Labor Inequality Research Articles

Entrepreneurship, Wage Inequality and Creative People in Labor Markets

We examine the impact of entrepreneurship and the proliferation of creative people on wage inequality in regional labor markets. Two important trends in metropolitan labor markets over the last few...

Migrant farmworker injury: temporality, statistical representation, eventfulness

This article considers ethnographic field research in order to analyze the violence and exploitation inherent to our transnational agro-food system and the ways in which temporality and statistics may aid in making visible and invisible certain experiences of migrant farmworker injury as well as individual and collective actions for wellbeing. Based in long-term, in-depth ethnographic research, this article utilizes theories of temporality and events in order to highlight social and health inequalities in agricultural labor and encourage agricultural, food and health scholars to consider critically the effects of our methods. Juxtaposing the injury and health care experiences of one Mexican migrant farmworker with statistics on the health and health care of migrant and seasonal farmworkers more generally, the article confronts both the normalization of migrant farmworker injury and the taken-for-granted helpfulness of quantitative and qualitative research alike. In addition, the argument acknowledges the everyday, individual practices and collective actions migrant farmworkers engage into demand and build wellbeing for themselves, their families and beyond.

Crafting the Financial-Subject: A Qualitative Study of Young Workers’ Experiences in Financialised Pension Investment in Hong Kong

AbstractThis article applies the concepts of the financial-subject and micro-foundation of financialisation to young workers’ experiences with Hong Kong’s financialised pension regime. The results of our qualitative analysis show that many respondents doubt and belittle their financial investment for retirement. In response to the compulsory investment required by the government and the fact that their aspirations for security in later life seemed unfulfilled, some young workers undertook ‘uninformed’ investment and ‘age-led’ risk taking. The findings also show that employment precarity translates into investment precarity owing to workers’ unstable incomes and contributions; labour inequalities are reflected in financial inequalities. Arguably, the neoliberal crafting of the young financial-subject, including constructions of financial irresponsibility, irrationality, and illiteracy, is fraught with tensions, turning workers into investors and using finance to satisfy socio-economic needs. It contributes to social policy studies by connecting selfhood and institutions, and calls for questions about the future of financialised pensions.

The High-hanging Fruit of the Gender Revolution: A Model of Social Reproduction and Social Change

This article proposes an abstract sociological model of stable patriarchal social relations and feminist social change. I describe a patriarchal equilibrium of gender inequality and propose an approach for thinking about how various kinds of interventions can short-circuit the system, pushing it onto a new equilibrium path. In particular, I focus on possible interventions into parental leave policy, describing their social structural and cultural ramifications as well as a range of objections to them. However, more important than the specific interventions proposed is the general model itself, which depicts reinforcing structures of patriarchal culture, gender inequality in labor markets, and gender inequality in the home—and moreover, how this model can evolve. It describes a feedback loop that can lock structures of gender inequality in place but also provides a means for considering the spaces available to both blunt the social reproduction of gender inequality and reinforce “genderless” social relations.

Labour Inequalities in Europe: The Case of Serbia

Gender differences present a topic of great interest in contemporary societies. Aim of this paper is to make a comparison between the unemployment in Serbia and the European countries, and to identify those countries which record the most similar performances considering gender and age. The research is conducted through analysis of activity rates, employment rates, unemployment rates, inactivity rates and long-term unemployment rates. The factor analysis enabled us to identify main factors that influence structures of the labour markets in Europe. Final result of this research is the recommendation of policy measures, including the promotion of women entrepreneurship, in order to reduce gender inequalities in contemporary society's economic activity.

The Gendered Division of Household Labor over Parenthood Transitions: A Longitudinal Study in South Korea

Recent research from the gender revolution perspective suggests that men’s increasing involvement in the family domain accounts for the positive association between fertility and female labor force participation in developed Western countries. However, little relevant evidence exists on their Asian counterparts, where lowest-low fertility, low levels of women’s employment, and traditional family values prevail. Using the 2007, 2008, and 2010 waves of the Korean Longitudinal Survey of Women and Families (N = 10,263 couple-waves), we examine how parenthood transitions affect wives’ and husbands’ provisions of household labor and how their employment status moderates this relationship. Focusing on comparisons between first and additional children, we estimate couple fixed-effects regressions. The dependent variables are the time that each spouse spends on household labor and the husband’s share of the couple’s total time spent on this labor. The key independent variables are the number of children and the number interacted with each spouse’s employment status. The results show that household labor was gendered even prior to the birth of the first child. Inequality in household labor increased significantly further with first children, but not with additional children. This increase persisted regardless of women’s employment status, thereby implying that first children might exacerbate the double burden on employed women. Policy lessons are drawn regarding how to raise fertility and female labor force participation in Korea and other countries where women have difficulty reconciling work and family life.

Diverging by Gender: Syrian Refugees’ Divisions of Labor and Formation of Human Capital in the United States

In this article, I examine how Syrian refugee men and women shifted their household divisions of labor in their initial years of resettlement in the United States. I combine and extend relational approaches from gender theory and economic sociology to examine how men’s and women’s behaviors shifted, the resources engendered by behavioral shifts, and how they interpreted and compensated for new behaviors and resources. I show that shifts in Syrian household divisions of labor occurred at the intersection of inequalities in social policies, labor markets, and households. As a result of limited social assistance, the refugee families needed to earn an income within months of their arrival. The Syrian men entered the labor market, in keeping with a breadwinning expectation for their labor, but could only access menial jobs that limited their time and opportunity to learn English. Women, meanwhile, did not enter the labor market full-time and could attend English classes. By observing this divergence in men’s and women’s language learning, I theorize human capital as a gendered outcome of household divisions of labor.

Is Inequality Really Declining in Malaysia?

ABSTRACTOfficial statistics report rapidly declining household income inequality in Malaysia during the 2000s. However, this phenomenon has passed unnoticed and unexplained, while public discourse widely asserts that inequality has either risen or remained high. In particular, salaries and wealth are perceived to be increasingly concentrated at the top. Difficulties in accessing national income survey data necessitate exploration of other data sources, which permit this article to investigate trends in personal earnings and wealth inequality. Recent information on retirement savings, as well as public sector employment and car sales, indicate earnings rising moderately or holding steady, marked by higher growth in the uppermost segments. On wealth ownership, housing sales record high growth at the top and lagging growth in the bottom half; while unit trust fund ownership suggests similar trends, particularly within the majority Bumiputera population. Our findings, while exhibiting gaps, shed some light on the state of inequality and broadly concur with public perceptions of rising or persistently high inequality. This study also underscores the multi-dimensionality of inequality and the importance of researching structural inequalities in labour and asset markets.

Interprovincial differences in labour force distribution and utilization based on educational attainment in Indonesia, 2002–2015

AbstractIntroducing an employment variable with five levels of educational attainment per capita and employing inequality decomposition, this study addresses three questions. How does labour force vary by education and provinces? How does labour force utilization vary by education and provinces? What are the potential causes of differences? We find that the no‐primary‐education group is more endowed in less‐developed provinces and allocated most unequally among education groups across provinces, despite past universal primary education policies. The senior‐secondary‐education group with the largest labour share is a growing concern due to the lower employment rate and largest interprovincial inequality.

Gender aspects in action- and outcome-based payments for ecosystem services—A tree planting field trial in Kenya

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) schemes have been increasingly implemented in developing countries where gender-related inequalities are generally prevalent. A randomized field trial in Kenya revealed the impacts of participants’ gender in conservation auctions and in environmental performance of action- and outcome-based PES schemes and provided evidence for associations between the gender effects and traditional gender roles. First, we identified differences between men and women in the utilities of the contract and relative risk aversion as potential drivers of the decrease in bids by women compared to men in the auction for action-based contracts. Second, we observed a gender-specific difference in perceptions of risk in the outcome-based approach when women increased their bids. Third, women achieved lower tree survival than men, despite women providing more effort. In this context, we identified the inequality in reciprocal labor for male and female contract holders as a possible source of the gendered tree survival. This case study showed that targeting women improves gender equity in terms of access to project decision-making, trainings and cash, and can significantly improve the effectiveness of the PES scheme.

Gênero, trabalho e cidadania: função igual, tratamento salarial desigual

Resumo: Este estudo aborda a questão da (des)igualdade de gênero no trabalho, mais especificamente acerca da disparidade salarial entre homens e mulheres, à luz da igualdade e da premissa internacionalmente concertadas de trabalho igual, salário igual, objetivando problematizar como se apresenta contemporaneamente a demanda por paridade salarial como direito e como exercício de cidadania. Nesse compasso, ao analisar o ordenamento que veda discriminar (in)diretamente a mulher quando esta executa igual função ocupada por um homem e sublinhar a existência de uma aguda desigualdade sociolaboral, pretende-se refletir também sobre a persistência de uma ainda insuficiente compensação jurídica, proporcionada pela discriminação positiva. Constata-se que, apesar dos avanços verificados com uma maior inserção da mulher no mercado de trabalho, as determinações socioeconômicas, políticas e culturais que incidem sobre as relações de gênero dificultam a aplicabilidade dos instrumentos jurídicos disponíveis, entrelaçando essa questão com outras desigualdades próprias do modelo societário capitalista; porquanto permanece a igualdade salarial como uma demanda urgente e desafiadora da cidadania política, sobretudo em tempos de desmonte dos direitos sociais.

Reconstructing “Job Relations” for tackling Labor Inequalities: Towards a comprehensive stabilization of labor markets by activating multilateral bargaining

Reconstructing “Job Relations” for tackling Labor Inequalities: Towards a comprehensive stabilization of labor markets by activating multilateral bargaining

Predictors of parental leave support: Bad news for (big) dads and a policy for equality

Parenthood increases gender inequality in paid (employment) and unpaid labor (e.g., caretaking). New parental leave plans aim to increase gender equality by reducing managerial discretion and offering gender-neutral benefits. However, coworkers may undermine these inclusive aims, particularly if they show variable support per employee characteristics. Thus, we examine why and how employee gender and obesity interactively predict coworkers’ support for parental leave and test an intervention to increase equality. Three between-subjects experiments with working American adults ( Ns = 133–252) indicate that obesity decreases coworkers’ parental leave support for men, but increases coworkers’ parental leave support for women; these effects are replicated and mediated by coworkers’ caregiving ability expectations of the employees, inequalities that are reduced when parental leave is made the default. Discussion focuses on our results’ implications for theory, practice, and for men and women’s paid and unpaid labor, including recommendations for parental leave policy design and delivery to increase equality.

Informalidad y precariedad laboral entre las empleadas del servicio doméstico en Santiago del Estero

The objective of this paper is to analyze the informal employment situation and the precariousness of female domestic workers in Santiago del Estero, Argentina. This is one of the most feminized activities in the Santiago labor market and the main one among female occupations in the Santiago del Estero-La Banda conglomerate.In that place about 25% of the women who work in the area focuses in this activity being one of the most informal in terms of regulation, registration to social security as well as income and permanence. The theoretical-methodological approach used gives us a variety of perspectives that we consider necessary for the treatment of the problem. That’s why we turn to theoretical visions that deal with studies of the subject under study, as well as those operational concepts on informality and job insecurity. Through a study composed of quantitative and qualitative approaches we propose to analyze socio-demographic, socio-occupational dimensions and the experiences and perceptions of the employees themselves from their testimonies. For this purpose, the data was obtained from the Permanent Household Survey of INDEC, as well as those obtained from interviews with employees and employers of the activity. This way of approaching the object led us to first characterize the labor market in Santiago del Estero from the point of view of the gender’s differences, then a specific characterization on the situation of the domestic service and its workers. Finally, an approximation to the ways in which these labor inequalities are maintained in terms of informality and job insecurity.

Women’s Fertility Autonomy in Urban China: The Role of Couple Dynamics Under the Universal Two-Child Policy

Under China’s universal two-child policy, decisions about whether to have a second birth become more dynamic, flexible, and subject to negotiation between the spouses; moreover, how women can maintain their fertility autonomy has far-reaching implications for gender equality. Using valuable, new data from the 2016 Survey of the Fertility Decision-Making Processes in Chinese Families, we examine the relationship between couple dynamics and women’s fertility autonomy in urban China. If women want no more than one child and already have one, intending to have a second birth indicates low fertility autonomy. Couple dynamics are measured by conjugal power structure and spousal pressure on fertility. We find that only if women have less marital power than their husbands, greater fertility pressure from husbands is associated with a higher likelihood that women intend to have a second birth. In addition, when investigating the determinants of couple dynamics, we find that women’s marital power depends on their relative resources, whereas fertility pressure from husbands persists regardless. The findings suggest that in post-reform urban China, growing gender inequalities in labor markets likely reduce women’s marital power, which in turn negatively affects their fertility autonomy. We urge greater research and policy attention to gender equality issues in the era of the universal two-child policy.

The Gendered Division of Household Labor Over Parenthood Transitions: A Longitudinal Study in South Korea

BACKGROUND Korea’s traditional family values and low rates of fertility and female labor force participation make it an interesting case for examining the dynamics between parenthood transitions, household labor, and paid work. OBJECTIVES Focusing on comparisons between first and additional children, we examine how parenthood transitions affect wives’ and husbands’ respective provisions of household labor and the division of the labor within the couple, as well as how their employment status moderates these relationships. METHODS Using the 2007, 2008, and 2010 waves of the Korean Longitudinal Survey of Women and Families (N = 10,263 couple-waves), we estimate fixed-effects regressions. The dependent variables are the time each spouse spends on household labor and the husband’s share of the couple’s total time spent on the labor. The key independent variables are the number of children and the number interacted with each spouse’s employment status. RESULTS Household labor was gendered prior to the first birth. The child made both spouses provide more household labor; however, the increase was significantly larger for women. Women’s employment buffered the increase to a limited extent. First and additional children had comparable impacts on all outcomes. CONTRIBUTION In Korea’s gendered context, gender inequality in household labor increased further with first children, but not with additional children. The patterns persisted regardless of women’s employment status, implying that first children might increase the double burden on employed women. Policy lessons are drawn to raise fertility and female labor force participation in Korea and other East Asian countries.

Policy Implications to Improve the Business Environment to Encourage Female Entrepreneurship in the North of Vietnam

Policy Implications to Improve the Business Environment to Encourage Female Entrepreneurship in the North of Vietnam

Household registration, urban status attainment, and social stratification in China

Previous studies on the household registration system (hukou) have focused either on the selective process of hukou conversion to urban status and its impact on social stratification or on the socioeconomic disadvantages and the assimilation of rural migrant workers in cities. Pooling the data from two national probability surveys in China (CGSS 2003 and 2008), we investigate socioeconomic inequality in urban labor markets and the role played by successful and unsuccessful conversion to urban hukou status for those of rural origins. Specifically, we compare the earnings of three subgroups: those who acquired urban status through their own efforts, those who gained their urban hukou via the incorporation of their villages into cities, and rural migrants who have not obtained an urban hukou. Linear regression results show that the commonly observed earnings premium associated with urban hukou status is limited only to a subgroup of rural-origin people who obtained their urban hukou through a highly selective process. Propensity-score matching analyses further reveal that the effect of urban hukou status on earnings is positively associated with the propensity of hukou conversion to urban status, and that the urban hukou only pays off among people with better education and higher-status occupations within the state sector. These findings shed new light on the relationship between mobility processes and stratification outcomes, and bear important policy implications for the ongoing reform of the hukou system in the process of China’s urbanization.

Cultural Capital: Arts Graduates, Spatial Inequality, and London’s Impact on Cultural Labor Markets

This article looks at the degree to which spatial inequalities reinforce other forms of social inequality in cultural labor markets. It does so using the example of London, an acknowledged hub for the creative and cultural industries. Using pooled data from 2013 to 2015 quarters of the United Kingdom’s. Labour Force Survey, we consider the social makeup of London’s cultural labor force, and reveal the extent to which, rather than acting as an “engine room” of social mobility, London’s dominance in fact reenforces social class disparities in cultural employment.

Righting the balance

Two major threats face the world: environmental degradation and the growing gap between rich and poor. Historical and contemporary evidence indicates that they are symptomatic of a growing structural imbalance in all economies – how nature is exploited to create wealth and how it is shared among the population. The root of this imbalance is that natural capital is under-priced, and hence overly exploited, whereas human capital is insufficient to meet demand, thus encouraging relatively higher wages for skilled labour and wealth inequality.