Parental Education and Fertility: An Empirical Investigation Based on Evidence from Taiwan

This paper investigated the size of the impact of parental education on fertility choice and whether this effect was larger for maternal education. This paper utilized the substantial expansion of educational opportunities in Taiwan and thus applied the two-stage least-square method to account for the endogeneity of educational attainment. The results showed that parental education was an important factor in reducing the fertility rate. In addition, maternal education was a stronger determinant than paternal education.     

The Effects of Labor Unions on Workplace Performance: New Evidence from France

How do unionization and collective bargaining affect firm profitability? In this paper, we revisit this question using a nationally representative sample of French establishments. In addition to examining union/non-union differences in profitability, we explore the possible sources from which unions capture profits. The results indicate that unionization in France is associated with poorer financial performance in the workplace. The results also indicate that concentration-related profits do not provide an important source of union rents in France. Finally, this study provides strong support for the hypothesis of union appropriation of the returns from long-lived physical capital.     

Temporary Migration Overseas and Household Labor Supply: Evidence from Urban Philippines

The impact of international migration on the labor supply of workers' nonmigrant relatives has not been well documented in the literature. Using household survey data representing mostly overseas contract workers, i.e., temporary migrants, this paper shows that labor supplies of migrants and their nonmigrant relatives are inseparable. Migrants reduce the labor supply of nonmigrant relatives, which translates into lower earnings from local labor markets. Households substitute income for more leisure – a significant and previously little recognized benefit of emigration for Philippine households. This benefit varies by gender of nonmigrants and is generally higher for men.     

The Effects of Material Incentives in Mail Surveys: Two Studies

Two studies were undertaken on the effects of including a materialnonmonetary incentive in mail surveys, using various samplesof the general public in the Netherlands. The results show thatnonmonetary incentives produce a higher initial response rate,but follow-ups reduced the effect of the incentive to a nonsignificantratio. Inclusion of the incentive produced no response biasand little volunteer bias. Results from these studies offera possible explanation for why past studies on nonmonetary incentiveshave often shown positive effects: they were conducted usingmethods that produced low response rates. When methods thatproduce high response rates are used, the effect of nonmonetaryincentives on response rate disappears. Finally, the use ofmonetary incentives in mail surveys with a high base responseis discussed.     

Work,Childcare, or Both? Experimental Evidence on the Efficacy of Childcare Subsidies in Raising Parental Labor Supply

Journal of Family and Economic Issues - As a policy tool aimed at raising parental labor supply, childcare subsidies come with high expectations. Using data from a factorial survey conducted in the...     

Parental separation and well-being of youths: Evidence from Germany

This paper employs recent data for Germany and a new outcome variable to assess the consequences of parental separation on the well-being of youths. In particular, it is considered how subjective well-being, elicited from an ordinal 11-point general life satisfaction question, differs between youths living in intact and non-intact families, holding many other potential determinants of well-being constant using ordered probit regressions. The main finding of this study is that living in a non-intact family has not the hypothesised large negative effect on child well-being.     

The Impact of Taking Parental Leave on Fathers’ Participation In Childcare And Relationships With Children: Lessons from Sweden

In Sweden, government-mandated paid parental leave has been available to both mothers and fathers since 1974. By 2006, each parent had two non-transferable leave months and nine additional months to share. From the beginning, parental leave was presented as a policy designed to promote gender equality, with women and men having equal opportunities and responsibilities to contribute economically to the family and care for children. Sweden thus provides a unique setting to explore whether social policy can be an important instrument for changing the gender contract. Analysing survey data from 356 fathers working in large private companies, we found that the amount of parental leave days taken had positive effects on several aspects of fathers’ participation in childcare and on their satisfaction with contact with children, controlling for other factors contributing to fathers’ participation in childcare. Our findings suggest that the full potential of Sweden's parental leave policy for degendering the division of labour for childcare will not likely be met until fathers are strongly encouraged by social policy to take a more equal portion of parental leave.     

Impact of Public and Private Cash Transfers on Poverty and Inequality: Evidence from Vietnam

This article investigates the extent to which public and private transfers affected poverty and inequality in Vietnam in the mid‐2000s. It finds that the impact of public transfers on poverty was negligible, due to the low coverage of the poor and the relatively small amounts transferred. Moreover, the effect of the receipt of transfers on expenditures was small: recipients decreased the labour supply and only a limited amount of the extra income went to current consumption. Domestic private transfers were somewhat more successful in reducing poverty. With most public and private transfers going to non‐poor households, inequality was only marginally affected.     

The Effects of Being Out of the Labor Market on Subsequent Wages: Evidence for Uruguay

Based on administrative data combining workers’ earnings histories and unemployment insurance benefits, we document short and long term wage losses for a large sample of Uruguayan formal workers with high tenure. The contribution of this paper is to provide original evidence about job separation costs in a developing country, based on a unique array of social security and unemployment insurance administrative micro-data. Our main findings indicate that workers lose around 38 % of their previous wages in the first quarter after separation, and 1 year after, losses are still more than 14 %. If we consider earnings plus unemployment insurance benefits, losses at the quarter of separation are considerable lower, amounting 22 % of previous wages. We also provide original evidence about how wage losses vary across age groups, gender, industry and size of the firm. Differences between switchers and non switchers, as well as the effects of the economic cycle are also analyzed.     

The Effects of Parental Resources on Adolescent Perceptions of Parental Rewarding and Punishing: Persuasive Appeals

The present study examined the impact of parental socioeconomic resources on adolescent perceptions of parental rewarding and punishing persuasive message strategies. It was argued that parents with greater socioeconomic resource bases are equipped better than lesser endowed parents to invoke rewarding and punishing persuasive appeals. Using Marwell and Schmitt's typology of rewarding and punishing persuasive strategies, one hundred and ninety adolescents ranging from seventh to twelfth grade were sampled from two midwestern communities. Results provide some support for the influence of parental socioeconomic resources on adolescent perceptions of parental rewarding and punishing persuasive appeals. However, a secondary analysis revealed adolescents' age and gender affect their perceptions more than parental resources.     

Rural-to-Urban Transition and the Division of Labor: Evidence from Saudi Arabia

Abstract Ecological theory proposes that the evolution of societies from rural-based to urban-based forms of organization occurs as cities coordinate a widening territorial division of labor. This research assesses the efficacy of this model in Saudi Arabia and represents a crucial test of the generalizability of ecological theory. The rural-to-urban transition in that country did not proceed, as it did in much of the rest of the world, in the context of a substantial extraction of surplus from the agrarian sector and difficulties in absorbing displaced agricultural labor by the industrial sector. Despite this, and other rather extraordinary departures from typical patterns, the strong association between urbanization and the division of labor predicted by ecological theory emerges.     

The Influence of Incremental Increases in Token Cash Incentives on Mail Survey Response: Is There an Optimal Amount?

The research reported is from a large-scale, national, mixed-modesurvey (N = 49,675 addresses), in which token incremental, noncontingentincentives used in the second (mail) stage of the survey weretested in an experimental design. The levels of the incentivestested ranged from $0 to $10, in one-dollar increments, withthe exception that there was no $9 condition. Furthermore, theexperiment was conducted using three types of household addressesthat originally were sampled in the first stage of the mixed-modesurvey via a random digit dial (RDD) frame: (1) households thatagreed to participate in the mail stage of the survey; (2) householdsthat were never contacted in the RDD stage despite numerouscontact attempts; and (3) households that had refused to participatewhen contacted in the RDD stage. It was determined that amongthose households that had previously agreed to participate,even those that received no cash incentive ($0) were more likelyto return completed surveys than the groups of previously noncontactedand previously refusing households that received $10. It wasalso found that the nature of the outcome of the prior contactwith the household mediated (that is, interacted with) the proportionaleffects of the incremental incentives, in ways only partiallyconsistent with Dillman’s social exchange theory. Thefindings, which are consistent with leverage-salience theory,suggest that if there is an optimal amount for an incentiveto use in a mail survey, then it is a variable amount best targetedto the individual household.     

Conditional Cash Incentive and Use of Health Care Services: New Evidence from a Household Experiment

Studies have recently provided insights into the effects of incentive modalities in the health care sector. However, there is insufficient evidence on the underlying causes of the partial effectiveness of these strategies in the health systems of developing countries. This study presents results from a large-scale randomized experiment across 6848 households in Afghanistan that evaluates the impact of a conditional incentive pay scheme on health facilities. Supported by the target-income hypothesis framework and relaxing the compliance assumption in the empirical modeling, the estimated coefficients yield causal effects of the supply-side conditional incentive on the utilization for health care services. After 2 years, the conditional incentive increased the use of pre-targeted maternal and children health care services among the households at lower levels and at contracted-out health facilities. Additionally, the incentive scheme is associated with sizable efficiency gains at the facility level. These gains are realized at the expense of deterring service users’ satisfaction with physicians’ communication qualities. This study establishes that margins of improvement do exist in the supply-side performance conditioning on an organizational structure and the service contractual arrangements of health facilities. This work provides a framework for the plausible implementation of incentive policies in the health care sector.

     

Evidence from the Chernobyl Nuclear Accident: The Effect on Health,Education, and Labor Market Outcomes in Belarus

The Chernobyl nuclear accident of 1986 had deleterious health consequences for the population of Belarus, especially for those who were children at the time of the disaster. Using the 2003–2008 waves of the Belarusian Household Survey of Income and Expenditure (BHSIE), we estimate the effect of radiation exposure on the health, education, and labor market outcomes among cohorts and areas affected by the accident, utilizing the nuclear accident as a natural experiment. We find that young individuals who came from the most contaminated areas had worse health, were less likely to hold university degrees, were less likely to be employed, and had lower wages compared to those who were older at the time of the accident and who came from less contaminated areas.     

A Note on Dual Internal Labor Markets and Wages of Temporary Workers: Evidence from Linked-Employer-Employee Data

I use linked employer-employee data from the German Federal Statistical Office to estimate within-firm wage differentials between temporary workers with fixed-term contracts and workers with permanent contracts in the context of dual internal labor markets. Wage-tenure profiles of permanent workers are estimated separately for each firm to obtain a proxy for the prevalence of internal labor markets. Temporary workers earn significantly lower wages in firms with steeper wage-tenure profiles. This finding is consistent with the segmentation in a primary permanent workforce with high wages and a secondary temporary workforce with low wages, if internal labor markets are more prevalent.     

Family Cap and Nonmarital Fertility: The Racial Conditioning of Policy Effects

Using an experimental design, this research examines the effect of the nation's first family cap on the births, abortions, and contraception use of over 8,000 women receiving public assistance in New Jersey. The family cap denies additional cash benefits to children conceived while the mother is receiving public assistance. Our research shows that a targeted welfare benefit manipulation does influence fertility behavior; however, the effect is conditioned by race. We find that Black women in the experimental group have a 21% lower birth rate and a 32% higher abortion rate than Black women in the control group. We do not find a birth effect for Hispanic or White women. We discuss the policy implications of the effects of a segmented family cap.