Does Immigrant Selection Policy Matter? Labor Market Integration of Ethiopian Immigrants in Israel and the United States

Population Research and Policy Review - Immigration policy debates currently focus on restricting immigration in favor of the highly skilled with the assumption that highly skilled immigrants will...     

The Stages of Human Capital and Economic Growth: Does the Direction of Causality Matter for the Rich and the Poor?

This paper demonstrates that key models of human mobility across several disciplines can be considered as specific cases of a broader conceptualisation of mobility in terms of its contribution to wellbeing. It is argued that this wellbeing perspective offers important advantages for the formulation of policy in areas that must respond to mobility in cross-cultural contexts, and particularly in regard to policy relating to highly mobile, indigenous peoples. An applied example is provided through a discussion of how this conceptualisation of mobility offers a different understanding of the mobility of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, one that may have led to superior policy outcomes.     

Does Culture Affect Divorce? Evidence From European Immigrants in the United States

This article explores the role of culture in determining divorce by examining country-of-origin differences in divorce rates of immigrants in the United States. Because childhood-arriving immigrants are all exposed to a common set of U.S. laws and institutions, we interpret relationships between their divorce tendencies and home-country divorce rates as evidence of the effect of culture. Our results are robust to controlling for several home-country variables, including average church attendance and gross domestic product (GDP). Moreover, specifications with country-of-origin fixed effects suggest that immigrants from countries with low divorce rates are especially less likely to be divorced if they reside among a large number of coethnics. Supplemental analyses indicate that divorce culture has a stronger impact on the divorce decisions of females than of males, pointing to a potentially gendered nature of divorce taboos.     

Mismatch in the Norwegian Labour Market 2003–2013: Did Immigrants Make a Difference?

For the Norwegian economy, 2003–2013 was a period of large growth and big business cycle fluctuations. The aggregate uv-curve reflects this and shows a reduction in both the vacancy rate and the unemployment rate from 2003 to 2013, suggesting improved labour market matching over the period. The inclusion of Eastern European countries in the European Union in 2004 and 2007 caused an increasing influx of foreign job seekers. I quantify regional and occupational mismatch, and make a distinction between natives and immigrants. Indicators show no reduction in mismatch over time, which therefore cannot account for the increased labour market efficiency that the uv-curve suggests. However, ‘footloose’ immigrants seem to have adapted better than ‘rooted’ natives to the structure of labour demand in the regional dimension, and thus to have contributed to a lower level of mismatch than would have resulted without immigrants. In the occupational dimension immigrants made no significant difference. Levels and differences in employment and unemployment among and between immigrants and natives were not well explained by their education levels or types.     

Does Demographic Transition with Human Capital Dynamics Matter for Economic Growth? A Dynamic Panel Data Approach to GMM

Social Indicators Research - This study seeks to empirically investigate whether demographic transition with dynamics of human capital matters for economic growth for a representative sample of...     

Social Capital: Does it Add to the Health Inequalities Debate?

The aim of this study is to assess the effective measurement range of Ryff’s Psychological Well-being scales (PWB). It applies normal ogive item response theory (IRT) methodology using factor analysis procedures for ordinal data based on a limited information estimation approach. The data come from a sample of 1,179 women participating in a midlife follow-up of a national birth cohort study in the UK. The PWB scales incorporate six dimensions: autonomy, positive relations with others, environmental mastery, personal growth, purpose in life and self-acceptance. Scale information functions were calculated to derive standard errors of measurement for estimated scores on each dimension. Construct variance was distinguished from method variance by inclusion of method factors from item wording (positive versus negative). Our IRT analysis revealed that the PWB measures well-being most accurately in the middle range of the score distribution, i.e. for women with average well-being. Score precision diminished at higher levels of well-being, and low well-being was measured more reliably than high well-being. A second-order well-being factor loaded by four of the dimensions achieved higher measurement precision and greater score accuracy across a wider range than any individual dimension. Future development of well-being scales should be designed to include items that are able to discriminate at high levels of well-being.     

U.S. Immigrants’ labor market adjustment: Additional Human capital investment and Earnings Growth

New Immigrant Survey-Pilot data are used to address the long-standing debate over whether immigrants to the United States assimilate economically. Using panel data and an individual fixed-effect specification, I find evidence indicating rapid economic assimilation, on the order of an average increase in earnings of 12%-13% during the 12-month survey period. Results indicate partial support for Duleep and Regets' Immigrant Human Capital Investment (IHCI) model, indicating an inverse relationship between initial earnings and earnings growth and showing some evidence of the expected interaction between skill transferability and skill level when predicting human capital investment decisions. Having more years of education, English proficiency, and lower earnings at the baseline are associated with a higher probability of enrolling informal school in the United States. Overall, findings suggest substantial economic integration within the first year after establishing permanent residency.     

Who is the “She” in the Pandemic “She-Cession”? Variation in COVID-19 Labor Market Outcomes by Gender and Family Status

Population Research and Policy Review - The sharp decline in employment after the COVID-19 lockdown was not uniformly felt across demographic groups. Utilizing the 2017 to 2020 monthly Current...     

Market Access and the Border Effect of China’s Labor Migration

This paper introduces a new economy geography index,market access, to analyze the dynamic mechanism of labor migration in China based on the sample data from China’s labor cross-region flow 1998 ～ 2008.The empirical test prove the reversed U-shape of Market access -Wage - Migration and finds that market access in early period of China’s reform increased labor migration significantly from peripheral zone to the central area which caused China’s core-peripheral competition landscape.However with the appearance ofLewis turning pointand disappearance of demographic dividend,the M-W-M mechanism tends to weaken.The calculation shows that the estimated value of hidden barriers against labor migration, i.e.border effect, is 3.94,and the values of border effects boast of a ladder-type rising trend from the east to the west in China.The labor market in the central area is relatively open while more isolated in peripheral zone.To change China’s center-periphery pattern into more balanced development among regions and to maintain the competitiveness of China’s industrial production,it is important for government to have proper policies to maintain free market and ensure efficient allocation of production factors.     

Children and Careers: How Family Size Affects Parents’ Labor Market Outcomes in the Long Run

We estimate the effect of family size on various measures of labor market outcomes over the whole career until retirement, using instrumental variables estimation in data from Norwegian administrative registers. Parents’ number of children is instrumented with the sex mix of their first two children. We find that having additional children causes sizable reductions in labor supply for women, which fade as children mature and even turn positive for women without a college degree. Among women with a college degree, there is evidence of persistent and even increasing career penalties of family size. Having additional children reduces these women’s probability of being employed by higher-paying firms, their earnings rank within the employing firm, and their probability of being the top earner at the workplace. Some of the career effects persist long after labor supply is restored. We find no effect of family size on any of men’s labor market outcomes in either the short or long run.     

Literacy Skills as an Explanation for Labor Market Imbalances by Occupational Type in Canada: Microsimulation Projections for 2014–2024

Population Research and Policy Review - In Canada, the immigration selection process gives great importance to education level. However, studies find that given an equivalent level of education,...     

Returning to a New Mexican Labor Market? Regional Variation in the Economic Incorporation of Return Migrants from the U.S. to Mexico

Population Research and Policy Review - In recent years, a historically unprecedented number of Mexican migrants to the U.S. returned to Mexico. Compared to previous cohorts, recent return migrants...     

Welfare and the Children of Immigrants: Transmission of Dependence or Investment in the Future?

The public concern that immigrant families might be using a disproportionate share of social benefits and transmitting some form of public dependency to their children, combined with the rising levels of immigrants entering the country, fueled the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act in 1996, which limited public assistance to many immigrant families. This paper uses the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to explore the association between exposure to welfare and young adult outcomes of high school graduation, college enrollment and labor force participation with a focus on parental nativity status as well as broad country of origin group. Results indicate a persistent negative association between welfare legacy and high school graduation; a negative association that is most pronounced for children of natives. Results also show the largest positive effect of welfare receipt among the most disadvantaged group, the young adult children of immigrants from Mexican and Central American countries. The main finding of this study suggests that the negative impacts of welfare receipt might be lessened and in some cases reversed among the young adults from immigrant families. Such findings challenge the common notion that immigrant families use welfare as a crutch across generations and raise serious concern about U.S. immigration and welfare policies.     

Tolerance Within Community: Does Social Capital Affect Tolerance?

Credit cooperatives are financial intermediaries that pay attention to social criteria. Thus, if such entities want to survive and thrive in the new international context, they cannot ignore their inefficiencies in both the financial and social dimensions of their activity. However, previous research on efficiency in credit cooperatives is very limited and only considers their financial activity. To date, no study has been published giving evidence through indicators on whether these banking institutions are socially efficient. This paper therefore constructs a social efficiency index of Spanish credit cooperatives during the period 2008–2014 and examines its main explanatory factors. After applying a two-stage Data Envelopment Analysis approach, the results from the first stage indicate that, on average, the social efficiency of Spanish credit cooperatives reaches an acceptable level of 66.42 %. Second-stage truncated regression reveals that entities with a greater proportion of branches in urban areas are socially less efficient, whereas both their size and the number of service points have a positive effect. Interestingly, social efficiency also varies significantly depending on the regional location of credit cooperatives in Spain. As a result, our findings enable these Social Economy financial institutions to both know their performance relative to their social activity and use this information to improve their competitiveness in the future.     

Does migration pay? Earnings effects of geographic mobility following job displacement

It has been well established that involuntary job displacement has strong negative effects on earnings. Utilising a large dataset, containing all workers in Sweden who were involuntarily displaced from work through closures or substantial cutbacks occurring in 1987 or 1988, this paper studies whether migration helps mitigate these negative effects. Substantial gender differences in earnings effects of internal migration are found: men generally have positive effects, while the consequences for women are negative.     

Trends in Economic Homogamy: Changes in Assortative Mating or the Division of Labor in Marriage?

The growing economic resemblance of spouses has contributed to rising inequality by increasing the number of couples in which there are two high- or two low-earning partners. The dominant explanation for this trend is increased assortative mating. Previous research has primarily relied on cross-sectional data and thus has been unable to disentangle changes in assortative mating from changes in the division of spouses’ paid labor—a potentially key mechanism given the dramatic rise in wives’ labor supply. We use data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to decompose the increase in the correlation between spouses’ earnings and its contribution to inequality between 1970 and 2013 into parts due to (a) changes in assortative mating, and (b) changes in the division of paid labor. Contrary to what has often been assumed, the rise of economic homogamy and its contribution to inequality is largely attributable to changes in the division of paid labor rather than changes in sorting on earnings or earnings potential. Our findings indicate that the rise of economic homogamy cannot be explained by hypotheses centered on meeting and matching opportunities, and they show where in this process inequality is generated and where it is not.     

Measuring Interprovincial Flows of Human Capital in China: 1995–2000

This study measures the consequences of interprovincial migration in China in terms of the flows of human beings and the flows of human capital using two micro datasets. First, this study uses a household income survey dataset to estimate the earning returns to education as one of the two measurements of human capital. Then, the micro-dataset of the 2000 Chinese Census is used to calculate the flows of human capital among provinces by using the results from the estimation of human capital. The flows of human capital are then compared to the flows of human beings to see whether they go in the same directions and to the same extent. The results indicate that although in most of the cases, the flows of human beings and the flows of human capital are in the same directions, there are some cases that a province experienced a loss in human beings but a net gain in human capital, or vice versa. Second, some provinces are more adversely affected by the flows of human capital than others, which may not be seen by merely examining the flows of human beings. Third, non-hukou migration is different from hukou migration in volume, in scope of both gains and losses of human beings and human capital, and in directions for some provinces. Finally, we can conclude that measuring the flows of human capital is a useful way to observe how migration affects the potential of regional distribution of development.

Trends in Inequality of Opportunity for Developing Countries: Does the Economic Indicator Matter?

Social Indicators Research - The aim of this paper is to shed some light on the behaviour of Inequality of Opportunity (IOp henceforth) in developing countries. The analysis is carried out using...