welfare benefits and unemployment in affluent democracies the moderating role of the institutional insider outsider divide the effect of generous welfare benefits on unemployment is highly contested the dominant perspective contends that benefits provide disincentive to work whereas others portray benefits as job sea

assessing the effects of wives earnings on family income inequality we argue that the effect of wives earnings can be assessed meaningfully only by comparing the observed distribution of income with a reference distribution the components of the standard decomposition of the gini coefficient have no implicit reference distribution and therefore should not be interpreted as a measure of the effect of an income source on inequality we suggest several intuitive counterfactual reference distributions and illustrate their use with 1979 and 1989 u s data we conclude that wives earnings reduced inequality in that the income distribution would have been less equal in their absence alternative measures of the impact have mixed results

rent seeking and the transformation of employment relationships the effect of corporate restructuring on wage patterns determinants and inequality a key debate in research on corporate restructuring is whether this widespread and extensive transformation process made contemporary employment relationships more open with firms relying largely o

skill biased technological change and rising wage inequality some problems and puzzles the recent rise in wage inequality is usually attributed to skill biased technical change sbtc associated with new computer technologies we review the evidence for this hypothesis focusing on the implications of sbtc for overall wage inequality and for changes in wage differentials between groups a key problem for the sbtc hypothesis is that wage inequality stabilized in the 1990s despite continuing advances in computer technology sbtc also fails to explain the evolution of other dimensions of wage inequality including the gender and racial wage gaps and the age gradient in the return to education

a life course trajectory framework for understanding the intracohort pattern of wage inequality much research has been devoted to cross sectional and intercohort patterns of wage inequality but relatively little is known about the mechanisms for the intracohort pattern of wage inequality to fill this intellectual gap this article establishes a life course trajectory lct framework for understanding the intracohort pattern of wage inequality first the author proposes and conceptualizes three essential properties of the lct framework random variability trajectory heterogeneity and cumulative advantage that are used to establish a mathematical formalization of the lct framework both the conceptualization and the formalization imply that intracohort wage inequality will increase over the life course due to random variability trajectory heterogeneity and cumulative advantage finally the author combines the lct framework with the multilevel growth curve model then applies the model to data from the nlsy79 and finds support for the significance of random variability trajectory heterogenei

intra household allocation of parental leave we introduce childcare sharing in a collective model of household behavior to investigate which factors make spouses increase or decrease their share of parental leave the concern about future consumption motivates parents to invest in their human capital and to limit their leave duration using relative income and the age difference between spouses as distribution factors we cannot reject pareto efficiency in childcare sharing higher relative incomes and larger age differences shift the conditional leave allocation towards the relatively poorer and younger partner respectively households with higher total income purchase more professional childcare

educational assortative mating and earnings inequality in the united states1 this article investigates how changes in educational assortative mating affected the growth in earnings inequality among households in the united states between the late 1970s and early 2000s the authors find that these changes had a small negative effect on inequality there would have been more inequality in earnings in the early 2000s if educational assortative mating patterns had remained as they were in the 1970s given the educational distribution of men and women in the united states educational assortative mating can have only a weak impact on inequality and educational sorting among partners is a poor proxy for sorting on earnings

recent trends in the uk income distribution what happened and why the uk income distribution changed its shape dramatically during the 1980s this paper documents the trends and analyses their causes copyright 1996 by oxford university press

levels and trends in u s income and its distribution a crosswalk from market income towards a comprehensive haig simons income approach recent research on u s levels and trends in income inequality varies substantially based on how these studies measure income we crosswalk move between standards from a market income of tax units to a more comprehensive measure of income including realized capital gains of households using a unified data set and replicate common findings in the literature by using a comprehensive income definition in the spirit of haig simons considering yearly accrued capital gains rather than focusing on the delayed reporting of capital gains that appear in internal revenue service tax return data the observed growth in income inequality and top income shares since 1989 is dramatically reduced

welfare benefits and female headship in u s time series whether welfare benefits affect marriage and fertility decisions of the low income population has been the subject of much research the substantial bias in the u s welfare system toward female headed families relative to either married couples or single childless individuals provides a clear financial incentive for early nonmarital childbearing postponement of marriage divorce postponement of remarriage and other behaviors that make eligibility for welfare benefits more likely or that avoid the loss of eligibility after it has been achieved the findings in the cross sectional research literature through 1995 summarized in moffitt 1998 exhibit a clear central tendency pointing toward an effect of welfare on some aspects of family structure namely marriage and fertility however there is also agreement that the time series evidence is inconsistent with that from crosssectional data for real benefits have been falling for over 20 years while female headship has been rising moreover bringing other programs such as food stamps and medicaid into the picture helps explain rising female headship increases in the late 1960 s and early 1970 s when those programs were introduced and solidified but does less well in explaining the

economics of co firing coal and biomass an application to western canada abstract co firing biomass and coal in retrofitted power plants is an efficient means to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the energy sector under ipcc reporting rules the impacts of energy produced from biomass would not be reported in the energy sector thereby effectively lowering the emission intensity of a power plant in this study a carbon tax is compared to a feed in tariff for incentivizing conversion of coal plants to co fire with biomass in the application a model of the alberta electrical grid with an intertie to british columbia is linked to a fiber transportation model for these provinces results indicate that there is an upper threshold on a carbon tax after which retrofitting of coal plants is less efficient than increasing natural gas generating capacity this is not the case with a feed in tariff as it specifically targets biomass energy although the optimal generating mix achieved with a carbon tax leads to lower aggregate emissions than the mix achieved using a feed in tariff it will result in higher average generating costs results indicate that it is optimal for alberta to retrofit approximately 500 mw of current coal capacity 8 6 to co fire with biomass although alberta wood pellet production acts as a constraint on further conversions

educational assortative mating and household income inequality we use data from denmark germany norway the united kingdom and the united states to document the degree of educational assortative mating how it evolves over time and the extent to which it d

the care economy gender economic restructuring and job polarization in the u s labor market the u s job structure became increasingly polarized at the turn of the twenty first century as high and low wage jobs grew strongly and many middle wage jobs declined prior research on the sourc

social class and income inequality in the united states ownership authority and personal income distribution from 1980 to 2010 this study outlines a theory of social class based on workplace ownership and authority relations and it investigates the link between social class and growth in personal income inequality since the 1980s inequality trends are governed by changes in between class income differences changes in the relative size of different classes and changes in within class income dispersion data from the general social survey are used to investigate each of these changes in turn and to evaluate their impact on growth in inequality at the population level results indicate that between class income differences grew by about 60 since the 1980s and that the relative size of different classes remained fairly stable a formal decomposition analysis indicates that changes in the relative size of different social classes had a small dampening effect and that growth in between class income differences had a large inflationary effect on trends in personal income inequality

earnings inequality and the changing association between spouses earnings increases in the association between spouses earnings have the potential to increase inequality as marriages increasingly consist of two high earning or two low earning partners this article uses log linear models and data from the march current population survey to describe trends in the association between spouses earnings and estimate their contribution to growing earnings inequality among married couples from 1967 to 2005 the results indicate that increases in earnings inequality would have been about 25 30 lower than observed in the absence of changes in the association depending on the inequality measure used three components of these changes and how they vary across the earnings distribution are explored

accounting for inequality trends decomposition analyses for the uk 1971 86 eight explanations for uk income inequality trends between 1971 and 1986 are assessed by pooling evidence from inequality index decompositions by population sub group and by income source the principal causes of the aggregate trends were a mixture of changes in earnings inequality employment structure and unemployment but this mixture changed over time the impact of wage inequality changes on income inequality changes fell during the 1970s and 1980s reflecting the secular decline in the importance of employment earnings for household income packages unemployment changes had their largest impact at the start of the 1980s between 1981 and 1986 self employment income changes appear to have had the largest influence

export led development labour market conditions and the distribution of income the case of singapore the newly industrialising countries nics of east asia have attracted considerable attention in recent years and the impressive economic performance of the gang of four hong kong taiwan singapore and south korea in particular has played an important part in what little 1982 describes as the resurgence of neo classical economics in development thinking the experience of these outward looking export oriented economies is contrasted with the record of the more inward looking import substituting policies adopted by many other less developed countries ldcs and is interpreted as confirmation of the neoclassical thesis that economies which permit the market mechanism to establish a structure of equilibrium prices and incentives can expand in accordance with their comparative advantage generating significant employment gains rapid economic growth and improvements in income distribution the employment gains represent the predictable consequences of the expansion of labour intensive manufactured exports as little 1981 notes in his comparative study of south korea taiwan hong kong and singapore the major lesson is that labour intensive export oriented policies were the prime cause of an extremely rapid and labour intensive industrialisation p 42 the employment intensity of the export oriented industrialisation eoi strategy is in turn seen as the central factor behind improvements in income distribution thus balassa 1982 argues that gains in employment may also be obtained as exports increase the demand for labour and thereby improve income distribution p 59 fields 1984 reiterates the point quite simply if everyone in the labour force is employed at a market clearing wage inequality is less than if some are employed at higher than market clearing wages and others are unem ployed and earn nothing p 81 minimum government intervention has facilitated the efficient operation of the market fields 1984 for example regards the difference in wage setting processes supply and demand in the east asian nics institutional wage

reducing child poverty in britain an assessment of government policy 1997 2001 the reduction and eventual elimination of child poverty has become one of the central objectives of the new labour government in britain measures to achieve this by changing taxes and benefits and promoting paid work are described their effects are assessed using a micro simulation model the policy changes will achieve a significant reduction in child poverty but it will remain in 2001 substantially higher than in 1979 and much higher than in most european nations

racial inequality trends and the intergenerational persistence of income and family structure racial disparity in family incomes remained remarkably stable over the past 40 years in the united states despite major legal and social reforms previous scholarship presents two primary explanations for persistent inequality through a period of progressive change one highlights continuity because socioeconomic status is transmitted from parents to children disparities created through histories of discrimination and opportunity denial may dissipate slowly the second highlights change because family income results from joining individual earnings in family units changing family compositions can offset individuals changing economic chances i examine whether black white family income inequality trends are better characterized by the persistence of existing disadvantage continuity or shifting forms of disadvantage change i combine cross sectional and panel analysis using current population survey panel study of income dynamics census and national vital statistics data results suggest that african americans experience relatively extreme intergenerational continuity low upward mobility and discontinuity high downward mobility both helped maintain racial inequality yet intergenerational discontinuities allow new forms of disadvantage to emerge on net racial inequality trends are better characterized by changing forms of disadvantage than by continuity economic trends were equalizing but demographic trends were disequalizing as family structures shifted family incomes did not fully reflect labor market gains

the impact of income components on the distribution of family incomes attempts have recently been made to assign inequality contributions to various components of income this paper discusses the issues involved in such assignments and highlights the problems that follow from having a number of possible decomposition rules u s data on the distribution of family incomes are used to examine the relative influence of these income components and to evaluate empirically the performance of different decomposition rules a wide range of inequality contributions can be obtained even when restricted to only naturally derived decomposition rules some of the results are plainly absurd and serve to warn against the indiscriminate use of decomposition formulae without first investigating their properties

computers skills and wages computer technology is most prominently used by skilled high wage workers this suggests that computer use requires skills to take full advantage of the possibilities which are particularly present among relatively skilled workers this article develops a simple technology adoption model showing that the decision to adopt computer technology depends on i the tasks to be performed ii the level of skill or education and iii the level of wages applying this model to british data it is shown that the effect of wages and particular tasks on computer adoption is larger than the effect of skills on adoption the estimates suggest that in britain computer use is likely to be a matter of cost efficiency and not so much of workers skills

scar effects of unemployment an assessment of institutional complementarities this article uses panel data from the survey of income and program participation sipp and the european community household panel echp for a comparative analysis of workers post unemployment earnings trajectories in the united states and 12 western european countries across the study sample of industrialized countries results of difference in difference propensity score matching show post unemployment earnings losses to be largely permanent and particularly significant for high wage and older workers as well as for women the analyses also show that negative effects of unemployment on workers subsequent earnings are mitigated through either generous unemployment benefit systems or strict labor market regulation these effects stem partly from favorable behavioral responses that prevent downward occupational and industrial mobility and partly from changes in the overall structure of labor markets favoring the transferability of worker skills between jobs these positive effects materialize despite t

consumption needs and inequality most empirical studies demonstrating a u turn in inequality in the united states are based on the distribution of income however utility is derived from the consumption of goods and services and there are many reasons to expect the distribution of expenditure to be different from the distribution of income the author demonstrates that consumption based inequality indexes actually decrease over the postwar era this conclusion differs from the stylized facts because of differences in the income and expenditure distributions differences also arise from the inclusion of equivalence scales to account for the different needs of heterogeneous households copyright 1994 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

what happens when agent t gets a computer the labor market impact of cost efficient computer adoption this paper offers a model of how computer technology has changed the labor market demonstrating that wage differentials between computer users and non users are consistent with computers first being introduced in high wage jobs following cost efficiency furthermore skill upgrading occurs following a reemphasis on non routine tasks after adoption the model also reveals that neither differences in computer skills nor complementary skills are needed to explain wage differentials between users and non users skill upgrading and the changing organization and intensity of work finally the predicted effects on the wage structure are consistent with empirical evidence

unions norms and the rise in u s wage inequality from 1973 to 2007 private sector union membership in the united states declined from 34 to 8 percent for men and from 16 to 6 percent for women during this period inequality in hourly wages increased by over 40 percent we report a decomposition relating rising inequality to the union wage distribution s shrinking weight we argue that unions helped institutionalize norms of equity reducing the dispersion of nonunion wages in highly unionized regions and industries accounting for unions effect on union and nonunion wages suggests that the decline of organized labor explains a fifth to a third of the growth in inequality an effect comparable to the growing stratification of wages by education

testing the significance of income distribution changes over the 1980s business cycle a cross national comparison using kernel density estimation we describe the distribution of household size adjusted real income and how it changed over the business cycle of the 1980s in the united states and the united kingdom we confirm previous studies that show income inequality increased in the two countries and the middle of the distribution was squashed down using a series of statistical tests however we find that while the mass in both tails of the distribution increased significantly in both countries over the period by far the greatest gains were in the upper tail copyright 1999 john wiley sons ltd

income inequality and income segregation this article investigates how the growth in income inequality from 1970 to 2000 affected patterns of income segregation along three dimensions the spatial segregation of poverty and affluence race specific patterns of income segregation and the geographic scale of income segregation the evidence reveals a robust relationship between income inequality and income segregation an effect that is larger for black families than for white families in addition income inequality affects income segregation primarily through its effect on the large scale spatial segregation of affluence rather than by affecting the spatial segregation of poverty or by altering small scale patterns of income segregation

family change employment transitions and the welfare state household income dynamics in the united states and germany since the demise of modernization theory social scientists have sought explanations for persisting differences in the stratification of industrialized societies primarily by studying how educational and labor market institutions shape the life chances of individuals this approach undervalues two key features of any stratification system family dynamics and the welfare state employment changes changes in household composition and changes in the employment situation of a spouse or partner can all trigger large shifts in income and material well being the impact of these events is mediated by public tax and transfer mechanisms and by private actions taken by household members this comparative analysis of household income dynamics in the united states and germany shows that variations in welfare state policy produce distinct societal patterns of income mobility and furthermore shows that the relative importance of labor market events family change and welfare state policies for income dynamics depends on gender the strong interrelationship between individual incentives and the structure of opportunity produces an asymmetry in the long term impact of events the negative effects of events that reduce income generally decay over time while the effects of positive events generally persist

developments in international solid biofuel trade an analysis of volumes policies and market factors abstract this paper presents and analyses international solid biofuel trade and concludes upon interactions with bioenergy policies and market factors it shows that trade has grown from about 56 to 300 pj between 2000 and 2010 wood pellets grew strongest i e from 8 5 to 120 pj other relevant streams by 2010 included wood waste 77 pj fuelwood 76 pj wood chips 17 pj residues 9 pj and roundwood 2 4 pj intra eu trade covered two thirds of global trade by 2010 underlying markets are highly heterogeneous generally though trade evolved whenever supply side market factors coincided with existing emerging demand patterns market factors and policies both defined trade volumes though policy changes did not have as prominent effects on trade developments as in the liquid biofuel sector economic viability is the key limiting factor main exporting countries have low feedstock costs and already existing wood processing industries trade relevant aspects are the commodity s monetary value determined by its homogeneity heating value and bulk density consumer markets are diverse in residential heating demand trade patterns have been influenced by local biofuel availability and short term price signals i e mainly price competitiveness and investment support for boilers stoves commodities are mainly sourced regionally but price differences have triggered a growing trade the industrial segment is greatly influenced by policy frameworks but more mature e g established routes trade is strictly linked to margins defined mainly by policies and combustion technologies uncertainties in the analysis are due to data gaps across and within databases regarding import export declarations to estimate bioenergy related trade anecdotal data was indispensable we believe datasets should be streamlined across international institutions to eventually enable reporting of global trade beyond digit 6 level research is needed to provide further insights into informal markets interrelations between trade factors are particularly relevant when mapping future trade streams under different policy trade regime scenarios

taxes and transfers their effects on the decision to end a marriage abstract the transfer system typically has large marriage disincentives while the income tax system is likely to subsidize marriage for many low income families in other words the tax system may offset an increase in transfer benefits associated with marital separation the interaction of the transfer system with the income tax system has largely been overlooked the income tax system has become more relevant for low income families with the recent expansion of the earned income tax credit which filers may be eligible for even if their tax liability is zero this paper uses family level measures of the change in transfer benefits and tax liability associated with a change in family structure to consider the effect of these financial incentives on separation decisions

the division of labour worker organisation and technological change the model developed in this article explains differences in the division of labour across firms as a result of computer technology adoption changes in the division of labour result from reduced production time and improved communication possibilities the first shifts the division of labour towards generic structures while the latter enhances specialisation our estimates for a sample of dutch establishments in the period 1990 6 suggest that productivity gains have been the main determinant for shifts in the division of labour these productivity gains induced skill upgrading while in firms gaining from improved communication possibilities specialisation increased and skill requirements have fallen the rapid spread of computer technology has led to substantial changes in the division of labour and a shift in the demand for labour in favour of skilled workers mostly these changes have been accompanied by flatter organisational structures larger autonomy for workers or workgroups the application of innovative human resource management practices and so on there are also less typical examples where computerisation is associated with increased specialisation e g the rapid increase of call centres scripting of communication with clients and stricter procedures although the empirical relationship between information and communication technology ict adoption and organisational change has been well documented disagreement remains about the reasons why computerisation provides firms with incentives to change the structure of their organisation and the skill requirements of their workforce

the impact of the changing us family structure on child poverty and income inequality this paper analyses links between rising income inequality child poverty and one parent families in the united states from 1971 to 1989 one test reallocated weights so that 1989 proportions of children by mothers marital status resembled the 1971 distribution a second method used 1 simulated marriages among unmarried men and unmarried mothers in 1989 to reproduce 1971 marital patterns and 2 earnings responses induced by the simulated marriages the results indicate that the trend away from marriage accounted for almost half the increase in child income inequality and more than the entire rise in child poverty rates excerpt

what causes public assistance caseloads to grow this paper uses state panel data to investigate changes in public assistance caseloads through the end of the afdc program in 1996 with particular attention to the rapid increase in caseloads between 1990 and 1994 previous research has focused on total caseloads with attention to economic and policy variables and does a relatively poor job of explaining this caseload increase this paper utilizes a much richer set of control variables to investigate the causes of caseload change it separates afdc caseloads into three subcomponent programs separately investigating changes within the afdc up program afdc child only cases and the remaining core afdc cases with benefits paid to single mothers and their children and it explores whether this caseload rise was driven by changes in takeup rates versus in eligibility the results indicate a large unexplained rise in total afdc caseloads even with a very rich specification a good share of this is due to sharp increases in child only cases driven by program and demographic shifts to a lesser extent this rise was caused by the expansion of afdc up to all states these two factors explain half of the overall rise and all of the unexplained rise in afdc caseloads the remaining increase in core afdc cases benefits received by single mothers and their children is well explained within the model and is the result of economic demographic political and policy changes these variables appear to have increased eligibility among the core afdc population in the early 1990s during the economic slowdown takeup rates also increased during this time period but not by a large amount

trends in the growth and distribution of skills in the u s workplace 1960 1985 using new measures of job skills and standard measures of education and earnings the authors examine the effects of changing occupational and industry employment patterns on the skill composition of work between 1960 and 1985 the results show a strong upgrading of cognitive and interactive skills combined however with a substantial slowdown in the rates of growth of those skills and a declining demand for motor skills the earnings mix of jobs did not show the same high correlation with employment growth as skill and education levels because high wage low skill jobs declined in the goods industries while low wage jobs requiring at least moderate skill levels grew rapidly in the services

anti poverty policy for families in the next century from welfare to work and worries this paper reveals that recent changes in social policy have included both sharp cutbacks in welfare for non working families and dramatic increases in supports for low income working families it explores the reasons for these changes and documents how they have radically changed work incentives for some persons notable single mothers the result has been a large increase in work by low wage single parents the paper concludes by examining several potential dangers of this new direction and explores the challenges that remain for the next century

optimizing cooperative carbon emission reduction among enterprises with non equivalent relationships subject to carbon taxation abstract getting enterprises to reduce carbon emissions cooperatively is an effective way of sharing the burden of carbon taxation it is easier for core enterprises to promote cooperation because of their dominant positions in the supply chain the main goal of this paper is to provide a potential method for the core enterprise to organize this cooperation successfully we explore how core enterprises should allocate their reduction investments and coordinate the selection of technology upgrade strategies so as to maximize their profits without disrupting the profits of cooperating enterprises for a supply chain where there are non equivalent relationships between enterprises the main hypotheses are that each enterprise only produces one product and each production process in each enterprise can only select one production technology and the intermediate products are mainly traded among cooperative enterprises a model based on independent carbon emission reduction model i is first constructed and used to analyze each enterprises basic information when they reduce carbon emission without cooperation considering total costs profits and so on then based on this information a model including cooperation is proposed model ii in model ii the enterprises are divided into core and cooperative enterprises and both capital and technical cooperation are considered a multi agent system is presented to simulate the negotiations between the enterprises and is then used to solve model ii finally a numerical example is considered to examine the feasibility of the proposed model the results indicate that a cooperative carbon emission reduction strategy has more advantages than the independent carbon emission reduction approach a notable advantage is that it can further rationalize the emission reduction structure of the supply chain through rational allocation of reduction investments and thus further restores profits

how network externalities can exacerbate intergroup inequality the authors describe a common but largely unrecognized mechanism that produces and exacerbates intergroup inequality the diffusion of valuable practices with positive network externalities through social networks whose members differentially possess characteristics associated with adoption the authors examine two cases the first to explore the mechanism s implications and the second to demonstrate its utility in analyzing empirical data in the first the diffusion of internet use network effects increase adoption s benefits to associates of prior adopters an agent based model demonstrates positive monotonic relationships given externalities between homophily bias and intergroup inequality in equilibrium adoption rates in the second rural urban migration in thailand network effects reduce risk to persons whose networks include prior migrants analysis of longitudinal individual level migration data indicates that network homophily interacts with network externalities to induce divergence of

welfare states and the scar effects of unemployment a comparative analysis of the united states and west germany1 the article examines whether through supporting workers search for adequate reemployment the decommodification achieved by welfare state transfers reduces the longer run scar effects of unemployment drawing on employment history data from the survey of income and program participation and the german socio economic panel the analysis establishes positive effects of unemployment benefits on workers post unemployment jobs workers risks of incurring severe earnings losses of experiencing occupational mobility and of entering unstable job arrangements are considerably reduced in both the united states and west germany as workers face constrained choices in labor markets however this institutional protection of workers economic status comes at the economic cost of prolonged unemployment simulation analyses suggest that higher benefit coverage alone might account for up to 20 of the smaller cumulative disadvantages associated with unemployment for german workers

inequality among american families with children 1975 to 2005 from 1975 to 2005 the variance in incomes of american families with children increased by two thirds in attempting to explain this trend labor market studies emphasize the rising pay of college graduates while demographers typically highlight the implications of family structural changes across time in this article we join these lines of research by conceiving of income inequality as the joint product of the distribution of earnings in the labor market and the pooling of incomes in families we develop this framework with a decomposition of family income inequality using annual data from the march current population survey our analysis shows that disparities in education and single parenthood contributed to income inequality but rising educational attainment and women s employment offset these effects most of the increase in family income inequality was due to increasing within group inequality which was widely shared across family types and levels of schooling

rank regressions wage distributions and the gender gap in this paper we propose a novel rank based procedure to decompose changes in the gender wage gap into three components changes in the skill distribution changes in the wage structure and improvements in the position of women in a distribution of reference using cps data from 1979 and 1991 we perform the decomposition at each percentile of the wage distribution and show that the results are sensitive to the choice of distribution of reference male versus overall wage distribution we also find that relative wage gains of women may have been a source of increasing wage inequality among men

native competition and low skilled immigrant inflows this paper demonstrates that immigration decisions depend on local labor market conditions by documenting the change in low skilled immigrant inflows in response to supply increases among the us born using pre reform welfare participation rates as an instrument for changes in native labor supply i find that immigrants competing with native entrants systematically prefer cities with smaller supply shocks the extent of the response is substantial for each native woman working due to reform 0 5 fewer female immigrants enter the local labor force these results provide direct evidence that international migration flows tend to equilibrate returns across us local labor markets

a short term analytical model of the singapore economy abstract the rapid economic transformation of the newly industrializing countries has aroused considerable interest in their economic structure and functioning this paper contributes to the discussion by seeking to anatomise the singapore economy the economy s dynamism is reflected by the fact that although our model is a short term one capital investment both foreign and domestic plays a central role in it the model is also characterized by a novel specification of the export function the inclusion of non traded goods and of a sectorally segmented labor market and a fairly comprehensive treatment of the financial system the general equilibrium response of the model to various parameter shifts is investigated and the factors responsible for the economy s rapid development thereby elucidated

inequality and poverty in united states the effects of rising dispersion of men s earnings and changing family behaviour using semiparametric density estimation techniques we analyse the effect of rising dispersion of men s earnings and related changes in family behaviour on increasing inequality in the distribution of family income in the united states for the period 1969 1989 the growing dispersion of men s earnings and changing family structure can account for most of the rise in family income inequality by contrast the increase in labour force participation by women offset this trend inequality grew at a slower rate in the 1990s than in earlier decades largely because of stabilization in the relative earnings of men from low income families

economic inequality new methods for new trends two positions dominate the debate over the recent increases in economic inequality in the united states the job skill mismatch thesis attributes rising inequality to growth in the number of high skill high wage jobs that leaves less skilled workers behind the polarization thesis in contrast argues that the service shift generates growth in the number of both high wage and low wage jobs and declines in the middle standard summary measures of distributional inequality cannot discriminate between these depictions of where job growth is occurring we propose new methods for measurement that provide both summary and detailed information about the distributional shifts in earnings and aframework for statistical inference using data from the curent population survey cps on yearly earnings from 1967 to 1987 we show that the trends in distributional inequality vary considerably by race gender and time while the evidence provides more support for the polarization argument this thesis needs refinement if it is to account for the variations in changing inequality observed here

make money surfing the web the impact of internet use on the earnings of u s workers much research on the digital divide presumes that adults who do not use the internet are economically disadvantaged yet little research has tested this premise after discussing several mechanisms that might produce differences in earnings growth between workers who do and do not use the internet we use data from the current population survey to examine the impact of internet use on changes in earnings over 13 month intervals at the end of the internet boom our analyses reveal robustly significant positive associations between web use and earnings growth indicating that some skills and behaviors associated with internet use were rewarded by the labor market consistent with human capital theory current use at work had the strongest effect on earnings in contrast to economic theory which has led economists to focus exclusively on effects of contemporaneous workplace technology use workers who used the internet only at home also did better suggesting that users may have benefited from superior

marital sorting inequality and the role of female labor supply evidence from east and west germany this paper examines to what extent marital sorting affects cross sectional earnings inequality in germany over the past three decades while explicitly taking into account labor supply choices using rich micro data the observed distribution of couples earnings is compared to a counterfactual of randomly matched spouses hypothetical earnings are predicted based on a structural model of household labor supply for west germany a positive effect of marital sorting on inequality is found after adjusting for labor supply behavior while the effect is limited when earnings are taken as given this means that there is positive sorting in earnings potential which is veiled by relatively low female labor force participation in east germany the impact of marital sorting on inequality is highly disequalizing irrespective of adjusting for labor supply choices this is mainly due to the fact that east german women are much more attached to the labor market

the payoff to skill in the third industrial revolution1 is the third industrial revolution indeed driven by rising payoffs to skill this simple but important question has gone unanswered because conventional models of earnings inequality are based on exceedingly weak measurements of skill by attaching occupational skill measurements to the 1979 2010 current population surveys it becomes possible to adjudicate competing accounts of the changing returns to cognitive creative technical and social skill the well known increase in between occupation inequality is fully explained when such skills are taken into account while returns to schooling prove to be quite stable once correlated changes in workplace skills are parsed out the most important trend however is a precipitous increase in the wage payoff to synthesis critical thinking and related analytic skills the payoff to technical and creative skills often touted in discussions of the third industrial revolution is shown to be less substantial

effects of growing wage disparities and changing family composition on the u s income distribution abstract u s income inequality soared after 1979 the present paper estimates the contribution of increased earnings inequality to the surge in overall income inequality between 1979 and 1996 the direct contribution of increased earnings inequality is surprisingly modest even if male and female earnings inequality had remained unchanged at their 1979 levels about two thirds of the observed increase in overall u s inequality would have occurred other factors contributing to higher overall inequality include the growing correlation of husband and wife earned incomes and the increasing percentage of americans who live in single adult families families that typically have much more unequal incomes than husband wife families

heat or power how to increase the use of energy wood at the lowest cost abstract we compute the optimal subsidy level for fuelwood consumption that makes it possible to achieve the french biomass energy consumption target for this purpose we model the competition and trade offs between the consumption of fuelwood for heat fw h and the consumption of fuelwood for electricity fw e to do so we couple a forest sector model with an electricity simulation model and we test different scenarios combining fw h and fw e that account for contrasting potential increases in the carbon price and the potential reduction in the number of nuclear plants we assess the implications of these scenarios on 1 the budgetary costs for the government 2 industrial wood producers profits 3 cost savings in the power sector for the different scenarios tested and 4 the carbon balance we show that the scenario with the highest carbon price and the lowest number of nuclear plants is the least expensive from a budgetary perspective indeed when associated with a high carbon price co firing may increase fw e demand with a lower subsidy level which makes it possible to reduce the cost of reaching the target however in this case fw e crowds out part of fw h which may cause political and economic issues from a carbon balance perspective an fw h only scenario performs better than any other scenario that combines fw h and fw e due to the relatively low emissions factors of alternative technologies for electricity generation and in particular nuclear energy

wage inequality and family labor supply using the march current population surveys and the 1960 census this article describes earnings and employment changes for married couples in different types of households stratified by the husband s hourly wage while declines in male employment and earnings have been greatest for low wage men employment and earnings gains have been largest for wives of middle and high wage men these findings cast doubt on the notion that married women have increased their labor supply in the recent decades to compensate for the disappointing earnings growth of their husbands

skill biased technological change and wage inequality evidence from a plant retooling1 one of the most popular explanations for the increased wage inequality that has occurred since the late 1970s is that technological change has resulted in a downward shift in the demand for low skill workers this pattern is also alleged to account for the growth in racial inequality in wages over the same period this article reports on a case study of the retooling of a food processing plant a unique longitudinal multimethod design reveals the nature of the technological change the changes in job requirements and the mechanisms by which the changes affect the wage distribution for hourly production workers this research finds that indeed the retooling resulted in greater wage dispersion and that the changes have also been associated with greater racial inequality in wages however contrary to the claims of advocates of the skill bias hypothesis organizational and human resources factors strongly mediated the impact of the changing technology absent these high road organizational choices th

accounting for the gap a firm study manipulating organizational accountability and transparency in pay decisions great progress has been made in documenting how employer practices may shape workplace inequality less research attention however has been given to investigating which organizational strategies are effective at addressing gender and racial inequality in labor markets using a unique field study design this article identifies and tests for the first time whether accountability and transparency in pay decisions two popular organizational initiatives discussed among scholars and practitioners may reduce the pay gap by employee gender race and foreign nationality through a longitudinal analysis of a large private company i study the performance based reward decisions concerning almost 9 000 employees before and after high level management adopted a set of organizational procedures introducing accountability and transparency into the company s performance reward system before such procedures were introduced there was an observed gap in the distribution of performance based rewards where women ethnic minorities and non u s born employees received lower monetary rewards compared with u s born white men having the same performance evaluation scores and working in the same job and work unit with the same manager and the same human capital characteristics analyses of the company s employee performance reward data after the adoption of accountability and transparency procedures show a reduction in this pay gap i conclude by discussing the implications of this study for future research about employer strategies targeting workplace inequality and diversity

transition of china s power sector consistent with paris agreement into 2050 pathways and challenges abstract with a high carbon fuel mix and enormous space for efficiency potential the power sector is critical to cope with global emission mitigation targets the climate targets of less than 2 c and even ambitious 1 5 c confront china s power sector due to the rising momentum of power demand and the power mix dominated by coal power considering the potential carbon emissions space of the power sector in china this paper sets the alternative high share renewable power 1 5 and 2 c scenarios that necessitate the zero emissions and even negative emissions for the power sector by 2050 and then proposes the pathways and outlines challenges to demonstrate the arduousness and uncertainty of the mega project of power transition the results indicate that a package of options is needed for the transition while unconventional bio energy is the key to a 1 5 c scenario notably the coal power represents the largest barrier to low carbon transition owing to the rising installation and massive stranded assets during the long term reconfiguration of the power sector

inequality in children s contexts income segregation of households with and without children past research shows that income segregation between neighborhoods increased over the past several decades in this article i reexamine income segregation from 1990 to 2010 in the 100 largest metropolitan areas and i find that income segregation increased only among families with children among childless households two thirds of the population income segregation changed little and is half as large as among households with children i examine two factors that may account for these differences by household composition first i find that increasing income inequality identified by past research as a driver of income segregation was a much more powerful predictor of income segregation among families with children among whom income inequality has risen more second i find that local school options delineated by school district boundaries contribute to higher segregation among households with children compared to households without rising income inequality provided high income households more resources

employment opportunities of young men and family formation major shifts in family patterns have limited progress toward reducing poverty and narrowing black white income differences much of the recent rise in female headship results from the rising number of never married mothers despite a decline in the proportion of unmarried young women having babies the drop in marriage rate has been so great that a rising proportion of children are under the care of never married mothers the absence of a parent dramatically increases current poverty of children and as sara mclanahan 1988 shows growing up in a poor family and in a mother headed family holding constant for income increases the chances that a child will become poor as an adult a long literature links the creation of mother headed families with the inadequate financial resources of men in 1965 the moynihan report attributed the then high rates of marital disruption among black families to the joblessness of black men but warned that family dissolution might have reached a self perpetuating stage unrelated to employment opportunities did the dramatic increases in one parent families after 1965 reflect such a new self generating pattern or were the job market problems of men the primary cause of the continuing decline in stable intact american families the most forceful recent proponent of the male job opportunity hypothesis hereafter mjo is sociologist william j wilson wilson 1987 argues that the declining number of employed black men relative to black women best explains the increasing proportions of black female headed families clifford johnson and andrew sum 1987 contend that declining real earnings of all young men was a major cause of their declining marriage rates this paper examines the mjo hypothesis with respect to young men and family formation marriage and becoming parents i begin by viewing the mjo hypothesis from the perspective of the economics of the family i then consider evidence from empirical studies of the mjo hypothesis the conclusion notes future policy and research direc

do changes in demographic characteristics explain declining male employment rates examination of the australian case using a propensity score re weighting decomposition approach using australian data spanning the period from 1981 to 2001 we apply a propensity score re weighting decomposition approach to investigate the extent to which the large decline in the male employment population rate over this period can be attributed to changes in socio demographic characteristics we find that changes in observed characteristics account for little of the aggregate decline however changes in characteristics are found to be important for population sub groups in particular changes in partner status and partner employment status have acted to decrease employment rates of younger males but increase employment rates of older males a further finding is that holding observed characteristics constant there has been a very large decline in the employment rate of 55 64 year olds with bachelor degree qualifications in the course of applying the decomposition method we illustrate that validity of inferences depends on appropriate specification of the reweighting function

life course risks mobility regimes and mobility consequences a comparison of sweden germany and the united states1 the analysis of intergenerational mobility has primarily used measures of social position that are functions of an individual s occupation occupation based models of social mobility however have limitations that arguably have grown in recent decades meta analysis of available evidence for sweden western germany and the united states concerning occupational mobility household income mobility job displacement union dissolution and poverty dynamics shows the limitations of the individual level occupation based career trajectory approach to life course mobility this article develops an alternative formulation at the household level which focuses on cross national variation in the extent to which societal institutions influence the rate of events with the potential to change a household s life conditions via the manipulation of incentives for mobility generating events and the extent to which they mitigate the consequences of these events through social insurance the combination of these institut

the returns to computer use revisited have pencils changed the wage structure too are the large measured wage differentials for on the job computer use a true return to computer skills or do they just reflect that higher wage workers use computers on their jobs we examine this issue with three large cross sectional surveys from germany first we confirm that the estimated wage differential associated with computer use in germany is very similar to the u s differential second we also measure large differentials for on the job use of calculators telephones pens or pencils or for those who work while sitting down we argue that these findings cast some doubt on the literal interpretation of the computer use wage differential as reflecting true returns to computer use or skill

gaining ground poverty in the postwar united states official measures of poverty in the united states are compiled by the bureau of the census by comparing a household s income level to a prespecified threshold from a theoretical perspective it is more appropriate to evaluate the level of poverty using a consumption based measure of household welfare in this paper i evaluate the level of poverty using expenditure data from the consumer expenditure survey i find that consumption based poverty rates are much lower than those based on income the trend in the poverty rate in the united states is sensitive to the price index and equivalence scales used to adjust the poverty thresholds

recent trends in top income shares in the usa reconciling estimates from march cps and irs tax return data although the majority of research on us income inequality trends is based on public use march cps data a new wave of research using irs tax return data reports substantially higher levels of inequality and faster growing trends we show that these apparently inconsistent estimates are largely reconciled if the inequality measure and the income distribution are defined in the same way using internal cps data for 1967 2006 we closely match irs data based estimates of top income shares reported by piketty and saez 2003 our results imply that any inequality increases since 1993 are concentrated among the top 1 percent of the distribution

u s wage inequality trends and recent immigration how should we assess the changing economic status of workers and families in the united states the answer is obvious to many including outstanding economists who decry the meager wage growth and rising wage and income inequality in the united states since 1979 paul krugman 1992 richard freeman 1996 1997 james tobin 1996 1997 according to freeman 1996 1997 the following facts are not in dispute

measuring the effects of socio economic variables on the income distribution an application to the east german transition process this paper develops a discrete variant of the semiparametric methodology of dinardo fortin and lemieux 1996 dfl to measure the effects of socio economic variables on the income distribution although the proposed method is also based on the calculation of hypothetical income distributions by reweighting the original population it is much easier to implement the framework is applied to examine the distributional effects of rising unemployment decreasing female labor market participation and widening income structure in east germany following the reunification with west germany in 1990 the empirical results suggest that both these tendencies contributed considerably to the recent increase in income inequality in east germany

labor supply and marital separation panel data are used to estimate the effect of marital separation on labor supply female labor supply increases substantially and male labor supply declines marginally lending support to the theory of specialization within the household the most interesting finding is that women began to increase their labor supply well before the actualsplit occurs suggesting either that shocks to labor supply change divorce probabilities or that women with a higher likelihood of divorcework more this argument is pursued by constructing and estimating a simultaneous model of labor supply and divorce risk copyright 1986 by american economic association

income taxes and the marriage decision economic incentives have been found to play an important role in the marriage decision in developed and developing countries however the way in which the income tax treatment of the family affects these incentives has been routinely ignored this paper uses time series data for the united states from 1947 to 1988 to estimate the impact of economic factors including for the first time the tax consequences of marriage on the aggregate marriage rate the estimation results indicate that economic factors like income female wages and education play an important and statistically significant role in the marriage decision in particular the tax consequences of marriage clearly affect the marriage decision when income taxes increase with marriage the aggregate marriage rate declines however the magnitude of this impact is quite small this result suggests that some individuals respond to tax incentives in their marriage choices but that for many individuals taxes do not affect these decisions

the diffusion of computers and the distribution of wages abstract when the costs are decreasing workers adopt technology at the point where the costs equal the increased productivity output per worker increases immediately while productivity benefits increase only gradually if costs continue to fall as a result workers in computer adopting labor market groups experience an immediate fall in wages due to increased supply on the other hand adopting workers experience wage increases with some delay this model explains why increased computer use does not immediately lead to higher wage inequality more specifically the results of the model are shown to be consistent with the question why within group wage inequality among skilled workers as a result of computer technology adoption in the united states increased in the 1970s while between group wage inequality and within group wage inequality among the unskilled did not start to increase until the 1980s the model also predicts that the more compressed german wage structure leads to a lagged diffusion of computer technology along with smaller changes in wage inequality our empirical analysis suggests that this is consistent with the actual developments in germany since the 1980s finally the theoretical predictions seem to be of the right magnitude to explain the empirical quantities observed in the data

bringing income distribution in from the cold the title of this presidential address is chosen to highlight the way in which the subject of income distribution has in the past been marginalised for much of this century it has been very much out in the cold there are signs that in the 1990s it is being welcomed back and i shall be referring to recent research but i would like to use this occasion to give further impetus to the re incorporation of income distribution into the main body of economic analysis this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

a life cycle perspective on changes in earnings inequality among married men and women abstract the connection between changes in earnings inequality of individuals and changes in family earnings involves several links the movements in the employment of different family members the association between changes in husbands and in wives earnings and patterns of assortative mating a decomposition of the logarithm of the coefficient of variation in family earnings identifies these links the data on the dispersion of family earnings are organized not simply over time but also by age the growth in wives relative employment and earnings has partly offset the effects on family earnings inequality of the increase in husbands earnings inequality

hourly versus salaried payment and decisions about trading time and money over time using longitudinal data from the british household panel survey the authors examine how individuals employment compensation salaried or hourly affects their decisions to trade time for money res

why are child poverty rates higher in britain than in germany a longitudinal perspective we analyze why child poverty rates were much higher in britain than in western germany during the 1990s using a framework focusing on poverty transition rates child poverty exit rates were significantly lower and poverty entry rates significantly higher in britain we decompose these cross national differences into differences in the prevalence of trigger events changes in household composition household labor market attachment and labor earnings and differences in the chances of making a poverty transition conditional on experiencing a trigger event the latter are the most important in accounting for the cross national differences in poverty exit and entry rates

welfare the earned income tax credit and the labor supply of single mothers during 1984 1996 welfare and tax policy were changed to encourage work by single mothers the earned income tax credit was expanded welfare benets were cut welfare time limits were added and welfare cases were terminated medicaid for the working poor was expanded as were training programs and child care during this same time period there were unprecedented increases in the employment and hours of single mothers we show that a large share of the increase in work by single mothers can be attributed to the eitc and other tax changes with smaller shares for welfare benet cuts welfare waivers training programs and child care programs