded to include bisexuals and others, and some understanding of the experiences of transgender people has begun to emerge. Future work should explore relationships among members of the families they create.     

Do minimum wage hikes reduce employment? State-level evidence from the low-wage retail sector

Several recent studies have challenged the conventional notion that raising the minimum wage reduces employment. This study considers this issue by examining the minimum wage's influence on retail employment. Standard labor market analysis suggests that low-wage industries should be particularly sensitive to minimum wage hikes. Therefore, by considering retail employment using pooled-cross sectional, state-level data, this study extends recent research that generally emphasized teen employment. The empirical analysis considers state data from the latter 1980's, a unique period where many states raised their minimum wage above the federal level. Our results suggest that an increased minimum wage reduces retail employment, which is consistent with the standard labor market model. Moreover, further analysis indicates that minimum wage hikes also had relatively large adverse effects on total state employment growth, which implies that state minimum-wage policies can affect firm and household location. We thank Dan Rickman and the anonymous referee for their help with this study.     

SKILLED‐UNSKILLED WAGE INEQUALITY AND URBAN UNEMPLOYMENT

The impact of trade liberalization on the labor market in the North has drawn tremendous attention in the face of the growing skilled‐unskilled wage gap but in the South it has been somewhat neglected. One of the key structural differences between the North and the South is that the South experiences a pronounced rural‐urban migration in the presence of urban unemployment. We introduce this feature in the structure of a simple general equilibrium model to analyze the effects of trade liberalization and fragmentation on employment and the skilled‐unskilled wage differential in the South. In particular, we show that while fragmentation necessarily improves the unskilled wage and the skilled wage, more lucrative global opportunities for the skilled final product, in the absence of fragmentation, can reduce the rural wage and increase urban unemployment. The effect of fragmentation, ceteris paribus, on the skilled‐unskilled wage gap is sensitive to the degree of substitutability between land and unskilled labor. As such, fragmentation can magnify the increase in the skilled‐unskilled wage gap resulting from an improvement in the terms of trade. It is also shown that a technological progress in the intermediate goods sector increases the skilled‐unskilled wage gap and raises urban unemployment. (JEL F1, O1, F11, F12)     

Marriage and the Motherhood Wage Penalty Among African Americans,Hispanics, and Whites

This study draws on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 5,929) to analyze the moderating effects of race and marriage on the motherhood wage penalty. Fixed‐effects models reveal that for Hispanic women, motherhood is not associated with a wage penalty. For African Americans, only married mothers with more than 2 children pay a wage penalty. For Whites, all married mothers pay a wage penalty, as do all never‐married mothers and divorced mothers with 1 or 2 children. These findings imply that racial differences in the motherhood wage penalty persist even for women with similar marital statuses, and they suggest that patterns of racial stratification shape women’s family experiences and labor market outcomes.     

Does International Outsourcing Really Lower Workers’ Income?

We analyze the impact of international outsourcing on income, if the domestic labor market is imperfect, i.e. there is a bilateral bargaining between a firm and a labor union. In our analysis we distinguish between the cases where the parties negotiate over the wage only and where they negotiate over both wage and profit sharing. We find in the first case that outsourcing has an ambiguous effect on the workers’ income, while it increases the workers’ income in the second case. For the optimal amount of international outsourcing, we find that, depending on the wage effect of outsourcing, in a pure wage bargaining system it can be higher or lower than the level where domestic and foreign marginal labor costs are the same. In contrast, in a wage and profit share bargaining system, the amount of outsourcing lies below this level.     

Minimum wages and poverty with income-sharing

Textbook analysis tells us that in a competitive labor market, the introduction of a minimum wage above the competitive equilibrium wage will cause unemployment. This paper makes three contributions to the basic theory of the minimum wage. First, we analyze the effects of a higher minimum wage in terms of poverty rather than in terms of unemployment. Second, we extend the standard textbook model to allow for income-sharing between employed and unemployed persons in society. Third, we extend the basic model to deal with income sharing within families. We find that there are situations in which a higher minimum wage raises poverty, others where it reduces poverty, and yet others in which poverty is unchanged. We characterize precisely how the poverty effect depends on four parameters: the degree of poverty aversion, the elasticity of labor demand, the ratio of the minimum wage to the poverty line, and the extent of income-sharing. Thus, shifting the perspective from unemployment to poverty leads to a considerable enrichment of the theory of the minimum wage.      

LABOR MARKET DYNAMICS WITH SEARCH FRICTIONS AND FAIR WAGE CONSIDERATIONS

Fairness considerations in wage setting can improve the ability of the Diamond‐Mortensen‐Pissarides search and matching model to account for U.S. labor market dynamics. Firms' production is influenced by workers' effort input, which depends on whether workers consider the employment relation as fair. A typical worker's effort is determined in a comparison of individual current wage with wage norms, including the outside option, the individual past wage, and the wage level in the steady state. The fairness considerations in the search framework give rise to endogenous real wage rigidity, and realistic volatilities of unemployment, vacancies, and labor market tightness. (JEL E24, E32, J64)     

Employment and Sexual Orientation:

Economist, sociologists, and other social scientists have begun to study the influence of sexual orientation on individuals in the labor market, particularly with respect to employment discrimination. The conceptual framework developed in this paper connects lesbian, gay, and bixexual workers' disclosure of their sexual orientation to the economic and social characteristics of the workplace. Disclosure creates the potential for discrimination by employers and coworkers. The framework shows how sexual orientation operates independently and in interaction with other important characteristics such as race and gender. A review of existing research supports the hypothesis that discrimination against gay workers exists. Both workplace groups for gays and lesbians and those who work gay and lesbian workers (such as supervisors, personnel managers, and counselors) need to understand the relationship between disclosure and discrimination in order to make workplaces supportive of lesbian, gay, and bisexual workers.     

Commitment to Work Among Welfare‐Reliant Women

The purpose of this article is to describe the work of welfare‐reliant women and to reveal commitment to work in the experiences of 84 welfare‐reliant, rural women interviewed for this study. Understanding the domains where welfare‐reliant women exhibit commitment to work may help policy makers, trainers, and employers design and implement interventions that enhance chances of success for these women in the formal, paid workforce. Discussion focuses on the women's formal labor force participation in the past and desire for wage work in the future; barriers to labor force participation, both personal and in the rural job market; informal work and the work of care; support networks; survival strategies for making ends meet while receiving welfare; and the stigma of welfare receipt.     

“I Try Not to Depend on Anyone but Me”: Welfare‐Reliant Women's Perspectives on Self‐Sufficiency,Work, and Marriage*

Welfare reformers sought to reduce “dependency,” or reliance on state‐supported cash benefits and deployed a discourse of “self‐sufficiency” to promote the legitimacy of efforts to remove welfare recipients from publicly funded cash assistance through either wage labor or marriage. We use longitudinal, qualitative interview data collected from 38 initially welfare‐reliant women to examine what self‐sufficiency means to them and their perspectives on how work and marriage affect their ability to be self‐sufficient. Grounded theory analysis revealed that for these women, self‐sufficiency means formal independence from both the state (i.e., Temporary Assistance to Needy Families [TANF]) and men (i.e., marriage). Although they value marriage as an institution and would ideally marry, they do not consider marriage to be a likely route to self‐sufficiency given the pool of men available to them. Rather, they embrace their own market‐based wage labor as the means by which they can attain some measure of independence. Taking our lead from the women in this study, we challenge the emphasis on marriage in current welfare policy. We argue that employment training that results in better jobs for women and men and work supports that make low‐wage work pay are clearly the appropriate direction for policy aimed at the welfare‐reliant and working poor.     

Gender,Productivity, and the Marital Wage Premium

Explanations for married men’s wage premium often emphasize greater market productivity due to a gendered division of household labor, though this “specialization thesis” has been insufficiently interrogated. Using data from Wave 2 of the National Survey of Families and Households (N = 972), this paper examines the relationship between wages and time spent in paid labor and housework for married women and men with high levels of labor force attachment and their spouses. Scrutiny of couples’ time use finds strong evidence for the gendered division of labor, but little support for the anticipated wage effects of the specialization thesis itself. Less strict sample restrictions point to the need for continued research directed at couples’ joint employment and household labor decisions.     

On institutions and wage determination

This paper examines the difficulties encountered in incorporating necessary institutional features of the labor market in wage change analysis. A simple ‘institutional’ model is advanced to clarify the method and implications of the incorporation of the relevant institutional detail. Certain lacunae of the research literature are identified and the need for relations supplemental to those already identified in that literature emphasized. Further process in applied work necessitates,inter al., recognition of the endogeneity of contract length and mode.     

The labor supply of male Hispanic immigrants in the United States

"Several recent studies have begun the systematic analysis of the labor market characteristics of Hispanics in the United States. This research has focused on two related issues: a) how the immigration and assimilation experience affects Hispanic earnings; and b) the measurement of wage differentials between Hispanics and non-Hispanics. The main findings of this research are that the earnings of (some) Hispanic immigrants rise rapidly after immigration; and that the wage differential between Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites is generally due to differences in observable skill characteristics. This article extends previous research by focusing on another labor market characteristic: the labor supply of Hispanic immigrants."     

INFLATION DYNAMICS AND LABOR MARKET SPECIFICATIONS: A BAYESIAN DYNAMIC STOCHASTIC GENERAL EQUILIBRIUM APPROACH FOR JAPAN'S ECONOMY

Which labor market specification is better able to describe inflation dynamics, a widely used sticky wage model or a recently investigated labor market search model? Using a Bayesian likelihood approach, we estimate these two models with Japan's data. This article shows that the labor market search model is superior to the sticky wage model in terms of both marginal likelihood and out‐of‐sample forecast performance, particularly regarding inflation. The labor market search model is better able to replicate the cross‐correlation among inflation, real wages, and output in the data. Moreover, in this model, real marginal cost is determined by both hiring cost and unit labor cost that varies with employment fluctuations, which gives rise to a high contemporaneous correlation between inflation and real marginal cost as represented in the New Keynesian Phillips curve. (JEL E24, E32, E37)     

Economic Theories of Low-Wage Work

This article examines economic theories of the low-wage labor market to increase understanding of economic inequality and poverty in the United States, particularly related to the labor market. On the one hand, neoclassical, labor monopsony, and Harris-Todaro models explain how minimum wage policies are related to supply and demand of labor, human capital, employment, and unemployment. On the other hand, the efficiency wage model, the dual labor market theory, and technology development and globalization account for the causes of the wage differentials. This article includes a conceptual map that illustrates the interrelationships between these economic theories of low-wage work.     

Is there any merit to the merit-based immigration system? What Sub-Saharan African immigrant labor and housing market outcomes tell us about U.S. economic and immigration systems

For decades, U.S. immigration policy debates have centered on creating a merit-based system limiting entry to high-skilled immigrants. Yet the emphasis on merit-based immigration ignores the fact that high-skilled immigrants already enter the United States in merit-based immigration assume high-skilled immigrants benefit the U.S. economy because they are better able than low-skilled immigrants to translate skills into economic success. Using Sub-Saharan (Black) African immigrants' labor and housing market outcomes, I show that meritocracy only partially explains U.S. labor and housing outcomes, leaving a merit-based system unlikely to address America's economic needs. The majority of immigrants to the U.S. are non-White, and racial discrimination in the labor market results in occupational and wage disadvantages in the U.S. Due to the public charge rule, high skilled immigrants may be less likely to get their visas renewed or green card applications approved because of these labor market disadvantages. Without stable visa status, high-skilled immigrants will be less likely to make long-term economic investments in the United States—an important way of contributing to the U.S. economy. Together, research indicates that U.S. immigration reform will not work without first enacting policy addressing racial disparities in economic systems.     

The private sector as a sociological laboratory

This article discusses the experiences and obstacles the author encountered while conducting research on dislocated workers from a privately owned inner city printing company that closed in 1993. While these experiences are meant to guide others, the primary issue addressed is the schism between social science academicians, particularly sociologists and members of the business community, and its impact on the relationship between economics and sociology. The possible causes and consequences of the problems sociologists face when using the private sector as a research laboratory, and its effect on the sub-field of economic sociology, are also explored. Recommendations for breaking down these barriers are considered. David A. Reingold received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago, and wrote his dissertation on plant closings, worker dislocation, and low-wage labor markets. He has published articles on the employment problem of the urban poor, as well as the effect of inner-city public housing on community participation and work behavior. His work appeared in Urban Studies, Economic Development Quarterly and the journal of Urban Affairs. Currently, he is working on a study of welfare reform’s impact on human service providers.     

Does volunteer work pay off in the labor market?

Focusing on the investment motive for volunteer work, this paper examines whether volunteer work has an economic payoff upon the labor market in France. Using a switching regression model with endogenous switching, we find that in the public sector volunteers receive a positive wage premium that does not influence their involvement, while the premium is negative in the private sector. We also find little evidence of the presence of alternative types of returns on the labor market, such as employment mobility or entry into the labor market. Our findings are more consistent with a consumption motive and we suggest that volunteering is carried out with a relational purpose.     

Income taxation and the allocation of market labor

The allocation of work effort within the market economy will be unaffected by taxation if all returns from labor market activity are taxed equally. However, if the earnings from certain types of market employment are taxed at relatively lower rates, labor will shift into these areas until after-tax earnings are equal across all types of employment. This paper presents evidence suggesting that income taxation induces labor to move from high- to low-tax geographic areas and from wage and salaried jobs into self-employment activities. By affecting the allocation of market labor, the income tax generates a welfare loss in addition to that resulting from the tax’s effect on total work effort.