David Neumark and Giannina Vaccaro
Several studies find that there is little sex gap in wages at labor market entry, and that the sex gap in wages emerges (and grows) with time in the labor market. This evidence is…
Abstract
Several studies find that there is little sex gap in wages at labor market entry, and that the sex gap in wages emerges (and grows) with time in the labor market. This evidence is consistent with (i) there is little or no sex discrimination in wages at labor market entry, and (ii) the emergence of the sex gap in wages with time in the labor market reflects differences between women and men in human capital investment (and other decisions), with women investing less early in their careers. Indeed, some economists explicitly interpret the evidence this way. We show that this interpretation ignores two fundamental implications of the human capital model, and that differences in investment can complicate the interpretation of both the starting sex gap in wages (or absence of a gap), and the differences in “returns” to experience. We then estimate stylized structural models of human capital investment and wage growth to identify the effects of discrimination (or other sources of a starting pay gap) and differences in human capital investment.
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Joseph G. Hirschberg and Daniel J. Slottje
The Blinder Oaxaca decomposition method for defining wage differentials (generally referred to as discrimination) from the wage equations of two groups has had a wide degree of…
Abstract
The Blinder Oaxaca decomposition method for defining wage differentials (generally referred to as discrimination) from the wage equations of two groups has had a wide degree of application. However, the decomposition measures can very dramatically depending on the definition of the non-discriminatory wage chosen for comparison. This paper uses a form of extreme bounds analysis to define the limits on the measure of discrimination that can be obtained from these decompositions. A simple application is presented to demonstrate the use of the bootstrap to define the distributions of the discrimination measure.
Susan Harkness and Jane Waldfogel
In this paper, we use microdata on employment and earnings from a variety of industrialized countries to investigate the family gap in pay – the differential in hourly wages…
Abstract
In this paper, we use microdata on employment and earnings from a variety of industrialized countries to investigate the family gap in pay – the differential in hourly wages between women with children and women without children. We present results from seven countries: Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Finland, and Sweden. We find that there is a good deal of variation across our sample countries in the effects of children on women’s employment and in the effects of children on women’s hourly wages even after controlling for differences between women with and without children in characteristics such as age and education. We also find that the variation in the family gap in pay across countries is not primarily due to differential selection into employment or to differences in wage structure across countries. We suggest that future research should examine the impact of family policies such as maternity leave and child care on the family gap in pay.
Ruben Bostyn, Laurens Cherchye, Bram De Rock and Frederic Vermeulen
We make use of rich microdata from the Belgian MEqIn survey, which contains detailed information on individual consumption, public consumption inside households, and time use. We…
Abstract
We make use of rich microdata from the Belgian MEqIn survey, which contains detailed information on individual consumption, public consumption inside households, and time use. We explain the observed household behavior by means of a collective model that integrates marriage market restrictions on intrahousehold allocation patterns. We adopt a revealed preference approach that abstains from any functional form assumptions on individual utility functions or intrahousehold decision processes. This allows us to (set) identify the sharing rule, which governs the intrahousehold sharing of time and money, and to quantify economies of scale within households. We use these results to conduct a robust individual welfare and inequality analysis, hereby highlighting the important role of detailed consumption and time use data.
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Michaela M. Bucchianeri and Dianne Neumark-Sztainer
In contrast to the attention it has received in related fields of research, body image has remained understudied within the field of public health. This is highly problematic…
Abstract
Purpose
In contrast to the attention it has received in related fields of research, body image has remained understudied within the field of public health. This is highly problematic, given a growing body of evidence implicating body dissatisfaction in a range of other public health concerns. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
This commentary is based on a review of the public health, body image, eating disorder, and mental health literatures.
Findings
Body dissatisfaction is implicated in a range of public health concerns, including impaired psychological health (e.g. depression) and eating- and weight-related problems (e.g. eating disorders, obesity).
Originality/value
Given these associations, as well as the high levels of body dissatisfaction in the population, the authors argue for a critical need to address the prevalence of body image concerns as a public health issue worthy of greater consideration within programs and policies; dedicated funding for research on antecedents, consequences, and intervention strategies; and allocated resources for training.
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IN high‐speed level flight in the compressibility region an entirely new factor makes its appearance, viz: small variations of atmospheric density and speed of sound with height…
Abstract
IN high‐speed level flight in the compressibility region an entirely new factor makes its appearance, viz: small variations of atmospheric density and speed of sound with height. This factor affects dynamic stability due to continuous changes of height during longitudinal disturbances; there is no effect in lateral disturbances. The affects are very small in low‐speed flight but they increase steadily with Mach number. The short‐period oscillations are not affected but the corrections to phugoid motion become appreciable in high subcritical flight, larger in supercritical (transonic) range, and very important in supersonic flight. The effects of compressibility are of paramount significance but they should be considered in conjunction with varying height effects. Another result of the investigation is the appearance of a new mode of disturbance, due to the stability quartic being converted into a quintic. The fifth (real) root is often small, it may vary in sign according to aerodynamic properties of the aircraft and characteristics of the power unit. The new mode is a subsidence or a divergence, and it determines height stability or instability, hence it may show to what extent an aircraft is able to keep constant altitude over long stretches of time.
Globally, jurisdictions have made several attempts to eliminate and minimize discrimination in employment. These include moral suasion, social justice arguments, business case…
Abstract
Globally, jurisdictions have made several attempts to eliminate and minimize discrimination in employment. These include moral suasion, social justice arguments, business case arguments, and legislative enactments. Whilst the former has had limited success, the passage of legislation has proved instrumental, not only in containing the perpetration of discrimination based on protected grounds but also in increasing awareness of the disadvantages which result from the disparate treatment meted out to persons as a result of their immutable characteristics. Disabilities are one such grounds. Where legislation exists, it typically prohibits disparate treatment in relation to persons with disabilities in the areas of employment, education, and the provision of goods and services. This chapter analyses a sample of discrimination cases, with claimants who have alleged discrimination based on their diagnosis of autism or a related disorder within the autism spectrum. These cases are within the United Kingdom and have been decided by Employment Tribunals in England. The cases and decisions are held at the office of the Employment Tribunal Service in Suffolk and are accessible via their online repository. The sample of Tribunal cases presented here relate to various employment practices within British workplaces.
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The purpose of this paper is to examine the earnings differentials between the locals and the rural–urban migrants in urban labor market in Vietnam.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the earnings differentials between the locals and the rural–urban migrants in urban labor market in Vietnam.
Design/methodology/approach
Using the new Vietnam Rural-Urban Migration Survey 2013 (VRUMS2013) that is specifically designed for rural–urban migration, the author applies Appleton et al.’s (1999) procedure correcting for potential selectivity to decompose the offered earnings gap between the locals and the rural–urban migrants into within- and between-occupation pay differential. Bootstrapping is used to derive the standard errors for the decomposition results. The author further applies the propensity score matching (PSM) method to check whether the results are robust by restricting the sample to the “common support.”
Findings
Within-job difference, particularly, the favorable treatment toward urban workers contributes significantly to the overall and total unexplained earnings gap. Further, between-job pay differential attributed to the over-representation of urban workers in high-paying job also helps to widen the gap. These results are robust restricting to the “common support” sample using PSM.
Research limitations/implications
Due to the sample size, occupations are only classified into three broad categories. Finer classification will allow a better comparison between the contributions of between and within-occupation to earning inequality. The data are only limited to a few cities and do not include other urban centers that also receive rural–urban migrants.
Practical implications
Policies to promote equal pay and alleviate within-job “discrimination,” especially the preferential treatment favoring the locals (rather than to provide equal access to different jobs) are crucial for migrants’ labor outcome. Moreover, this study can, to some extent, be seen as a timely contribution for the debate on household registration reform in general and in Vietnam specifically. Given China’s announcement to grant permanent household registration (hukou) to unregistrated migrants in late 2015, investigating whether there is a two-tier labor market in the cities in Vietnam is particularly important for the ongoing debate regarding future of household registration system (ho khau).
Originality/value
This is the first study in Vietnam on rural–urban migration and occupation segregation – an area that has been relatively less well studied in developing/transitional countries. Vietnam is also one of the few developing countries who have household registration system in place. This has made it an interesting case. The author uses a new survey data to apply the Appleton et al. (1999) decomposition on the offered wage gap rather than observed wage gap. Standard errors of the decomposition results are bootstrapped and a robust check using propensity score method is conducted.
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The purpose of this paper is to assess field experiments of labour and product markets that have attached photos to identify applicants (in the case of labour markets) or…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to assess field experiments of labour and product markets that have attached photos to identify applicants (in the case of labour markets) or sellers/crowd funders (in the case of product markets).
Design/methodology/approach
The experiments seek to identify the contribution of attractiveness, race/ethnicity, skin colour, sexual orientation or religion to the behaviour of agents in markets. These experiments attach photos to CV to signal attractiveness, or the basis of being tested such as race/ethnicity, skin colour or religion.
Findings
Many experiments report significant findings for the impact of attractiveness or the identity revealed on positive callbacks to applicants.
Research limitations/implications
The issue considered here, however, is to what extent it is attractiveness or other perceived characteristics that may have had an impact on the behaviour recorded in the experiments. The results of the studies covered in this paper, to a lesser extent those of Weichselbaumer (2004) and Baert (2017), are compromised by including photos, with the possibility the responses received were influenced not only by the basis being tested such as attractiveness, race/ethnicity or religion but by some other characteristic unintended by the researcher but conveyed by the photo.
Practical implications
There is evidence in the experimental work of a range of characteristics that photos convey of individuals and their impact on labour and product market outcomes such as success in obtaining a positive response to job applications and success in obtaining funding to finance projects in the product market. Suggestions are made for future experiments: evaluation of photos for a range of characteristics; use of a “no photo” application together with the photo applications; and evaluation of responses for any bias from unobservable characteristics using Neumark (2012).
Originality/value
This paper discusses for the first time three questions with some tentative answers. First, the researcher faces introducing further unobservable characteristics by using photos. Second, the researcher cannot fully control the experimental approach when using photos. Third, the researcher is able to accurately evaluate the impact of the photos used on the response/probability of call back. Field experiments using photos need to ensure they do this for the range of factors that have been shown to affect judgments and therefore potentially influence call back response. However, the issue remains whether the researcher has, in fact, identified all potential characteristics conveyed by the photos.