Is demography destiny? The role of structural and demographic factors in Australis past and future labour supply

Following the release of the Intergenerational Report, the Australian Treasury identified the levers to address the economic effects of demographic ageing as ‘the three Ps’: population, participation and productivity. To date, the first ‘P’, population, has been treated as an exogenous factor, with the common view being that there is very little that the government can do to supplant demographic ageing. Focusing upon labour supply, this paper shows how variation in Australia’s underlying demography can significantly alter Australia’s future labour supply. Although governments cannot redirect the cohort flow component of population ageing, much can be achieved in promoting growth of the labour supply by maintaining or increasing fertility (in the longer term), or increasing targeted migration (in the short to medium term). This paper also decomposes the relative role of cohort flow, changing demography and changing labour force participation on the growth of the labour supply over the past 20 years. Over this period, the entry of the baby boom generation (cohort flow) and increased labour force participation of women accounted for almost all of the growth in the labour force. Changing demography had very little effect. However, Australias future labour supply will not include a large increase in cohort flow (as caused by the baby boomers) or a very large increase in female labour force participation. Regardless of the assumptions used, labour supply growth will be considerably lower in the next and subsequent 20 years, when compared to the previous 20.     

Role of women in schooling and child labour decision: the case of urban boys in India

This paper uses household level data from National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) of India, the 55th round (1999–2000), to show that for urban male children there exists significant wage incentive for schooling, though school dropout rate and child labour incidence are not so small. The parents’ level of education plays an important role in reducing this tendency; thus establishing the linkage between social and human capital outcomes in the family. We also look at the incidence of harmful and manual occupations among the child labour. Mother’s education now appears as a very important factor in curbing these incidences; supporting earlier findings that women’s empowerment (one important indicator of which would be female educational level) is indeed instrumental in increasing parental awareness.     

Family size,schooling and child labor in Peru -- an empirical analysis

This paper analyzes the effects of being indigenous, number of siblings, sibling activities and sibling age structure on child schooling progress and child non-school activity. The analysis is based on the Peru 1991 Living Standards Survey. The analysis shows that family size is important. However, the analysis also demonstrates the importance of taking into consideration the activities of siblings. The number of siblings not entrolled in school proves to be an important control variable in at least one specification of the empirical model. However, more research is needed on the interactions between siblings, their activities and their age structure. In other words, an attempt must be made to find ways of taking into account the “life cycle effects” of one‘s siblings on their schooling performance and labor force activity. The analysis also shows that the age structure of siblings is important, but in conjunction with their activities. That is, having a greater number of younger siblings implies less schooling, more age-grade distortion in the classroom and more child labor. JEL classification: J22, J23, I21 Received August 1, 1996 / Accepted February 21, 1997     

Individual and institutional determinants of multidimensional poverty: A European comparison

In this article we evaluate to what extent between-country differences in the probability of being ‘multidimensional’ poor can be explained by a range of ‘domain-specific’ indicators of welfare regime arrangements. To this end, a so-called micro-macro model is estimated, testing the ‘independent’ effect of institutions, as opposed to alternative explanations such as between-country differences in population composition and economic affluence. Although we conclude that institutional arrangements do influence the risk of multidimensional poverty in the expected direction, we also find that bringing the ‘economy’ back into the analyses has a non-trivial impact. Our results point at several avenues for further discussion and research. First, although the more elaborate welfare regimes generally do a better job in preventing poverty, the level of transfers is not always ‘proportional’ to the general standard of living in these countries. Second, we only find partial confirmation for the often cited ‘negative’ impact of labour market flexibility and the related equality-jobs trade-off. While stricter employment regulations do reduce the poverty risk (be it only after controlling for economic affluence), flexibility in terms of the availability of fixed-term labour seems to be preferable to unemployment, even if at the individual level, labour market flexibility increases the likelihood of being poor quite severely.

Role of Parental Education in Schooling and Child Labour Decision: Urban India in the Last Decade

This paper uses household level data from National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) of India, the 55th (1999–2000) and the 61st (2004–05) rounds, to show that even with a significant wage incentive for schooling of urban children, the school drop out rate and child labour incidence are not small over this period. The parents’ level of education plays an important role in reducing this tendency; thus establishing the linkage between social and human capital outcomes in the family. We also look at the incidence of harmful and manual occupations among the child labour. Mother’s education appears as the more important factor in the recent round in curbing the manual work incidences; supporting earlier findings that women’s empowerment (one important indicator of which would be female educational level) is indeed becoming instrumental in increasing parental awareness. Using a pooled data set, we have also analysed the changes in the impact of parental education on these decisions between 1999–2000 and 2004–05.

Change and continuity among minority communities in Britain

We compare the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities in Britain with other ethnic minorities to ask the questions ‘are Muslims different?’ and ‘is their behaviour changing over time?’. We look at the gender gap in education, age at marriage, marriage from the source country and female employment. In all these dimensions we find that Muslim communities are different but also that there is a convergence in behaviour. This is because those born in Britain generally differ markedly in behaviours from those born in the country of origin, but also because there is change within both the UK- and foreign-born communities.     

The impact of local labour markets on investment in further education: Evidence from the England and Wales youth cohort studies

The paper focuses on the individual's choice of activity on completion of compulsory schooling – to remain in full-time education or to seek employment – and the factors influencing this decision. Information from the England and Wales Youth Cohort Studies, coupled with labour market data, is used to estimate of logit model of choice and assess the role played by social and market factors. The results show that labour market conditions play an influential role in determining outcomes, particularly in the case of young males with weaker academic qualifications. Consistent with the time-series evidence, we find that participation rates in further education for both males and females are positively related to the unemployment rate in the local labour market, the effects being greater at times of economic recession when unemployment rates are rising. Received: 5 May 1997/Accepted: 17 July 1998     

The long-run labour market consequences of teenage motherhood in Britain

Common wisdom states that teenage childbearing reduces schooling, labour market experience and adult wages. However, the decisions to be a teenage mother, to quit school, and be less attached to the labour market might all stem from some personal or family characteristics.  Using the National Child Development Study (NCDS), we find that in Britain teenage childbearing decreases the probability of post-16 schooling by 12–24%. Employment experience is reduced by up to three years, and the adult pay differential ranges from 5% to 22%. The negative impact of teen motherhood on various adult outcomes is not only due to some pre-motherhood characteristics; hence policies aiming to encourage return to school and participation in the labour market may be an efficient way to reduce the long-term consequences of teenage pregnancy. Received: 10 October 2000/Accepted: 3 April 2002 All correspondence to Arnaud Chevalier. We are indebted to Martyn Andrews, Colm Harmon, Gauthier Lanot, Ian Walker and to the participants at the EEEG annual meeting (Southampton, 2000) and seminars at Keele University, LSE and Warwick University for their comments that greatly improved earlier versions of this paper. We also thank two anonymous referees and Christoph Schmidt for their insightful comments. All remaining errors are ours. The data was supplied by the Economic and Research Council's Data Archive at the University of Essex and are used with permission of the Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office. Responsible editor: Christoph M. Schmidt.     

Are Educational Mismatches Responsible for the ‘Inequality Increasing Effect’ of Education?

This paper asks whether educational mismatches can account for the positive association between education and wage inequality found in the data. We use two different data sources, the European Community Household Panel and the Portuguese Labour Force Survey, and consider several types of mismatch, including overqualification, underqualification and skills mismatch. We test our hypothesis using two different measurement methods, the ‘statistical’ and the ‘subjective’ approach. The results are robust to the different choices and unambiguously show that the positive effect of education on wage inequality is not due to the prevalence of educational mismatches in the labour market.     

The Set Point Theory of Well-Being Has Serious Flaws: On the Eve of a Scientific Revolution?

Set-point theory is the main research paradigm in the field of subjective well-being (SWB). It has been extended and refined for 30 years to take in new results. The central plank of the theory is that adult set-points do not change, except temporarily in the face of major life events. There was always some ‘discordant data’, including evidence that some events are so tragic (e.g. the death of one’s child) that people never regain their set-point. It was possible to dismiss these events as ‘exceptions’ and maintain the theory. However, several new findings are emerging, which cannot be dismissed as ‘exceptions’ and which appear to require substantial revisions or replacement of set-point theory. Many of these findings are based on the German Socio-Economic Panel Survey (SOEP 1984-), which provides the longest available time series on life satisfaction. Despite its centrality, the concept of the set-point is often not precisely defined. In this paper three alternative working definitions are offered. Depending on which definition is used, it is found that over 20 years 14–30% of German panel members recorded large and apparently permanent changes in their set-points. Changes of this magnitude are not compatible with set-point theory as currently understood. The challenge for SWB researchers now is to develop a theory which can account for change as well as stability.     

The influence of market wages and parental history on child labour and schooling in Egypt

This paper examines the influence of adult market wages and having parents who were child labourers on child labour, when this decision is jointly determined with child schooling, using data from Egypt. The empirical results suggest that low adult market wages are key determinants of child labour; a 10% increase in the illiterate male market wage decreases the probability of child labour by 22% for boys and 13% for girls. The findings also indicate the importance of social norms in the intergenerational persistence of child labour: parents who were child labourers themselves are on average 10% more likely to send their children to work. In addition, higher local regional income inequality increases the likelihood of child labour.

The mismatch between employment and child care in Italy: the impact of rationing

In Italy the women’s participation is among the lowest in Europe. The female employment rate stands almost 13 percentage points below the EU average and 22 below the Lisbon target. One of the most important reasons is related to the characteristics of child care system. We analyze the characteristics of the child care system in Italy and its relationship to the labor market participation decision of mothers. The two decisions are jointly considered in a discrete choice framework, which also allows for simple forms of rationing. We go on to estimate a bivariate probit model of the child care and employment decisions and find evidence that rationing is an important factor in interpreting price effects on utilization rates and employment decisions. Responsible editors: Deborah Cobb-Clark & Tito Boeri     

How Can Children Tell Us About Their Wellbeing? Exploring the Potential of Participatory Research Approaches within <Emphasis Type="Italic">Young Lives</Emphasis>

‘Wellbeing’ is a key concept in the study of children’s lives over time, given its potential to link the objective, subjective, and inter-subjective dimensions of their experiences in ways that are holistic, contextualized and longitudinal. For this reason wellbeing is one of the core concepts used by Young Lives, a 15-year project (2000–2015) that follows the lives of 12,000 children growing up in the context of poverty in Ethiopia, Peru, Vietnam and Andhra Pradesh (India) (see ). This paper examines a selection of methods being used by Young Lives to capture aspects of child wellbeing in the context of a range of children’s life experiences related to poverty, specific risks and protective processes. It draws on a review of the literature on child-focused methods and on recent experiences piloting three core qualitative methods in the four study countries. The paper reports the development of a methodology that is child-centred, but also acknowledges that every child is embedded within a network of social and economic relationships.

Assessing Subjective Well-being in Chinese Older Adults: The Chinese Aging Well Profile

Subjective well-being has increasingly been used as a key indicator of quality of life in older people. Existing evidence shows that it is likely that eastern cultures carry different life values and so the Chinese Aging Well Profile was devised for measuring subjective well-being in Chinese adults (50+). Data was collected from 1,906 community-dwelling Chinese (50+) in Taiwan in six sequential stages, involving qualitative interviews and psychometric testing. Seven key dimensions of subjective well-being identified in the interviews provided an item bank for instrument construction. The 31-item Chinese Aging Well Profile comprised seven subscales–’physical’, ‘psychological’, ‘independence’, ‘learning & growth’, ‘material’, ‘environmental’, and ‘social’ well-being. The study indicated that elements of subjective well-being are common across western and eastern cultures but are interpreted and weighted differently. This new instrument has demonstrated preliminary evidence for reliability and validity and that it is suitable for use in the Chinese speaking older population.     

Personal Wellbeing Index in a National Cohort of 87,134 Thai Adults

Satisfaction with life correlates with other measures of subjective wellbeing and correlates predictably with individual characteristics and overall health. Social indicators and subjective wellbeing measures are necessary to evaluate a society and can be used to produce national indicators of happiness. This study therefore aims to help close the gap in wellbeing data for Thailand. The specific aims are to: (1) calculate the Thai PWI and domain scores using a large scale sample; (2) examine the level of life satisfaction of Thais when compared to international standards; (3) examine the Thai PWI and domains in relation to demographic, socioeconomic, and geographic characteristics. Our report derives from the findings on the Personal Wellbeing Index (PWI) in a large national cohort of Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University adult students living all over Thailand (n = 87,134). This Thai cohort had an overall PWI of 70.0 on a scale from 0 to 100 which is consistent with Western populations. The ‘spirituality and religion’ domain had the highest average score. ‘Standard of living’, ‘future security’ and ‘achievement in life’ made the largest contribution to overall ‘satisfaction in life as a whole’. These domains also show a positive trend with increasing age, being married, higher income, more education, more household assets, and rural residence. The PWI will be an important tool for policymakers to understand the subjective wellbeing of population groups especially as Thailand is undergoing a political and economic transition.     

Well-Being is a Process of Becoming: Respondent-Led Research With Organic Farmers in Madagascar

Malagasy ‘players’—farmers, middle men, organic organisations and policy makers—see in export-orientated organic agriculture a way for Madagascar to build upon its historic export strengths: spices, essential oils, medicinal plants and tropical fruits. They point to the de facto organic status of most farming in the country and view organic production strategies as a means for Malagasy farmers to differentiate their produce in the highly competitive world market (Ramboatiana and Randriamanantena 2000; Randriamanantena 1998; Vallée 2000). However, producing for the export market poses significant challenges for Malagasy farmers. Despite its apparent ‘fit’ with existing farming practice, ‘true’ certified organic practice does not necessarily offer a means towards achieving a Malagasy farmer-defined ‘good life’. Smallholders can be disempowered through their incorporation into wider systemic relationships whose more powerful actors—such as buyers and consumers—and their ‘rules’ about what ‘organic’ is, for example, are necessarily unfamiliar. Yet farmers are very interested in the significant opportunities for much-needed cash that organic farming offers. This paper argues that strengthening farmer agency, and thus their presence as actors in international food chains, can be partially achieved if farmers are involved in devising the rules for organic and social certification. I set out eight principles that I have developed which seem important when trying to capture and measure ‘quality of life’ for the purposes of social certification. My theoretical and empirical work, detailed here, is set within a methodological discussion on how to best ensure that research is ‘respondent-led’. Respondent-led research is, I argue, critical for ensuring that an understanding of the components of ‘quality of life’, and their operationalisation as standards and indicators, is truly meaningful to the target group.

Wages, taxes and publicly provided day care

Public employment growth has been parallelled by increased female labour force participation, while real wages for typical female public sector occupations have not increased. In a theoretical model we, first, show that there is a tradeoff between day care provision and gross wages for occupations for which day care is a complement. It is possible to combine increased public labour demand with public day care provision leaving the wage unaffected. Second, non-parents will be in favour of increasing day care as long as day care productivity is higher than the inverse of the tax rate. This is because the effective labour supply and, therefore, the tax base increase. Third, parents want to push day care provision even further. They are prepared to accept a lower day care productivity than non-parents because day care provision relaxes the constraint on their desired labour supply. The Pareto efficient day care provision is between parents‘ and non-parents‘ preferred levels. Received: 12 December 1995 / Accepted: 17 September 1997     

The Capability Approach and Fuzzy Poverty Measures: An Application to the South African Context

One way of making the capability approach (CA) operational uses fuzzy poverty measures. In this paper, we present a new approach to applying these measures in the South African context using responses to a questionnaire on ‘The Essentials of Life’ in conjunction with a methodology for dealing with the vagueness of poverty. Our results suggest very low cut-offs for people or households to classify as definitely poor for some social indicators. These cut-offs are far lower than those Klasen used in his application of the CA. The attempt to apply the CA using Cheli and Lemmi’s ‘totally fuzzy and relative’ poverty measure in conjunction with our approach to specifying cut-offs can lead to incoherence. This measure can, nonetheless, be useful when social indicators have a ‘relativist component’. While the Cerioli and Zani measure does not lead to such incoherence, it also has a serious weakness.     

The evolutionary significance of wing dimorphism in carabid beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae)

A review of data on the background of wing dimorphism in carabid beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae) and especially of the closely relatedCalathus cinctus andC. melanocephalus is given. In bothCalathus species wing dimorphism is inherited in a simple Mendelian fashion with the brachypterous condition dominant, but inC. melanocephalus the expression of the long winged genotype is under environmental control as well. The development of long winged phenotypes in the latter species is favoured by relatively favourable environmental conditions, such as high temperatures and a high food-supply. The higher fecundity of the larger and heavier long winged females of both species may compensate for losses of long winged phenotypes by flight activities. The evolutionary significance of both types of inheritance is discussed in relation to dispersal. The ‘fixed type’ as found inC. cinctus is considered an opportunistic short term ‘between sites strategy’, whereas the ‘dynamic type’ ofC. melanocephalus represents a flexible long term ‘within sites strategy’.