The Effect of Housework on Wages: A Study of Migrants and Native-Born Individuals in Germany

To increase labour market participation among migrants, an increase in female labour market participation is important, with wages being a significant incentive. In research on the gender wage gap, the consideration of housework has been a milestone. Gender differences in housework time have always been much greater among migrants than among native-born individuals. Based on data obtained from the German Socio-Economic Panel from 1995 to 2017, this study questioned whether housework affects the wages of migrant full-time workers differently than those of their native-born counterparts. To consider the possible endogeneity of housework in the wage equation, the analysis estimated, in addition to an OLS model, a hybrid model to estimate within effects. Significant negative effects of housework on wages resulted for migrant women and native-born individuals. The effects for migrant men were significantly smaller or insignificant, which could not be explained by threshold effects. The greater amount of time spent on housework by migrant women than by native-born women will in general lead to a larger wage decrease due to housework for migrant women than for native-born women. The results further showed that the observed variables explained very little of the migrants’ gender wage gap, in contrast to the gap of native-born individuals. Human capital returns, including education and work experiences, were much lower for migrant women than for native-born women, whereas differences in housework equally contributed to the explained share of the gap for both groups, indicating the greater relevance of housework for migrants’ wage gap.

     

On the Labour Market Progress of Polish Accession Workers in South‐East England

The enlargement of the European Union (EU) in May 2004 produced a very significant wave of immigration to the United Kingdom that is likely to continue to impact its labour market in forthcoming years. Polish migrants were by far the largest cohort of the new entrants. This paper complements previous work that has begun to establish the characteristics and labour market performance of migrants from the new member states who have entered the United Kingdom. This paper uses a unique micro‐level data base to investigate the labour market evolution of Polish migrants in the UK labour market. We find that in the first UK job returns to human capital were negligible. However, for the current job an extra year of education increases the weekly gross wage by 3.2 per cent. There is evidence of a gender differential in pay in both jobs and that older workers are paid more than their younger counterparts but this effect becomes insignificant in the current job. We find that hours worked is a significant factor in wage determination. However, the influence of hours worked on wages declined by approximately 38 per cent between the first and current job. Results from multinomial logit models suggest that over‐time there is some “match” between the occupational groupings that these workers were attached to in Poland and the United Kingdom. We also find evidence that the use of employment agencies by some of these workers increases the likelihood of employment in skilled manual and non‐manual occupations. Workers who have had supervisory responsibility in the United Kingdom are more likely to be in professional or intermediate occupations.     

Native‐Migrant Wage Differential Across Occupations: Evidence from Australia

We investigate wage differential by migrant status across white‐collar and blue‐collar occupations in Australia. Migrants are observed to have a higher wage; this difference, however, does not exist once we control for covariates. The unconditional wage differential varies over wage distribution as well as by occupation. Significant wage differentials are found above the median: positive for white‐collar workers and negative for blue‐collar workers. Using recently developed decomposition methods based on Firpo, Fortin, and Lemieux (2009) we decompose wage differentials across their distribution. Overall, the wage advantage of migrants reflects their superior labour market characteristics, and in particular, their levels of education. We find that English language proficiency plays an important role in wage differences among immigrants from non‐English speaking countries.     

Self-employment and earnings among immigrants in Australia

This article contributes to the small Australian literature on the earnings of immigrants in the self-employment sector. Earnings functions for both the foreign-born and Australian-born are estimated, and the results show that compared with native-born workers, foreign-born workers have higher earnings in the wage/salary sector but lower earnings in the self-employment sector.
Among the foreign-born, the results suggest that self-employed immigrants are less skilled compared with those who are wage/salary employed. Thus, low-skilled immigrants may be forced into self-employment.
There is no evidence of immigrant "catch-up" in the self-employment sector. Among wage/salary workers, however, immigrant wages are characterized by a "catch-up" effect.     

Do undocumented migrants earn lower wages than legal immigrants? New evidence from Mexico

"This article examines the extent to which undocumented status lowers wage rates among immigrants to the United States from four Mexican communities. Regression equations were estimated to determine the effect of legal status on wages independent of other demographic, social and economic variables, and special efforts were made to control for possible sample selection biases. Findings suggest that the data are relatively free from selectivity problems that have characterized earlier studies, and that legal status had no direct effect on wage rates earned by male migrants from the four communities. Legal status also had little effect on the kind of job that migrants take in the United States, but it does play an important indirect role in determining the length of time that migrants stay in that country. By reducing the duration of stay, illegal status lowers the amount of employer-specific capital accruing to undocumented migrants, and thereby lowers wage rates relative to legal migrants." Data are for 1982-1983.     

Labor market outcomes of immigrant women in the United States: 1970 to 1990

42% of immigrant workers in the US are women. Data from the 1970, 1980, and 1990 US censuses are analyzed in the study of differences in labor market outcomes between US-born and immigrant women, and among immigrant women born in different countries or regions of the world. There was little difference between US-born and immigrant women as a whole in 1970. However, over the next 20 years, immigrants women's labor force participation rate and weekly earnings relative to natives became lower, and their unemployment rates became higher. By 1990, the wage gap was 14%. At the same time, the share of self-employed women and the amount of time worked among employed women were almost the same for immigrant women and the US-born throughout the period 1970-90. Immigrants born in the UK, Canada, Europe, Japan, Korea, China, the Philippines, and the Middle East have had steady or improved wages and unemployment relative to US-born women. Immigrants from Mexico and Central America have experienced relatively high unemployment and low earnings, with the wage gap reaching 35% in 1990. Disparities in the number of completed years of schooling explains a substantial share of the observed differences in labor market outcomes.     

Noncitizen Employment and the Wages of Healthcare Support Workers in the US

This study examines the relative wages of citizens and noncitizens employed as healthcare support workers as well as examines the effect of noncitizen support worker employment on the wages of citizen support workers. Relative wage findings reveal noncitizen support workers with less than eight years of US residency receive a noncitizen-citizen wage discount statistically significantly greater than the legal maximum of 5% below the local prevailing wage. These low relative wage levels could contribute to lower wages for citizen support workers, however elasticity of substitution findings suggest noncitizen support workers are not close substitutes for healthcare support workers who are US citizens. In addition, wage effect findings do not reveal a negative influence of noncitizen employment on the wages of native born US citizen support workers, while these findings reveal a relatively small wage decline for naturalized support workers. These findings are consistent with the citizen status job heterogeneity hypothesis. Nonetheless, finding noncitizen-citizen wage differences does not allow for ruling out the possibility of weak enforcement of prevailing wage legislation and possible employment of undocumented workers.     

Black‐White Wage Inequality in the 1990s: a Decade of Progress

Using Current Population Survey data, we find that the gap between the wages of black and white males declined during the 1990s at a rate of about.60 percentage point per year. Wage convergence was most rapid among workers with less than 10 years of potential experience, with declines in the gap averaging 1.40 percentage points per year. Using standard decomposition methods, we find that greater occupational diversity and reductions in unobserved or residual differences are important in explaining this trend. General wage inequality tempered the rate of wage convergence between blacks and whites during the 1990s.     

Visualising Gender Wage Differences in the European Union

The purpose of this article is to illustrate differences in the gender wage gap in 13 EU member states, using figures taken from the Household Panel for 2000. The methodology is based primarily on the kernel density functions of men's and women's wages. A range of situations can be observed from the Mediterranean countries (with a smaller gender pay gap) to the very specific cases of Austria and the UK and to northern European countries where the gender pay gap is chiefly the result of a larger proportion of men at higher‐paid levels. We also offer conclusions on the relevance of public employment, part‐time employment and short‐term hiring to explain the gender wage gap in each of the countries studied.     

Immigration Policy and Employment Conditions of US Immigrants from Mexico, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic1

Prior studies suggest that the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) in 1986 signalled a deterioration in the labour market conditions of Mexican migrants. In this paper, we examine whether and how labour market conditions worsened for Dominicans and Nicaraguans after 1986, and the extent to which these shifts were comparable to those experienced by Mexicans. Our analysis relies on a new source of data that offers comparable data across the three national origins. We estimate multivariate models that capture the effects of demographic attributes, human and social capital, migration‐specific human and social capital, legal status, period of trip, national origin, and other controls on the hourly wages earned by household heads and whether they received cash wages on their last US trip. Models with interaction terms reveal significant pre‐ and post‐1986 wage effects, but few differences in these effects between Mexicans and Dominicans or Nicaraguans. In contrast, group differences appear in the risk of cash receipt of wages. Dominicans and Nicaraguans experienced a greater increase in this risk relative to Mexicans pre‐ and post‐1986. Together, these findings depict a broader, negative impact of IRCA on Latino migrant wages than has been documented elsewhere.     

THE IMPACT OF LABOR CONTRACTS: EVIDENCE FROM BRAZIL

The conventional Keynesian model suggests that frictions created by nominal wage contracts generate a positive relationship between inflation and output. On the other hand, the New Classical/Real Business Cycle theory claims that firms and workers base their employment behavior, and hence output, on the marginal product of labor ignoring the efficiencies of fixed nominal wage contracts. Using Brazilian data, where nominal wages were indexed by law, tests show that fixed nominal wage contracts insignificantly affected output. Thus, the data support the view that fixed nominal wages play an insignificant role in determining the evolution of output. ( JEL E31)     

W/age bias in worker displacement: how industrial structure shapes the job loss and earnings decline of older American workers

This paper examines age differences in patterns of worker displacement and employment and earnings changes of displaced workers. Data from the 1998 Displaced Worker Supplement (DWS) of the Current Population Survey (CPS) indicate that older displaced workers possessed higher weekly wages than did younger workers at the time of their displacement. Moreover, older displaced workers suffered greater amounts of earnings loss than did younger displaced workers. Older workers, more often than younger workers, were displaced from jobs in the goods-producing sector. We attribute this age and industry difference in displacement to the higher earnings premium of older workers in the goods producing sector relative to the earnings premium of older workers in the service-producing sector. The age bias against older displaced workers may be viewed as part of social structural changes in the economy that have reduced the wage premium of the more expensive age segment of the workforce within industries that may economically benefit the most.     

Cognitive skills and Black–White wages in the United States labor market

Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), this study analyzes the effects of cognitive skills on the wages of Whites and African Americans in white and blue collar occupations. The results show that cognitive skills, net of education, are important predictors of wages across all occupations. Mathematics skills, in particular contribute to significant wage premiums for workers in white and blue-collar occupations, with the exception of Blacks in blue-collar professions. English skills lead to significant wage premiums only for Blacks in blue-collar occupations. While the incorporation of cognitive skills narrows the Black-White wage gap considerably, the effects of skills on the wages of Blacks and Whites are far from uniform. The results also show that despite using detailed controls for the quality of education, an extra year of schooling yields the highest wage premium for Whites in all occupations.     

Immigrant Wage Disadvantage in Sweden and the United Kingdom: Wage Structure and Barriers to Opportunity1

This article examines immigrant/native-born wage inequalities among workers in two Western European countries: Sweden, social democratic and with comparatively low wage dispersion, and the United Kingdom, economically liberal and with comparatively high wage dispersion. The analysis includes immigrants from 26 countries of origin. Findings demonstrate that inequalities in terms of real wages are smaller in more egalitarian Sweden. However, in terms of relative positions within the labor market, inequalities are if anything smaller in the UK. These findings highlight the role of wage dispersion in magnifying immigrant disadvantage, but also the limits of wage compression for ameliorating barriers to immigrant opportunity.     

On‐the‐job training in Europe: Determinants and wage returns

Using data from the European Community Household Panel on six countries over the period 1995–2001, this article investigates the determinants of workers’ participation in training activities and the effects of training on wages. Based on measures of four distinct training types, the authors find that while OLS estimates yield significant wage returns to training for nearly all of the countries, fixed‐effects estimations show returns to be not statistically different from zero. This suggests that wage returns to training might be overstated due to failure to take adequate account of the correlation of training with confounding factors that affect wages.     

The Gender Wage Gap in Belarus

A new release of the Belarusian Household Survey on Incomes and Expenditures provides the unique opportunity for an in-depth study of the gender pay gap in Belarus. The econometric analysis involves estimates of augmented earnings equations, also corrected for sample selection bias, as well as for least absolute deviations estimates at different quantiles of the wage distribution. The results suggest that the gender wage gap is smaller than in other countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States and Central and Eastern European countries, as one would expect considering the slow transition process, and is reduced after controlling for unobservable characteristics. Moreover, the gap increases as one moves from the 10th to the 90th quantile. This means that having jobs providing generally higher levels of wages for a woman, it is more and more difficult to get the same wage as that of a man.     

Unions and wage inequality

Summary and Conclusions The impact of unions on the structure of wages has recently attracted renewed interest as analysts have struggled to explain the rise in earnings inequality in several industrialized countries. Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States provide a potentially valuable set of countries for examining this question. All three countries now collect comparable data on wages and union status in their regular labor force surveys. Several features of the collective bargaining institutions of these countries make them suitable for studying the relationship between unions and wage inequality. Bargaining is highly decentralized; there are no general mechanisms for extending collective bargaining provisions beyond the “organized” sector; and the fraction of the work force covered by collective bargaining is relatively modest. Thus it is possible to compare the structure of wages for workers covered by union contracts to those who are not covered, and potentially infer the effect of unions on overall wage inequality.     

The Effects of Prevailing Wage Laws: A Comparison of Individual Workers'' Wages Earned on and off Prevailing Wage Construction Projects

I evaluate the effects of prevailing wage laws using a unique data set that shows the wages paid to workers on prevailing wage projects and the wages paid to the same workers during the same time period for work on projects not covered by prevailing wage regulations. The wage comparison shows that workers are generally paid more for work on prevailing wage projects than they are for work on non-prevailing wage projects. Thus, prevailing wage laws likely do increase the cost of public construction. In addition, to the extent that the quality of construction is improved, prevailing wage laws appear to be an inefficient mechanism by which to achieve additional quality, as the regulations often result in workers being paid more than they earn in the private market.     

Relative wages and exit behavior among registered nurses

I examine the exit decision of registered nurses using the longitudinal data files generated by the March Current Population Surveys (CPS) from 1983 through 1994. By examining the wages of workers outside of nursing, a measure of the reservation wage is constructed and related to the decision to leave nursing, either for an alternative job or to exit employment. My results indicate that nurses respond to outside wage opportunities. A one standard deviation decrease in the difference between the actual and predicted log wage results in an 8 percent increase in the exit of nurses. Secretaries, however, are shown to have a much greater sensitivity to outside wages due to the lower degree of occupation-specific training required for secretarial jobs. A similar increase in the wage gap for secretaries results in an 18 percent increase in turnover. RNs employed in hospitals, covered by a union contract, and employed in the public sector are relatively attached to the nursing profession. The author appreciates the helpful comments of Barry Hirsch, David Macpherson, and Leola Ross.