The Extent of Economic Vulnerability in the Canadian Labour Market and Federal Jurisdiction: Is There a Role for Labour Standards?

This paper characterizes vulnerable workers in Canada and the federal jurisdiction, based upon characteristics such as employment status, demographic characteristics, and job characteristics, and identifies areas in which labour standards may have a role. Based on this analysis, the paper evaluates the potential for labour standards to address economic vulnerability, focusing on labour standards policies aimed at wages and benefits, hours, and employment arrangements. In addition, the analysis considers the extent to which labour standards are likely to reach vulnerable workers. The results suggest several potential roles for labour standards and highlights policy implications.

The City of Saskatoon’s Local Area Planning Program: A Case Study

The City of Saskatoon’s Local Area Planning (LAP) Program is a community-based approach to developing comprehensive neighbourhood plans. In order to achieve sustainable and implementable Local Area Plans (LAPs), the City of Saskatoon has been using innovative methods of collaborative decision-making to engage citizens. The program has been recognized nationally by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities for demonstrating innovative approaches to citizen engagement in Sustainable Community Planning. A total of eight LAPs have been adopted by City Council and 212 recommendations have been approved, with 101 of these recommendations being completed, 71 currently in progress and 40 to be determined. Great strides have been made to implement the LAPs by allocating resources for coordinating implementation, working with communities, and for implementing the various recommendations. In addition, over 1,000 people representing various interests have participated in one or more LAP Committee or implementation meetings. Through this participation, partnerships have been formed, program and service delivery has been improved, and most importantly, communities have taken ownership of their plans. After completing eight LAPs, the LAP communities, City Council and city planners have felt the need to measure ongoing changes and progress in the LAP communities. In recognition of this, the City of Saskatoon’s City Planning Branch will be working with LAP communities, the Community-University Institute for Social Research (CUISR) and other stakeholders to develop a framework for statistically measuring changes in LAP communities and to monitor “Neighbourhood Success Factors”. The Neighbourhood Success Factors will work to detect serious socio-economic conditions before they reach a point of crisis. This paper will first describe the LAP Program before reviewing the proposed framework for statistically measuring changes in Saskatoon’s neighbourhoods.

A note on the score reliability for the Satisfaction With Life Scale: an RG study

The purpose of the present study was to meta-analytically investigate the score reliability for the Satisfaction With Life Scale. Four-hundred and sixteen articles using the measure were located through electronic database searches and then separated to identify studies which had calculated reliability estimates from their own data. Sixty-two articles met this criterion, providing 76 reliability coefficients. The articles comprising the sample were next coded to identify potential sample or test characteristics that might affect the variation in reliability estimates. Results indicate that score standard deviation, mean, percent female, US samples, English test version, and youth samples demonstrated significant relationships with score reliability. Results from this study provide useful information, in terms of scale performance, for researchers interested in using the measure for future academic endeavors.

Informal Food Production in the Enlarged European Union

How widespread is the production of food in old and new member states of the European Union and what is the social meaning or logic of such activities? We show that growing food is (a) more widespread in former communist countries than in traditional market economies and (b) is predominantly a hobby or recreational activity in affluent countries, but a coping strategy in reaction to experienced difficulties in making ends meet in poorer nations, and especially so in the former communist countries.     

Child support and non-resident fathers’ contact with their children

The paper presents a model of a non-resident father’s child support and contact with his child, which combines the public good treatment of “child quality” with “trade” in father–child contact time in a setting of non-cooperative interaction. It predicts that father’s income and mother’s non-labour income should have exactly the same effect on the frequency of father–child contact if he chooses to make lump sum payments to the mother. If he does not or there is a binding child support payment order, they have effects opposite in direction. A higher binding support order reduces father–child contact but may well raise “child quality”.

Does parents’ valuation of children’s health mimic their valuation of own health?

A single latent variable model of health status and therapeutic health care utilization is estimated for parents and own children of 6,557 US households. The equation system that identifies latent health status simultaneously determines a number of indicators of general health, including presence of morbidity symptoms, mobility limitations, medication needs, and utilization of therapeutic health care services. The main goal of the paper was to obtain an unbiased estimate of parents’ marginal substitution rate between own and child health. Results indicate that parents’ valuation of their children’s health exceeds their valuation of own health by almost twofold on average.

A longitudinal analysis of the impact of health shocks on the wealth of elders

We investigate the impact of health shocks on wealth, using all four waves of the Health and Retirement Study, and estimate not only the short-term effect but also the long-term effect of health shocks on wealth of the elderly. We find that new health events lower wealth in elders during the period in which such health shocks occur, but the impact tends to disappear over time. We also find that health shocks result in greater wealth depletion when they occur later in life. Together with existing health problems, the overall impact of health problems on wealth increases over time.

Nonmarket networks among migrants: evidence from metropolitan Bangkok,Thailand

This paper examines the nonmarket interactions among migrants in the urban labor market of Bangkok, Thailand. We test whether the population size and the labor-market performance of previous migrants have externalities to new migrants who have moved from the same province of origin. Our empirical results, which control origin fixed effects, time fixed effects, and origin- and year-specific correlated shocks, show that (1) the relative population size of previous migrants in the market decreases the employment probability of new migrants (substitution effect), (2) the employment probability of previous migrants increases that of new migrants (positive externalities), and (3) when the employment probability of previous migrants is high, however, the scale effect becomes positive, which demonstrates a threshold in the informational scale economies. The results imply that positive informational scale effect dominates negative substitution effect when the efficiency of previous migrants is sufficiently high in the destination labor market.

Age at marriage and marital instability: revisiting the Becker–Landes–Michael hypothesis

An early age at first marriage is known to be associated with a high risk of divorce. Yet, it has been suggested that beyond a certain point, the relationship between age at marriage and marital instability may become positive because as unmarried women begin to hear their biological clock tick, they may settle for matches far from the optimal. Analyses based on cycles 5 and 6 of the National Surveys of Family Growth show that the relationship between age at marriage and marital instability is strongly negative up to the late 20s, with a flattening of the curve thereafter.

The importance of being mature: the effect of demographic maturation on global per capita GDP

Given that savings behaviour and worker productivity have strong life-cycle components and given that demographic profiles vary across countries, population age structure should be linked to differences in levels of economic development. In this paper, we measure the economic importance of age structure variation for the global economy. We find that demographic maturation has been associated with nearly half of the evolution of global per capita GDP since 1960. We also find that age structure differences can account for just over half of the variation in worldwide per capita GDP (i.e. the lack of sigma convergence) observed since 1960.