Political legitimacy versus economic imperatives in system transformation: Hungary and East Germany 1990–93

East European policy makers currently face critical trade-offs between economic imperatives and system legitimacy imperatives. Economic imperatives, derived from the goal of medium term prosperity, demand rapid privatization and marketization. System legitimacy imperatives demand measures to minimize the unemployment, wage cuts and income inequality resulting in the short term from privatization and marketization. In 1989–90 East Germany and Hungary appeared to face the least harsh trade-offs and to be best placed of the ex-communist countries to achieve successful system transformation. Unlike their East European neighbours, neither had to develop democratic and market institutions from scratch. East Germany would import the Federal Republic's political system and market institutions. Hungary already had organized political parties and had been developing market institutions since 1968. Using panel survey data, the paper shows that, despite considerable economic achievements since 1990, there is widespread personal dissatisfaction and distress, and the legitimacy of democratic and market institutions is weak. The main data sources are the Hungarian Socio-Economic Panel (1992–5777 individuals in 2888 households) and the East German segment of the German Socio-Economic Panel (1990–4453 individuals in 2179 households).     

Chronic movers and the future redistribution of population: A longitudinal analysis

This research has two purposes. First, it examines individual- and household-level factors related to the propensity to move. The findings reveal that mobility is largely a matter of habitual movers changing residence repeatedly and frequently. The second objective is concerned with strengthening the foundation for projecting aggregate levels of mobility: (1) how does repeated movement manifest itself at the metropolitan scale? and (2) for predictive purposes, which aggregate indices capture the most important features of local population composition? Mobility rates were found to vary principally with the prevalence of chronic movers in an SMSA. These findings have several implications for policies designed to guide future population distribution. First, an SMSA’s capacity to correct local manpower imbalances by exchanging human capital with other areas may depend partially on its relative abundance of habitual movers. Second, the likelihood that new cities would attract disproportionate numbers of hypermobile persons might enhance their role within the framework of a broader distribution policy. The question posed here is whether high intrinsic levels of population turnover in some cities might fit into a larger strategy for realigning population growth and distribution nationally.     

Settlement policies and the economic success of immigrants

Many countries use settlement policies to direct the inflow of immigrants away from immigrant dense areas. We evaluate a reform of Swedish immigration policy that featured the dispersion of refugee immigrants, but also a change in the approach to labor market integration. We focus on how immigrants fared because of the policy. The evaluation indicates that immigrants experienced substantial long run losses. The bulk of the effect stems from a common component that affected immigrants regardless of location. We interpret the common component as being related to a shift in policy focus, from labor market assimilation to income support.All correspondence to Per-Anders Edin. We thank two anonymous referees, Magnus Löfström, seminar participants at the Institute for Labour Market Policy Evaluation (IFAU), Uppsala University, Stockholm University, the Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI), the Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IUI), and the CEPR conference on Marginal Labour Markets in Metropolitan Areas for valuable comments and Lisa Fredriksson for expert data assistance. We are also grateful to Sven Hjelmskog, Roland Jansson, Stig Kattilakoski, Christina Lindblom, Anders Nilsson, Kristina Sterne, and Lena Axelsson of the Immigration Board, and Anna Gralberg of the Ministry of Culture, who generously found time to answer our questions. This research has been partly financed through a grant from the Swedish Council for Work Life Research (RALF). Responsible editor: Christoph M. Schmidt.     

The Time-Pressure Illusion: Discretionary Time vs. Free Time

People’s welfare is a function of both time and money. People can – and, it is said, increasingly do – suffer time-poverty as well as money-poverty. It is undeniably true that people feel increasingly time pressured, particularly in dual-earner households. But much of the time devoted to paid and unpaid tasks is over and above that which is strictly necessary. In that sense, much of the time pressure that people feel is discretionary and of their own making. Using data from the 1992 Australian Time Use Survey, this paper demonstrates that the magnitude of this ‘time-pressure illusion’ varies across population groups, being least among lone parents and greatest among the childless and two-earner couples.     

Unemployment and marital dissolution

This paper analyses the effects of unemployment on the probability of marital dissolution. Based on panel data for a sample of Danish married couples, we estimate a dynamic model for the probability of marital dissolution where we take into account the possible effects of unemployment for both spouses. We also control for other factors such as education, age, presence of children, place of residence, health and economic factors. The empirical results show that unemployment seems to be an important factor behind marital instability. However, only unemployment of the husband has an effect, and this effect is immediate.We thank two anonymous referees for their helpful comments on an earlier draft.     

Is population decentralization lengthening commuting distances?

This study questions the conventional wisdom about how commuting distances change when workers migrate from metropolitan to nonmetropolitan areas. It does not appear that decentralization yields a more energy-intensive configuration of residences and job locations: we find no indication that this migration lengthens the aggregate distance that workers commute. Some migrants do commute long distances, but their numbers are offset by many more who end up closer to their jobs. Our findings relate to two contrasting views (“sprawl” and “nucleation”) of how workers are becoming repositioned in relation to their jobs as settlement patterns change; the latter view appears more realistic. We briefly discuss policy implications pertaining to alternative transportation modes for commuting, setting priority travel needs in an energy emergency, and telecommunications as a substitute for commuting.     

The increasing proportion of men with low earnings in the United States

This study has provided an examination of recent changes in the lower tail of the male earnings distribution. Data from the CPS for 1967 through 1978 were used to analyze the increasing proportion of male workers with annual and weekly earnings below a fixed low earnings threshold. Our central purpose was to assess the extent to which the growth in the probability of low earnings could be explained by the more salient changes in the structure of the male labor force over this period. To this end, logit analysis was used to examine the roles of education, experience, cyclical conditions, and cohort size in explaining variations in the probability of subthreshold earnings, conditional on experience and education. The estimates generally yielded the expected effects. However, the most important findings from our analysis concern the trends estimated net of education, experience, unemployment, and cohort size. These variables appear to explain satisfactorily the recent growth in the proportion of men with low earnings among those with at least sixteen years of education. For all other educational categories, our independent variables were unable to account for a major portion of the growth in the probability of low earnings. Our results supplement previous findings of positive trends for mean annual and weekly earnings net of a similar set of independent variables. Hence, we have provided substantial evidence of stagnation in the lower tail of the male earnings distribution--a stagnation not shared by the average worker nor fully explicable by education, experience, aggregate unemployment, or the entrance of the baby boom cohort into the labor market. Investigation of alternative explanations for this phenomenon, such as changes in female labor supply or the structure of labor demand, is clearly warranted.     

Welfare Receipt Among Children Living with Grandparents

Considerable increases in the numbers of children living with grandparents have prompted concerns over their economic well-being and grandparents’ use of welfare programs. Using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, I profile the economic well-being of children living with grandparents and estimate the likelihood of receiving two welfare programs: food stamps and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Findings suggest that identifying the exact living arrangements of children is pivotal to understanding differences in economic disadvantage and welfare receipt among children living with grandparents. Although children in grandmother-only, no parent present families are the most likely to be poor, they are not the children most likely to receive welfare. The children most likely to receive welfare live with their single mothers and grandparents in three-generation households.     

Contents Volume 21 (2002)

Volume Contents

Contents Volume 21 (2002)