The effect of the extent of unionism on union and nonunion wages

This paper provides estimates, derived from micro wage equations, of the effects of unionism on the wages for both union and nonunion labor. These equations control not only for union status, but also include measures of the extent of unionism in product and labor markets. The results suggest,inter alia, that an increase in the extent of unionization in an industry has substantial positive effects on the wages of nonunion as well as union workers. Increases in the extent of union coverage within an occupation, however, have little or no effect on nonunion wages.     

An Interpersonal Influence Model of Traditional Religious Commitment*

Typically, explanations of traditional religious commitment have relied on economic deprivation or sociodemographic variables. An alternative explanation was developed based on social control and participation in the activities of the congregation. It was predicted that the most important determinant of individual religious commitment would be denominational affiliation; the denomination establishes the expectations with regard to religious belief. It was also predicted that social participation variables, which determine the extent to which the individual is integrated into the congregation, would also be important. Testing the model with data broadly representative of the Protestant churchgoing population, it was found that denominational affiliation, church attendance and intra-congregational friendships were generally the three most important predictors of three traditional religious commitment measures. Other variables—education, occupation, gender, age and region of birth—made insignificant or small contributions to explained variance.     

Divison of Labor,Perceived Fairness,and Marital Quality: The Effect of Gender Ideology

This study assesses the relations between division of household labor, perceived fairness, and marital quality by comparing three ethnic‐religious groups in Israel that reflect traditional, transitional, and egalitarian ideologies. The findings, based on structural equation modeling (SEM) methodology, show that sense of fairness mediates the relation between division of labor and marital quality and gender ideology moderates these relations for women but not for men. Perceived fairness is related to the division of labor for women in egalitarian and transitional families but not in traditional ones. For egalitarian women, a more segregated division of labor is linked directly with lower marital quality whereas for women in transitional families it is mediated by sense of fairness. The findings are discussed on two overlapping levels—conceptual‐theoretical and sociocultural—with implications for understanding families in cultural transition.     

Religious Influences on the Risk of Marital Dissolution

This study examined multiple dimensions of religious involvement and the risk of divorce among a nationwide sample of 2,979 first‐time married couples. Multivariate proportional hazards modeling was used to analyze two waves of the National Survey of Families and Households. Results indicated that although each partner's religious attendance bore a modest relationship to marital dissolution, the risk of divorce was lower if husbands had conservative theological beliefs and when both partners belonged to mainline Protestant denominations. Conversely, the risk of divorce was elevated if husbands attended services more frequently than their wives and if wives were more theologically conservative than their husbands. These patterns withstood controls for sociodemographic covariates, marital duration, and marital quality. Directions for future research are discussed.     

LABOR SUPPLY ESTIMATION BIASES FROM DISREGARDING NONWAGE BENEFITS

Labor supply models and research underpinned by labor supply decisions often assume that workers' choices are functions of wage and wage offers. However, the literature shows evidence that such decisions at least partly depend on nonwage benefits encompassed in jobs and occupations. In this paper, I develop and estimate a stochastic dynamic model of occupation and job choice, where nonwage benefits are directly incorporated into the decision alongside wages (a full model). Nested within the full model is a wage model, which represents the common practice in the literature of basing selection solely on wages and disregarding nonwage benefits. I separately estimate the full model and the nested wage model to compare the implications (biases) of omitting nonwage benefits. I compare the two models' estimates of elasticities and an inequality reduction intervention policy. I find that disregarding nonwage benefits generally causes biases. There are cases when the two models predict very similar outcomes and have close estimates, such as in occupation‐specific elasticities and job transition elasticities. But these special cases are products of canceling biases. In most cases, ignoring nonwage benefits will bias estimates by overestimating the importance of wage in the selection process and by disregarding changes in relative prices between wage and nonwage benefits. (JEL J20, J32, D91)     

Does religion influence the labor supply of married women in Germany?

Using behavioral theories, this article analyzes whether religion influences married women in Germany in their decision to supply labor. Gender roles and accompanying attitudes toward the division of labor among spouses might differ across religious groups depending on the groups’ strictness. Examining data from the GSOEP, the findings suggest that denominational affiliation itself only weakly influences women’s labor participation decisions. However, women who participate regularly in religious activities are less inclined towards paid employment. Furthermore, there is evidence that the presence of a spouse with a strong belief also affects a woman’s supply of labor negatively.     

Effects of Religiosity,Forgiveness, and Spousal Empathy on Marital Adjustment

This study focused on married couples in a region of the United States that previous research has identified as having high rates of both religiosity and divorce. As a result, this study was designed to examine the effects of religiosity, forgiveness, and spousal empathy on marital adjustment. To investigate these constructs, married couples in this region were recruited (n?=?829) to participate in a cross-sectional, self-report telephone survey. Results indicate that religious service attendance and spousal empathy have direct positive effects on marital adjustment in European American married men; while religious service attendance, forgiveness, and spousal empathy have direct positive effects on marital adjustment in European American married women. Among African-American participants, only spousal empathy had a direct effect on marital adjustment for both men and women. Finally, spousal empathy moderated the association between previous marriage and current marital adjustment among European American married women.     

Amenities and the labor earnings function

Desirable locations are, other things equal, expected to be characterized by a mix of higher rents or lower wages. That is, if one area is more attractive than others, inmigration would occur, driving up the demand for land (hence raising rents) and increasing the supply of labor (hence lowering wages). The in-movement will continue until utility is the same across locations in equilibrium. Failing to hold constant amenities in the traditional earnings functions employed by labor economists will result, then, in omitted-variable bias if worker characteristics (years of schooling, union membership, and so on) are correlated with amenities. By way of illustration, our empirical analysis suggests that as much as 50 percent of the apparent return to unionization may be due to the impact of undesirable amenities, resulting in compensating higher wages, in areas of union strength — unionization is being credited with wage gains that properly should be attributed to climate and other (dis)amenities. Similar, though smaller, effects on other coefficients of the earnings function variables are presented.     

Religious Homogamy and Marital Quality: Historical and Generational Patterns, 1980 – 1997

Despite significant social changes in the past 50 years, research continues to find a strong and enduring link between religious homogamy and marital quality. Yet, research has not explicitly examined whether this link has changed over time or over generations. To address historical and generational trends, I use national, longitudinal data collected between 1980 and 1997 that represents 3,211 respondents in the parental and offspring generations and 2 measures each of marital quality and religious homogamy. The findings show that the relationship between religious homogamy and marital quality weakened significantly between 1980 and 1997 from intragenerational change and generational replacement. The homogamy–marital quality link was weaker in both generations partly because of the increasing relative influence of gender, work, and family issues. Additionally, a decline in perceptions of religious authority has altered the religion–marital quality connection, though mostly among the younger generation. Even so, religiously homogamous couples still report higher marital quality.     

In pursuit of a living wage: The ethical and economic thought of father John A. Ryan from the late 1890s until the new deal

Abstract

Father Ryan frequently cited Pope Leo XIII's major encyclical, Rerum novarum (On the Condition of Labor) to lend the support of traditional Catholic social teaching to social and labor reform. Advocating “sane individualism,” Ryan was the first American to argue convincingly that employers were bound in strict justice to pay employees at least a living wage, and his ethical influence gained wide appeal due to his conservative yet fair‐minded approach to distributive justice. Ryan supported labor unions and economic planning as means to gain fair wages and stock ownership for all workers and emphasized income redistribution to reduce depressionary underconsumption.     

Does Who Decides Really Matter? Causes and Consequences of Personal Financial Management in the Case of Larger and Structural Charitable Donations

We study causes and consequences of financial management in households in the specific case of charitable giving. We test hypotheses using couples in the Giving in the Netherlands Panel Study (n = 1,101). We find that more relationship specific investments lead to deciding on charitable giving as one economic actor. Furthermore, we find that the partner with the highest relative educational resources has most decision making power over charitable donations. Separately deciding couples are smallest charitable donors. Households in which the male partner decides are largest charitable donors when only larger and more structural donations are considered. This can be explained by their more conservative religious denomination.     

The Economic Value of Bilingualism for Asians and Hispanics1

This study examines how bilingualism affects the wages of Asian and Hispanic workers using 2000 Census data. In contradiction to the general belief that bilingualism can provide a competitive advantage in the labor market, we find no evidence that 1.5‐generation and U.S.‐born Asian and Hispanic bilingual workers generally have higher wages than their English monolingual co‐ethnics; in some cases, in fact, their wages are significantly lower. In search of specific circumstances under which bilingualism might provide an economic advantage, we also examine interactions of language with such variables as education, employment in the public rather than the private sector, and the size of the population of mother‐tongue speakers. With limited exceptions, we find no sign of greater economic returns to bilingualism. Since bilingualism requires considerable effort to maintain across generations in the United States, we conclude that the virtual absence of economic rewards for it creates pressure for linguistic assimilation.     

Erosion of purchasing power and labor supply

This paper presents three studies on the labor market in Italy, carried out using questionnaires over the course of time (1990–2002). The main result is that, if real wages decline to a certain extent, employed workers increase their labor supply, in order to recoup their lost purchasing power and to redress, perhaps unconsciously, the decline in their economic and social hierarchical position.As long as real wages grew at a satisfactory rate, in the early 90s, workers were unwilling to change their work schedules in either direction—exchanging income for leisure time at the current hourly wage or vice versa—whatever were their work time and wages. During the last decade workers—who suffered a decrease in real wages—have been willing to work more hours. As a result, workers did not demand more leisure time despite the fact that it had become cheaper as predicted by traditional theory. Thus, employers may expect a not-insignificant increase in labor supply if real wages decrease.     

The Correlates of Religiosity Among Black and White Americans*

This paper explores the correlates of religiosity among blacks and whites, asking two questions: (1) Is the relationship between SES and religious attendance the same for both races? (2) What factors best predict church attendance among both races? The findings show that (1) SES is positively related to religious participation among whites; (2) the best non-religious predictors of attendance across all denominations and churches studied are SES and age; (3) including a measure of religious belief greatly increases the explanatory power of a predictive model; but (4) the relationship between SES and attendance varies by denomination and church among blacks.     

WAGES,RENTS, AND HETEROGENEOUS MOVING COSTS

The model of compensating differentials in regional labor and land markets was formalized by Roback (1982) . The model interprets regional differences in constant quality wages and rents as compensating firms and residents for inter‐regional differences in amenities. This paper extends the Roback model to allow for moving costs which vary among a city's residents and businesses. This modification of the model generates new interpretations of regional differences in rents and wages. The theoretical results suggest that the interpretation of inter‐city rent and wage differentials as compensating is misguided, that such differentials are inappropriate as weights in Quality of Life (QOL) comparisons, and stresses the importance of local housing market parameters in the determination of these differentials. The importance of amenities is retained, but housing supply becomes the main other determinant of regional rents. Housing supply was ignored in the literature following on Roback's initial insight. We show that interactions between amenities and housing supply will bias QOL rankings. Finally, we support the empirical importance of heterogeneous moving costs by demonstrating the effects of exogenous supply constraints on local housing prices. (JEL R31)     

INFLATION AND WAGE RIGIDITY/FLEXIBILITY IN THE SHORT RUN

A recent literature uses accurate wage data from payroll records and provides compelling evidence against the conventional belief that nominal wages are downward sticky. This paper provides a unique contribution to this literature by conducting a formal analysis of the role of inflation in cyclical wage rigidity/flexibility. Analysis of payroll‐based wage data from the Korean labor market for the period 1971–2014 finds that the degree of downward nominal wage flexibility is countercyclical, and the countercyclicality becomes stronger during a deflationary, relative to inflationary, recession. This serves as a counter‐example to the conventional theory of cyclical wage rigidity. (JEL E24, E32, J30, J64)     

RISING AUTISM PREVALENCE: REAL OR DISPLACING OTHER MENTAL DISORDERS? EVIDENCE FROM DEMAND FOR AUXILIARY HEALTHCARE WORKERS IN CALIFORNIA

Autism is a development disorder that has increased in prevalence from 0.5 to 14.7 per 1,000 children over 1970–2010. Using annual wages and provider counts from the American Community Survey and information from 21 regional development centers in California, we estimate the labor demand for auxiliary health providers. We focus on this subset of providers because, unlike physicians and psychologists who can diagnose autism, these workers cannot induce their own demand. If the incidence of autism is increasing independently of other mental disorders, then the demand for auxiliary health providers should increase, leading to higher wages and labor supply. Otherwise, the increase in autism diagnosis is merely displacing other mental disorders. We find that a 100% increase in autism cases increases the wages of auxiliary health workers over non‐autism health occupations by 8–11% and the number of providers by 9–14%. Furthermore, we find that one of every three new autism diagnoses is merely supplanting mental retardation diagnoses, but does not displace other mental disorders. These estimates suggest that at least part of the increase in autism diagnoses, about 50–65%, reflects an increase in the true prevalence of the disorder. (JEL L11, J2, J3)     

Wives' Relative Wages,Husbands' Paid Work Hours,and Wives' Labor‐Force Exit

Economic theories predict that women are more likely to exit the labor force if their partners' earnings are higher and if their own wage rate is lower. In this article, I use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 2,254) and discrete‐time event‐history analysis to show that wives' relative wages are more predictive of their exit than are their own or their husbands' absolute wages. In addition, I show that women married to men who work more than 45 hours per week are more likely to exit the labor force than are wives whose husbands' work approximately 40 hours per week. My findings highlight the need to examine how women's partners affect women's labor‐force participation.     

The labor supply effects of child care costs and wages in the presence of subsidies and the earned income tax credit

This paper uses CPS and SIPP data between 1990 and 2004 to examine the effects of child care expenditures and wages on the employment of single mothers. It adds to the literature in this area by incorporating explicit controls for child care subsidies and the EITC into the estimation. Doing so provides an opportunity to examine mothers’ sensitivity to prices and wages net of policies that influence these amounts. Results suggest that lower child care expenditures, higher wages, and more generous subsidy and EITC benefits increase the likelihood of employment. Allowing the impact of child care subsidies and the EITC to vary with expenditures and wages reveals substantial heterogeneity. In particular, the largest labor supply effects of child care subsidies are generated for mothers with higher child care costs, while the largest labor supply effects of the EITC are found for mothers with lower wages.     

The Labor Supply of Female Heads of Household: Comparisons With Male Heads and Wives*

This paper compares a model of labor supply for female heads of household, male heads, and wives. Not only have female-headed households increased significantly as a proportion of all households in recent years, but these households are also more likely to be in poverty than are other households. Yet, the determinants of labor supply for this increasingly important demographic group still are largely unknown. Analyses are performed on a sample of employed female and male heads and wives from the 1976 Survey of Income and Education. We examine the effects of wages, unearned income, number of children, and several other variables on hours worked per year, allowing for race interactions. We find that female heads and wives are similar in the effects of wages on their labor supply, while female and male heads are similar in the positive effect of children. We conclude that although financial need, as evidenced by low wages and children, increases female heads’labor supply, employment in more advantaged, non-female dominated jobs and core industries is needed to promote their full participation in the labor force.