Relative Wages Research Articles

Rethinking Specialisation and the Sexual Division of Labour in the 21st Century

This paper aims to shed new light on explanations for the sexual division of labour, within a broader examination of within-household specialisation. We propose a set of indices which we believe are the first direct within-couple measures of specialisation. We use these to present a rich descriptive profile of specialisation. Absolute advantage in market work has only a small role in behaviour for heterosexual couples, and no role at all for same-sex couples. In contrast, sex-based specialisation is much greater. We consider whether the patterns in the data are consistent with a formal Beckerian model of comparative advantage. A woman would need to be 109 times more productive in market work than her male partner before reaching expected parity in domestic work, and this is likely biased downwards due to endogeneity of relative wages related to earlier time use decisions.

Do you have time to take a walk together? Private and joint time within the household

We develop a theoretical model for the intra-household allocation of time and consumption. The model distinguishes between the partners' joint and private leisure time. We estimate the parameters of our model on a Danish time use survey with information on time allocation and expenditures. The empirical estimation leads to four main conclusions. First, we find that assignable expenditures vary with female and male wage rates, consistent with the collective model, and we can assign this variation to the Pareto weight being sensitive to relative wages. Second, we find that men put more weight on both their own private expenditure and composite leisure than women. Third, we find that joint leisure and individual leisure are not perfect substitutes for partners. Fourth, we observe that both joint and private leisure are independent of the wage distribution. Thus, togetherness is not a substitute for economic factors. Fifth, we find that when the female wage goes up, all else equal, her child care hours increase, while her husband's child care hours decrease.

Wage Differentials, Bargaining Protocols, and Trade Unionism in Mid-Twentieth Century American Labor Markets

Income inequality has been lower in periods when trade unionism has been strong. Using observations on wages by occupation, by geography, and by gender in collective bargaining contracts from the 1940s to the 1970s, patterns in movements of wage differentials are revealed. As wages increased, some contracts maintained relative wage differentials constant, some maintained absolute differences in wages constant, others combined these two patterns, and some did not reveal an obvious pattern. The patterns persisted even as price inflation increased in the 1970s. The dominant pattern implies a reduction in inequality as usually measured.

The Role of the Gender Wage Gap in Overall Wage Inequality: A Quantitative Exercise

This article presents a novel wage inequality decomposition to analyze the impact of the gender wage gap on overall wage inequality. The decomposition determines the maximum relative wage between genders allowed before it begins to increase total inequality. In addition, I present a structural model of the labor market to evaluate the impact of establishing restrictions on intra-occupational gender pay gaps within each firm. Specifically, I introduce a restriction in which the average wage of one gender cannot exceed I± times the average wage of the other gender. For I± = 2, the model predicts a 10 percent wage inequality reduction. However, with a tighter restriction of I± = 1, the inequality reduction dissipates and reverses into a wage inequality increase.

WHAT HAS CHANGED A new farewell to the working class?

ABSTRACTS This paper aims to discuss the thesis supported by several scholars and institutions according to which capitalist societies have been through a sharp shift in the nature of work relations. It assumes that social and economic changes in work management and new technologies would have dissolved traditional forms of employment, and the consequence would be a decline in wage labor. This new ‘farewell to the working class’ contributes to the idea that it is impossible to protect workers via public regulation. Based on empirical research using several case studies and data, especially from labor markets in Brazil and the United Kingdom, we argue that the “new” forms of work are predominantly wage labor, despite companies’ efforts to disguise the content of employment relations. We do not deny the emergence of changes in labor management by companies. However, we point out that this includes strategies of dissimulation of the wage relationship to reduce chances of limiting labor exploitation.

Labor Market Analysis of the U.S.A and Eurozone; Similarities, Differences, and Reasons behind Them

The significant amount of well-organized and deeply-researched scholarly articles standing to the macroeconomic theories comes to define the labor market, which is also known as “job market”, a place where the supply side of the model comes from employees seeking for the best job while the demand side represents the employers who are mainly interested in skill-match and productivity of whom they hire for their industry. In the labor market, the equilibrium wage rate is determined at the intersection point of Wage-setting and Price-setting relation which pinpoints the relative wage on the vertical axis and the natural rate of unemployment on the horizontal axis in R^2. In order to comprehensively picture the labor market and its preliminary indicators that can be considered as the unemployment rate, and labor force participation rate, the macroeconomic perspective must be introduced in such a way that the role of investors, policymakers, and participants of the model is imaginable. In view of that, this small-scoped research conducted considers trade reforms, labor market outcomes, foreign competition, and labor market adjustment as well as the effect of the economic and financial crisis to scrutinize the current labor market conditions, similarities, and differences in the U.S.A and Eurozone respectively.

Men at work. Wages and industriousness in southern Sweden 1500–1850

ABSTRACTIn his classic works on the industrious revolution, Jan de Vries argues that demand for new consumer goods trigged eighteenth century Europeans to work more. This implies that industrious behaviour and new consumption patterns were two parallel and interdependent processes that preceded the industrial revolution. However, there is an alternative explanation for any increase in labour output on household level, namely that the labourers were forced to work more to meet ends. An indication of this could be that day labourers’ relative wages decreased over time. In this article, we investigate this by studying wages from annual and casual labour in southern Sweden and compare their levels with consumption baskets.

Quantifying The Incidence Of A Global Oil Price Shock In Nigeria: A Roy Model With Non-Homothetic Preferences And Endogenous Transfers

In this paper, I explore the distributional effects of a negative terms-of-trade shock to an oil-exporting country. Specifically, I begin by developing a computable Roy model of the Nigerian economy with non-homothetic preferences, after-tax income effects, and government endogenous transfers through oil subsidies. I then use this model to simulate the impact of the global oil price shock that hits the Nigerian economy in 2016. In doing so, I focus on differential impacts across workers due to their different skills, locations, and comparative advantages. I find that the oil shock led to a reverse Dutch disease characterized by increases of real output, relative wage and labor in the manufacturing and agricultural sectors. Further, the combination of the shock and subsidies removal affected poor and rich income groups differently, in accordance with their labor specialization patterns across sectors and differences in the consumption bundles they consumed. More precisely, I show that the shock causes aggregate welfare losses that are concentrated in high-income groups, as they tend to specialize in the crude oil and service sectors, the most hit by the shock. Next, using a series of government budget-balancing tax policy counterfactuals, I first show that the removal of the subsidies was the best response to the shock regarding the welfare outcomes of low-income workers. Second, I show that while removing the subsidies, the government can use fiscally neutral progressive tax redistribution schemes to lessen the extent of the welfare losses, particularly on the poor populations. Finally, I show that not accounting for heterogeneity in the expenditure behavior would introduce biases in the magnitude of the welfare changes.

Public opinion on Reasons for Emigration

This paper centers around a conceivable impact of displacement on human capital development. Emigration on a higher comes back to expertise nation gives an impetus to put resources into human capital. The level of human capital arrangement in the source nation can accordingly be emphatically corresponded with the likelihood of displacement. Unexpectedly a flood in emigration can lead the source nation out of being worked on snare. The ramifications of the model for the combination debate are likewise discussed.Preferred resettlement goals among young people reflect pictures and generalizations of different nations that persistently develop in a huge number of neighborhood and worldwide talks and from solid encounters with other countries.The results bolster the model firmly in many regards. Both wage rates and business rates in the sending and in the accepting nations affected vacillations in migration. The short-run changes were driven to a great extent by varieties in work rates while the long-run level of migration was resolved generally by the relative wage. Convenient sampling method is used in this study to collect the sample.1860 samples are recorded .The independent variables used are gender,educational qualifications,monthly income. The dependent variables prefer setting in abroad ,preference of aboard, reason for emigration.The statistics used are independent sample t,chi-square,Anova.The objective is to understand the reasons for emigration It is concluded that emigration is most major things in the world.The emigration is mainly due to higher income and good governance country

Public opinion on Reasons for Emigration

This paper centers around a conceivable impact of displacement on human capital development. Emigration on a higher comes back to expertise nation gives an impetus to put resources into human capital. The level of human capital arrangement in the source nation can accordingly be emphatically corresponded with the likelihood of displacement. Unexpectedly a flood in emigration can lead the source nation out of being worked on snare. The ramifications of the model for the combination debate are likewise discussed.Preferred resettlement goals among young people reflect pictures and generalizations of different nations that persistently develop in a huge number of neighborhood and worldwide talks and from solid encounters with other countries.The results bolster the model firmly in many regards. Both wage rates and business rates in the sending and in the accepting nations affected vacillations in migration. The short-run changes were driven to a great extent by varieties in work rates while the long-run level of migration was resolved generally by the relative wage. Convenient sampling method is used in this study to collect the sample.1860 samples are recorded .The independent variables used are gender,educational qualifications,monthly income. The dependent variables prefer setting in abroad ,preference of aboard, reason for emigration.The statistics used are independent sample t,chi-square,Anova.The objective is to understand the reasons for emigration It is concluded that emigration is most major things in the world.The emigration is mainly due to higher income and good governance country

Intra-household inequality, fairness and productivity. Evidence from a real effort experiment

Abstract This paper investigates experimentally how changes in wage rates and entitlements affect individual productivity in lab-in-the-field experiments run with married couples from rural regions in Uganda. We design a game in which the production task itself is straightforward, but where the rules governing payment vary across subjects and between rounds. In some cases, all the value of output goes to the husband; in other cases all goes to the wife; in other cases the value of output is shared equally and finally in some cases each spouse receives income according to only their own output. To consider the effects of wage inequality we vary the price paid for each completed item so that the ratio of male to female wages varies from 0.5 to 2. All this is done transparently so that both partners know the rules of the game. The results generally indicate that a rise in relative wages lowers relative effort, a result that is contrary to the most straightforward interpretation of standard models of the household, but compatible with some models of fairness. Men do not generally respond strongly to treatment. In contrast, women’s labor supply is strongly backward bending when all income goes to the husband, but effort rises with wages when each spouse gets to keep their own earnings. The results therefore suggest that the effects of reforming or removing one inequality may depend critically on the existence of other inequalities.

Do Women Face a Glass Ceiling at Home? The Division of Household Work among Dual-Earner Couples

In this paper we ask how the division of household labor varies across heterosexual dual-earner couples with different relative wages with a focus on differences between Southern and Western Europe. Using the EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions we first show that high income married or cohabiting women do twice as much housework as single women in Southern Europe. Further, their time spent in household production relative to their spouses' time in Southern Europe is the same regardless of their relative wages, while in Western Europe we find positive elasticity of substitution in household production with respect to relative wages. We thus present positive evidence for the presence of a “second-shift” that women face in Southern Europe, which may stem from regional gender norms. Our findings hold after instrumenting for relative wages using the relative wages of similar socio-economic groups in other countries.

ONE-TWO PUNCH OF HIGH WAGES AND EMPOWERING PRACTICES FOR MAINTAINING CARE NETWORKS IN NURSING HOMES

Stabilizing certified nursing assistant (CNA) employment is necessary for maintaining care networks and providing high quality of care for nursing home (NH) residents. This study’s objective was to examine the relationship of high wages and empowerment practices on CNA retention. We used the 2015 Ohio Biennial Survey to construct a facility-level dataset of 547 NHs and estimated multivariable linear regressions. NHs that provided both high wages and high empowerment were associated with a 12.95 percentage-point improvement in the CNA retention rate (SE = 4.53, t-value = 2.86, p = 0.0045). High wages and a high empowerment score did not have significant effects individually (p > .05). Retention rates were similar between NHs that lacked high wages and scored low on the empowerment scale, and NHs that provided one at a high level but not the other. Implications for better retaining CNAs require multiple empowerment practices combined with high hourly wages.

Redesigning Housing Policy

Executive SummaryDiscussion of the UK's housing crisis is of long date, and tends to focus on a simple story about a mismatch in housing supply and demand and the consequent need to build more homes. Yet the reality is more complex with multiple sub-plots including social housing, stress in the private rented sector, benefits, subsidies and ultimately taxation of home ownership.At the bottom of the market, the crisis is real and acute, as manifested in a sharp increase in homelessness and rough sleeping. The inescapable answer is to increase the depleted stock of social housing and widen eligibility criteria. An increase of 100,000 social units a year in England would help address this problem, as well as alleviate the financial squeeze on tenants of the private rented sector, whose number has grown sharply in the past 15 years in tandem with a steep rise in the housing benefit bill. Recent efforts to curb housing benefit have further increased distress, so it will be necessary to consider increasing benefits again alongside regulatory interventions with private landlords.In the home ownership market, recent government intervention has taken the form of the much-criticised Help-to-Buy Equity Loan scheme. This market policy to support new-build homes should be wound down and replaced by a scheme to endow all young people with a capital sum that they could use for second-hand homes as well. More generally, a more sophisticated approach to planning home-building is needed, both for assessing overall numbers and their regional distribution and in financing the supporting infrastructure.But none of these measures is a panacea for a housing crisis that is in large part a symptom of problems in the wider economy, such as low relative wages for young people, a lack of clarity about environmental issues, and failing places. A successful policy package to address the distorted structure of the housing market must also grasp the most difficult nettle of all – namely the way the tax benefits of owner-occupation incentivise overconsumption of housing and a widening wealth gap between renters and home owners, and between owners in different parts of the country. If we spend more to help those who struggle to afford decent housing, then it is only just to raise more taxation from those who benefit from restrictions on housing supply – whether through reform to council tax, a wider wealth tax or a limited form of Capital Gains Tax on principal residences.

Price rigidities and the relative PPP

We measure the proportion of real exchange rate movements accounted for by cross-country movements in relative reset prices (prices that changed since the previous period) using CPI microdata for five countries. Relative reset prices account for almost all of the real exchange rate movements. This is a challenge for most workhorse sticky price models used to generate volatile and persistent real exchange rates, in which relative reset prices are sluggish. Models where movements in relative wages are persistent and track the nominal exchange rate do replicate both the empirical properties of the real exchange rate and of relative reset prices.

Mudança estrutural, preços relativos e distribuição funcional da renda: o caso brasileiro (1995-2009)*

Resumo Este trabalho analisa o papel das transformações da estrutura produtiva sobre a evolução da parcela do trabalho na renda agregada no Brasil no período 1995-2009. Foi realizada uma decomposição estrutural do crescimento da parcela do trabalho, isolando o efeito das alterações na composição setorial da renda real dos efeitos relacionados aos ajustes dos preços relativos e à trajetória do salário médio real em relação à produtividade. As mudanças na composição setorial da renda tiveram um papel relevante para a evolução da participação das rendas do trabalho. Entretanto, essas mudanças se deram principalmente pelas alterações na estrutura de preços relativos mais do que por mudanças na composição real da renda. Por fim, observou-se que estes resultados podem ser associados às mudanças institucionais ocorridas no período, em especial às privatizações na década de 1990 e à política de valorização do salário mínimo real nos anos 2000.

A RETURN OF CLASS STRUGGLE WITHOUT CLASS? MORAL ECONOMY AND POPULAR RESISTANCE IN BRASIL, SOUTH AFRICA AND PORTUGAL

Abstract Since the emergence of the crisis of capitalist globalization in 2008, the deconstruction of the Fordist wage relationship and the rising unemployment in various countries have stimulated the growth of labour informality, distancing workers from labour protection, intensifying turnover and stimulating intermittent employment. Collective bargaining has become increasingly rare and decentralized, and jobs increasingly precarious and individualized, undermining the protective capacity of the ‘moral economy of the poor’ and transforming direct action - that is, popular action without the mediation of unions and traditional political parties - into perhaps the only credible alternative for ‘precarious workers’ to express their demands in a world marked by the commodification of labour, basic services and housing. A return to the era of the ‘class struggle without class’? This is the conjecture that this article sets out to evaluate, comparing the class experience of poor and precarious workers in three countries from the so-called Global South: Portugal, South Africa and Brasil.

Acted upon and acted through: Unions, consent and contestation vis-a-vis High Performance Work Systems in the automobile industry

Comparing Canadian, German and Swedish automotive unions, this article examines why since the 1990s unions have increasingly accepted High Performance Work Systems (HPWS). ‘External’ factors such as globalization, outsourcing and state neoliberal policies are important, but drawing upon Gramsci and Burawoy, the article adopts an ‘internal’ perspective emphasizing (a) how the mystification of the wage relation is a basis for capital’s workplace hegemony and (b) the role of union agency via ‘defend and restore’ and ‘modernize and adapt’ strategies. The article argues that by incorporating union resistance, HPWS has acted through unions as much as it has acted upon them.

Implementing Equal Pay Policy: Clash Between Gender Equality and Corporatism

Abstract More often than not gender equality policies are good on paper but fall foul of politicized implementation processes. The reasons behind this are becoming a key area of investigation for feminist scholarship on the implementation of gender policies. This article analyzes the barriers to implementing gender equality policies in a corporatist regime. Focusing on the 2007 nurses’ industrial action in Finland, the article considers the case of “Nancy the Nurse,” which aimed at negotiating higher wages for nurses. Our findings suggest that the corporatist regime effectively prevented the implementation of gender equality policy, thus upholding the status quo and maintaining current wage relativities.

Robot Arithmetic: New Technology and Wages

Existing economic models show how new technology can cause large changes in relative wages and inequality. But there are also claims, based largely on verbal expositions, that new technology can harm workers on average or even all workers. This paper shows— under plausible assumptions—that new technology is unlikely to cause wages for all workers to fall and will cause average wages to rise if the prices of investment goods fall relative to consumer goods (a condition supported by the data). We outline how results may change with different assumptions. (JEL D31, G31, J22, J24, J31, O31, O33)