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.     

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.     

Meta-analysis of the impact of age structure on fertility

The paper uses a meta-analysis to comparatively evaluate the literature addressing the aggregate relationship between a populations age structure and fertility, as hypothesized by Richard Easterlin. The analysis is based on 334 estimated effects retrieved from 19 studies. The results suggest that several factors undermine the empirical support of the Easterlinian age structure/fertility link. These include the neglect of income, the use of relative cohort size to characterize the age structure, mis-specifications of the relevant age-cohorts, as well as the functional form and estimation technique. The results also suggest that the sample of published estimates possibly suffers from two types of publication bias, an under-representation of insignificant effects for small samples, and bias towards supportive effects in the earlier years followed by a bias towards negative effects as the literature matured.All correspondence to: Brigitte Waldorf. The authors appreciate the insightful comments and suggestions from two anonymous reviewers. The research also benefited from discussions with participants of the International Colloquium on Meta-analysis in Economics, Free University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, December 2002. Finally, we would like to thank David Brown, Meagan Cahill, Angela Donelson, Calvin Farris, and Melaney Seacat from the University of Arizona for their research assistance. Responsible editor: Junsen Zhang.     

Private transfers with incomplete information: A contribution to the “altruism-exchange motivation for transfers” debate

We examine the role of altruism in determining optimal transfers from a principal (a mother) to selfish agents (her children) in return for attention services. Transfer-attention contracts are studied in a setting in which informational asymmetries arise from the inability of a parent to determine the extent of her children's selfishness. We find a predominating exchange motive for transfers in the symmetric informational regime we study. However, both altruism and exchange are important motives under asymmetric information. We show that altruism facilitates transfer-attention exchange arrangements with certain trade partners under incomplete information, but diminishes trade with others. Received: 19 November 2000/Accepted: 17 May 2001 The paper was written while Edward Seiler was a fellow at the department of Agricultural Economics and Management at the Hebrew University. The authors wish to thank Elad Aharoni for research assistance, and Judith Rivlin, Yacov Tsur, two anonymous referees and seminar participants at the Hebrew University for helpful comments. Responsible editor: Alessandro Cigno.     

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.     

A Comment on Ali Tas˛ıran's `Wage and income effects on the timing and spacing of births in Sweden and in the United States'

This note reviews and evaluates Taşıran's (1995) claim that estimated female wage effects on Swedish fertility dynamics reported by Heckman and Walker (1990) are not robust to the use of microwage data. The results reported here indicate that once individual wage measures have been purged of measurement error, estimated female wage effects are not sensitive to the introduction of microwages. The results reported by Heckman and Walker (1990) persist even with the use of microwage data. Received: 8 March 1996/Accepted: 4 December 2001 I thank Tom MaCurdy, Eric French and two anonymous referees for useful comments. This research was supported by NICHD grants HD-19226 and HD-28685. The usual disclaimer applies. Responsible editor: Klaus F. Zimmermann.     

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     

Have the relative employment prospects for the low-skilled deteriorated after all?

Has the relative unemployment propensity for the low-skilled increased during the 1990s? We address this question empirically, based on two notions of low skills; i) low education, and ii) low ability, conditioned on education and work experience. Ability is identified by previous earnings. Evaluated by the education-based measure, we find that unemployment propensity has not developed unfavourably for the low-skilled. Evaluated by the ability-based measure, it has. We uncover a steady deterioration of employment prospects for persons with low ability relative to others with similar formal qualifications. The adverse employment effects of being low-skilled are stronger the higher is formal education.All correspondence to Knut Røed. The paper is part of the project Sorting, exposed groups and labour market programs financed by the Research Council of Norway. We wish to thank Rolf Aaberge, Paul Gertler, Harald Goldstein, Karl Ove Moene, Jon Strand, Steinar Strøm, Asbjrn Rødseth and an anonymous referee for helpful comments. Responsible editor: John F. Ermisch.     

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.