Women's transitions in the labour market: a competing risks analysis on German panel data

This paper analyses the transitions between the three states of non-employment, part-time and full-time work of a sample of married women living in West Germany. The questions addressed concern the dynamics of women's labour market transitions and the association of the probability of transition with household and individual characteristics. A non-parametric duration analysis shows that women have a similar attachment to full-time and part-time work in terms of survival, and that survival in non-employment is shorter than in the other two states. Estimates of a parametric discrete-time competing risks duration model show that wives of retired husbands go into full-time work, children under 3 years have a disincentive effect on part-time work and that part-time work is a state that German women prefer to stay in and not a first step to full-time employment, whereas foreign women living in West Germany prefer full-time jobs.I thank Rebecca Blank, John F. Ermisch, Siv Gustafsson, John Micklewright, Pravin Trivedi, Jane Waldfogel and two anonymous referees for helpful discussions and comments, and Hans-Peter Blossfeld for providing access to these data through his research project at the European University Institute of Florence. Responsible editors: Siv S. Gustafsson, John F. Ermisch     

Job bust, baby bust?: Evidence from Spain

The unemployment rate in Spain has been exceptionally high for more than two decades by now. During the same period the fertility rate dropped dramatically reaching the lowest level in the world. In this study we look for evidence of a link between the `unemployment crisis' and the `fertility crisis' in Spain. We examine the factors that affect individuals' ages at marriage and childbirth, focusing on the effects of male employment status. Our results show that spells of non-employment have a strong negative effect on the hazard of marriage. We also find negative (but smaller) effects of part-time or temporal employment on the hazard of marriage. The estimated direct effects of joblessness and part-time work on birth hazards conditional on marriage are smaller and/or not significant for most birth intervals and sample groups. Simulations based on the estimated models confirm the potential for large `delaying' effects of joblessness on marriage. However, the delaying effect is not so large in simulations which control for the actual incidence of non-employment in the sample. Received: 7 January 1999/Accepted: 7 March 2000     

吉林省1990、1995年在业人口工作寿命表分析

从 1 990年到 1 995年 ,吉林省的就业状况发生了很大的变化。和 1 990年相比 ,1 995年的就业水平下降 ,男、女就业差距明显缩小。另外 ,反映人口综合就业水平的在业水平指数与年龄存在三次曲线相关     

The school-to-work transition of 2<Superscript>nd</Superscript> generation immigrants in Denmark

2^nd generation immigrants from less developed countries have less education and a lower employment frequency compared to the native Danish youth. We analyse the school-to-work transition of these groups using panel data for the years 1985–1997. The educational gap between 2^nd generation immigrants and the Danish youth is to some extent explained by age structure, while age does not explain the native-immigrant gap concerning the duration of waiting time until first job and the duration of first employment spell. Instead parental capital and neighbourhood effects seem to play a major role. We find large gender differences among 2^nd generation immigrants in the school-to-work transition.All Correspondence to Nina Smith. Thanks to Thomas Haugaard Jensen, Anne-Sofie Reng Rasmussen and Mette Skak-Nielsen who have done part of the computational work. We also want to thank two anynomous referees and participants in the ESF-conference on Migration and Development in Naples 2000 and the ESPE conference in Athens 2001 for many valuable comments. The project has been financed by the Danish Social Science Research Council (FREJA), the Danish Ministry of Labour and TSER. Furthermore, Helena Skyt Nielsen has been supported financially by the Danish Social Science Research Council (SSF), while this work was undertaken. Responsible editors: David Card and Christopher M. Schmidt.     

Employment gains and wage declines: The erosion of black women’s relative wages since 1980

Public policy initiatives in the 1950s and 1960s, including Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity law, helped mitigate explicit discrimination in pay, and the expansion of higher education and training programs have advanced the employment fortunes of many American women. By the early 1980s, some scholars proclaimed near equity in pay between black and white women, particularly among young and highly skilled workers. More recent policy initiatives and labor market conditions have been arguably less progressive for black women’s employment and earnings: through the 1980s, 1990s, and the first half of the 2000s, the wage gap between black and white women widened considerably. Using data from the Current Population Survey Merged Outgoing Rotation Group (CPS-MORG), this article documents the racial wage gap among women in the United States from 1979 to 2005. We investigate how demographic and labor market conditions influence employment and wage inequality among black and white women over the period. Although shifts in labor supply influence the magnitude of the black-white wage gap among women, structural disadvantages faced by black women help explain the growth in the racial wage gap.     

Child care and employment turnover

This paper explores how the responsibilityof caring for children affects employment stability by studying the relationship betweenthe characteristics and stability of substitute caregivers and the risk of leaving of job. Thedata come from the 1990 National Child Care Survey (NCCS), a nationally representative surveyof households with children under age 13 conducted in late 1989 and early 1990, and AProfile of Child Care Settings (PCS), a nationally representative survey of center-based programsand licensed family day care homes in the U.S., conducted at the same time and in the same 144counties. The results show that the availability of care affects the job stability of all employedmothers. Other effects differ by maternal wage. The cost of care affects the employment exits ofmoderate-wage mothers (who earn $6 to $8 per hour), the stability of care affects the employmentexits of moderate- and high-wage mothers, and the flexibility of care affects the employmentexits of low-wage mothers. These results are discussed in the context of current public policies.     

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.     

我国人口重心、就业重心与经济重心空间演变轨迹分析

近20年来我国人口重心、就业重心、经济重心的空间演变轨迹表明,我国区域经济差距的主要原因是东部沿海地区不断集聚生产的同时,没有更有效地吸纳中西部地区的人口,从而造成我国东部沿海地区与中西部地区的生产与人口、就业分布高度失衡。目前,建立完善的分享机制、进一步促进西部落后地区的人口向东部沿海发达地区流动、建立健全的流动人口管理体制是促进我国区域协调发展的有效策略。     

女性就业竞争力与出生人口性别比的城乡差异分析

经验分析表明,相对于城镇而言,农村拥有更高的出生性别比,本文试图从经济学角度解释此现象。改革开放以来,中国城镇女性的就业竞争力有显著的提高,城镇中男女性别在就业与教育中的差异都存在收敛的现象。但在农村中,男性和女性无论是在就业竞争力还是在劳动收益上都存在很大的差距,而且,调查结果显示,无论是与农村男性还是与城镇女性相比农村女性的受教育机会都要少得多,这些因素共同决定了农村女性与城镇女性的就业竞争力差异,并影响了城乡出生性别比。     

Did the association between fertility and female employment within OECD countries really change its sign?

Recent literature finds that in OECD countries the cross-country correlation between the total fertility rate and the female labor force participation rate, which until the beginning of the 1980s had a negative value, has since acquired a positive value. This result is (explicitly or implicitly) often interpreted as evidence for a changing sign in the time-series association between fertility and female employment within OECD countries. This paper shows that the time-series association between fertility and female employment does not demonstrate a change in sign. Instead, the reversal in the sign of the cross-country correlation is most likely due to a combination of two elements: First, the presence of unmeasured country-specific factors and, second, country-heterogeneity in the magnitude of the negative time-series association between fertility and female employment. However, the paper does find evidence for a reduction in the negative time-series association between fertility and female employment after about 1985.I benefited from stimulating discussions with Arnstein Aassve, Pau Baizan, Francesco Billari, Henriette Engelhardt, Hans-Peter Kohler and Alexia Prskawetz and a seminar in Rostock. Further, I am grateful to two anonymous referees for very useful suggestions that improved essentially the content of the paper. In addition, I thank Susan Masur, Susann Backer, and Elizabeth Zach for language editing. The views expressed in this paper are the authors own views and do not necessarily represent those of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. Responsible editor: Junsen Zhang.     

Cohort effects in the educational attainment of second generation immigrants in Germany: An analysis of census data

Even though second generation immigrants make up ever increasing population shares in industrialized countries we know little about their social integration and wellbeing. This study focuses on the educational attainment of German born children of immigrants. Their schooling success still lags behind that of natives. This paper investigates school attendance and completed degrees of second generation immigrants and finds that even after controlling for characteristics the educational gap remains large and significant. The available evidence suggests that this group as a whole does not assimilate to native educational standards and instead increasingly falls behind.This research was completed while the author was guest at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn, Germany. I am grateful for IZAs hospitality and particularly for the help of Thomas K. Bauer. I thank the anonymous referees and the editors for very helpful comments. Responsible editors: David Card and Christoph M. Schmidt.     

Reconciling workless measures at the individual and household level. Theory and evidence from the United States, Britain, Germany, Spain and Australia

Individual- and household-based jobless rates can offer conflicting signals about labour market performance. We outline a means of quantifying and decomposing the extent of any disparity (polarisation) between individual- and household-based measures and apply this to data from five countries over 25 years. Comparing actual household workless rates with counterfactuals based on a random distribution of employment, we find evidence of growing disparities between individual- and household-based non-employment measures in all five countries. The extent of this polarisation varies widely, but for each country, most of the discrepancies stem from within-household factors than from changing household composition.     

Political regimes and the family: how sex-role attitudes continue to differ in reunified Germany

We exploit the German separation and later reunification to investigate whether political regimes can shape attitudes about appropriate roles for women in the family and the labor market. During the divided years, East German institutions encouraged female employment, while the West German system deterred women, in particular mothers, from full-time employment. Our results show that East Germans are significantly more likely to hold egalitarian sex-role attitudes than West Germans. Despite a scenario of partial policy convergence after reunification, we find no evidence for a convergence process in gender attitudes. Indeed, if anything, the gap in attitudes rather increased.     

Political regimes and the family: how sex-role attitudes continue to differ in reunified Germany

We exploit the German separation and later reunification to investigate whether political regimes can shape attitudes about appropriate roles for women in the family and the labor market. During the divided years, East German institutions encouraged female employment, while the West German system deterred women, in particular mothers, from full-time employment. Our results show that East Germans are significantly more likely to hold egalitarian sex-role attitudes than West Germans. Despite a scenario of partial policy convergence after reunification, we find no evidence for a convergence process in gender attitudes. Indeed, if anything, the gap in attitudes rather increased.     

农村女性相对剩余劳动力非农就业的影响因素及对策研究

文章基于2011年5月对河北省围场县和赤峰市城郊农村进行的实地调研,根据在调研区域内对农村女性相对剩余劳动力中的21人进行的深度访谈和对200人进行的问卷调查,利用Logistic回归模型分析个人因素、家庭因素和地区因素对农村女性相对剩余劳动力非农就业的影响作用。研究表明,农村女性自身所拥有的非农技能影响作用最大;其次是居住的地区及地区拥有的乡镇企业或个体私营企业的数量;再次是家庭成员意见、家庭劳动力的人数和非农就业意愿;年龄和家庭耕地面积影响较小。最后从加强非农技能培训、加快乡镇企业的发展、大力倡导自由灵活行业方面提出相应的对策。     

中国不同区域动态就业弹性的比较——基于面板数据的实证研究

文章利用1997～2009年省际面板数据对东、中、西三大经济区域的动态就业弹性进行估计,结果表明,东部地区的短期就业弹性显著高于中、西部地区,但长期就业弹性的区域差异并不大,短期就业弹性的区域差异主要是由就业调整速度、劳动的生产效率和产业结构不同引起的。较低的短期就业弹性使中、西部地区在经济波动的情况下面临着更大的风险。中、西部地区可以通过发展劳动密集型行业、提高劳动生产效率来增加产出水平,同时调整产业规模、实现与东部地区产业的有效对接,促进区域间的良性互动和协调发展。     

Should I stay or should I go? Educational choices and earnings: An empirical study for Portugal

We analyse educational choices and earnings of individuals at two different levels in the Portuguese educational system. At each exit we consider two decisions: the decision to continue studying and the employment decision. We find empirical support for the existence of selectivity bias as the errors of the earnings functions are in general correlated with the disturbances of the decision functions. The obtained rates of return to education vary between 2.4 and 9.4 percent, depending on whether or not selectivity and quantity effects are excluded from the computations. Note that selectivity represents three quarters of this difference. Received: 5 March 2001/Accepted: 10 October 2001 I am grateful for the comments of the editor and two anonymous referees. Responsible editor: John F. Ermisch.     

Ethnic identity, majority norms, and the native–immigrant employment gap

Earlier studies do not agree on whether ethnic identity, i.e., immigrants’ attachment to the home country and the host country, can explain lower employment outcomes among immigrants. This study investigates the relationship between employment and ethnic identity and complements the literature by capturing a novel dimension of ethnic identity: openness to majority norms. Reproducing measures from earlier studies, I find that immigrants’ employment outcomes do not systematically associate with their ethnic identity. However, immigrants who share social norms with the majority experience significantly better employment outcomes, particularly first-generation immigrant women. Furthermore, I show that interethnic differentials in majority norms could account for up to 20 % of the explained part of the employment gap between natives and first-generation immigrants. Those results shed more light on the interethnic employment gap and aspects of immigrants’ identity relevant to economic integration.     

非正规就业者的境况得到改善了么?——来自1997-2011年CHNS数据的证据

为研究国有企业改革以来我国城镇非正规就业者的境遇变化,本文利用1997-2011年CHNS数据库,采用倾向得分匹配(PSM)方法,对城镇非正规就业者和正规就业者收入差距进行实证研究.结果发现,城镇非正规就业者与正规就业者收入存在显著差异,且呈现不断扩大的趋势,尤其是有雇工的非正规雇佣者、无雇工的非正规自雇者与正规就业者收入差距越来越大,表明我国城镇非正规就业者的生存境遇正不断恶化,劳动力市场向着不利于非正规就业的方向发展.这要求在劳动力市场改革中应充分考虑非正规就业者的生存空间,加大对非正规就业者的扶持力度的同时,注重非正规就业政策的差异性,减少劳动力市场扭曲对非正规就业者的影响.     

The Influence of the Built Environment and Other Factors on the Physical Activity of Older Women from Different Ethnic Communities

ABSTRACT

Inactivity has been identified as a major contributor to the burden of disease in older women. Study aims were: (a) to assess the personal, social, and environmental facilitators and impediments to physical activity in older women from ethnic communities; and (b) to determine the factors associated with physical activity participation. Older women (aged 60–84 years) were recruited from the local Italian (n = 20), Vietnamese (n = 26) and Anglo-Celtic (n = 26) communities. A survey questionnaire was administered in the participants' preferred language. The most common barriers were: “I am not in good health,” “I am self-conscious about my looks,” “I am too tired,” “I don't have time,” and “The weather is bad.” When comparing the ethnic groups, the Vietnamese women reported fewer barriers than the Italian women (2.6 vs. 5.9). While the Vietnamese women were much more likely to report being “self-conscious about my looks,” the Italian women more commonly reported poor health, being too tired, and not liking exercise as barriers. Overall, those living alone were more likely to be active and those who reported fear of injury, less active. Recognizing ethnospecific differences in the prevalence of barriers may be important when devising strategies to increase activity levels of older women.