A reply to Walker’s note: A comment on Taşiran’s ‘Wage and income effects on the timing and spacing of births in Sweden and in the United States’

Walker (1997) criticizes one of the conclusions in my book Tas?\iran (1995), that Heckman and Walker’s very high negative wage rate and positive income effects on Swedish fertility are very sensitive. In this paper, I explain, first, that my results are not only based on the series Walker mentions, but also on other series in both SFS and HUS data sets. Second, the combined aggregate and micro wage series he criticizes is mainly derived with Heckman and Walker. Third, by discussing the points he raises for the combination strategy, I show that his revised results are also supporting my conclusion. Received: 7 June 1996/Accepted: 16 July 1997 I am grateful to Anders Klevmarken, Lennart Hjalmarsson, Bj?rn Gustafsson and Ann Veiderpass for their valuable suggestions and discussions on an earlier version of this paper. Thanks also to two anonymous referees for their comments and to the responsible editor of this journal Klaus F. Zimmermann, for his encouragement and many helpful comments. Any remaining errors are my own. Responsible editor: Klaus F. Zimmermann.     

Gender wage discrimination at quantiles

The literature provides several scalar measures of gender wage discrimination that cannot identify whether discrimination is greater among high earners or among low earners. Furthermore, two populations may exhibit the same value of the scalar measure while discrimination could be very differently distributed. We extend Oaxacas scalar measure to any quantile of the distribution of wages. Our measure allows comparisons within a population and inter-population. Using the Spanish Survey of Wage Structure we find that gender wage discrimination increases with the quantile index but as a fraction of the gender wage gap reaches a maximum at the ninth percentile.All Correspondence to Javier Gardeazabal. We would like to thank Alberto Abadie and Teo Pérez Amaral for their comments. Financial support from the Basque Government, the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología and Ministerio de Trabajo y Asuntos Sociales (Instituto de la Mujer) is gratefully acknowledged. Javier Gardeazabal would like to thank the Department of Economics of the University of California, Santa Cruz, for its hospitality while part of this work was carried out, and the Spanish Ministerio de Educación y Cultura for financing the visit to UCSC. Responsible editor: Daniel Hamermesh.     

The educational attainment of second-generation immigrants in The Netherland

Since the mid-1960s the Netherlands has had a positive net immigration, mainly because of man power recruitment from Turkey and Morocco and immigration from the former Dutch colony of Surinam. Immigrants havea weak labor market position, which is related to their educational leveland language skills. Children and grandchildren of immigrants are expected to have a better chance of integration into Dutch society. In this paper we investigate whether this is true with respect to the educational attainment of second-generation immigrants from Turkey, Morocco, Surinam and the Dutch Antilles.The authors thank an anonymous referee and both editors for helpful comments. Responsible editors: David Card and Christoph M. Schmidt.     

Measuring inequality with asset indicators

This paper examines whether, in the absence of information on household income or consumption, data on household infrastructure, building materials, and ownership of certain durable assets can be used to measure inequality in living standards. Principal components analysis is used to obtain a relative measure of inequality, and a bootstrap prediction method is provided for use when auxiliary surveys are available. Mexican data is used to show that the inequality methods provided do provide reasonable proxies for inequalities in living standards. An application finds that after controlling for household income and demographics, school attendance of boys in Mexico is negatively related to state-level inequality.     

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.     

Premium differentiation in the Unemployment Insurance system and the demand for labor

We simulate the effect of the introduction of premium differentiation (experience rating) in the Dutch Unemployment Insurance system on the demand for labor for a variety of sectors in the Dutch economy. For the simulations we use the Bentolila and Bertola (1990) framework as a point of departure. In the simulations, the introduction of experience rating is modeled as expenditure neutral: in the absence of premium differentiation the cost of financing UI is modeled as a wage tax (independent of the number of workers fired by the firm), whereas in the presence of experience rating this cost is attributed to firing cost (affected by the firing action). Thus, the introduction of experience rating results in a shift from wage cost to firing cost. Following the political debate on the issue in the Netherlands, we assume that the introduction of experience rating does neither lead to a change in tax rates paid by workers nor to a change in eligibility rules or replacement rates of benefit claimants. Specific attention is paid to the distinction between young and old workers . In the model, labor adjustment costs (hiring and firing costs) are linear. The model allows for uncertainty in the business cycle.All correspondence to Hans Bloemen. Responsible editor: Alessandro Cigno     

Long run opportunity-costs of children according to education of the mother in the Netherlands

Children claim a large part of the parents' potential resources, particularly their time. Direct time costs arise through the time spent out of the labour force while the children are small, indirect costs are the result of lower investment into human capital. It is demonstrated in this paper that the average opportunity costs of children of lower educated mothers can be higher than those of higher educated mothers.The author wishes to thank his colleagues from de Leerstoel Vergelijkende Bevolkings- en Emancipatie-economie, especially Siv Gustafsson, John F. Ermisch and two anonymous referees for their comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper. The author is also thankful for Mr. and Mrs. van Ingen for their advice on improving the English text. Financial support from the FMO is gratefully acknowledged. Responsible editors: Siv S. Gustafsson, John F. Ermisch.     

The unemployment insurance compensation experience of immigrants in Canada, 1980-1988

This paper utilizes a new data set, compiled by Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Revenue Canada and Statistics Canada, to examine the unemployment experience of Canadian immigrant cohorts over the time period 1980 to 1988. Using the records of unemployment insurance benefits of persons who immigrated to Canada in those years and who filed income tax returns, the unemployment experiences of those people are compared by landing year, gender, level of education, language ability, and country of last permanent residence. The determinants of the proportion of each immigrant cohort that received unemployment insurance benefits are estimated by relating the proportions to landing year, duration of time in Canada, and labour market conditions. Briefly, we find no obvious influences on UI receipt behaviour following the immigration reforms of 1982. However, the recession of 1981–82 had a major impact on incomes which did not recover until 5 or 6 years later. Nevertheless, more generous UI benefits did raise slightly the likelihood of UI receipts. Received: 5 December 1995 / Accepted: 14 August 1996     

Hebrew language usage: determinants and effects on earnings among immigrants in Israel

This paper uses the 1983 Census of Israel to analyze Hebrew speaking skills and the effects of Hebrew fluency on the earnings of adult male immigrants. Hebrew fluency increases with a longer duration in Israel, the presence of children in the household, marrying after immigration, living in an area in which a smaller proportion speak one‘s mother tongue, a younger age at migration, a higher level of schooling and varies by country of birth. Earnings increase monotonically with the use of Hebrew. Speaking English as a second language is associated with higher earnings, even when country of origin is held constant. Received: 9 June 1997/Accepted: 6 November 1997