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Work, Economy and Organizations

Western University

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Full-Text Articles in Family, Life Course, and Society

Predicting Education-Job Mismatch And Its Consequences For A Cohort Of American Workers, Emily J. Orr Jun 2022

Predicting Education-Job Mismatch And Its Consequences For A Cohort Of American Workers, Emily J. Orr

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This paper considers the income and health consequences of education-job mismatch for a cohort of workers. Education-job mismatch is common, but there is little research on how it is related to outcomes for workers. This study uses longitudinal data from the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to examine education-job mismatch over a significant portion of the work life course – early career, between ages 25 and 35, and mid-career. Findings suggest that gender, race/ethnicity, and occupational sector are important predictors of experiencing education-job mismatch. Men, African Americans, and workers in office-administrative occupations were more likely to experience mismatch. …

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Enriching Or Discouraging? Competing Pictures Of Aging And Paid Work In Later Life, Rebecca Casey, Ellie Berger Apr 2016

Enriching Or Discouraging? Competing Pictures Of Aging And Paid Work In Later Life, Rebecca Casey, Ellie Berger

Population Change and Lifecourse Strategic Knowledge Cluster Discussion Paper Series/ Un Réseau stratégique de connaissances Changements de population et parcours de vie Document de travail

The picture and experience of work and retirement are continuously changing in Canada and will likely continue to change into the future with the aging of the population. There are two pictures of work in older age presented in the literature: a positive and enriching picture and a picture that highlights the challenges facing some older workers. The positive and enriching picture focuses on the experiences of older individuals who are able to continue working if they want to work and are able to work; those who continue working because they are motivated by work rather than pay or new …

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Policy Brief No. 19 - Caregiver Assessment: An Essential Component Of Continuing Care Policy, Janice Keefe, Nancy Guberman, Pamela Fancey, Lucy Barylak Apr 2016

Policy Brief No. 19 - Caregiver Assessment: An Essential Component Of Continuing Care Policy, Janice Keefe, Nancy Guberman, Pamela Fancey, Lucy Barylak

Population Change and Lifecourse Strategic Knowledge Cluster Research/Policy Brief

Family and friend caregivers are the backbone of Canada’s health and social care systems. The support they provide is indispensable in enabling individuals with long-term health issues to remain in their communities. Caregivers take on a challenging role—one that can impact their physical and mental health, social activities, personal finances, employment and relationships (Health Council of Canada, 2012; Keefe, 2011). Caregivers’ health and wellbeing has repercussions for the care recipient, their family, their communities and the health care system. To support this critical role, caregivers need to be understood as partners in care, but also as potential individual clients of …

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Policy Brief No. 16 - Annual Levels Of Immigration And Immigrant Entry Earnings In Canada, Feng Hou, Garnett Picot Apr 2016

Policy Brief No. 16 - Annual Levels Of Immigration And Immigrant Entry Earnings In Canada, Feng Hou, Garnett Picot

Population Change and Lifecourse Strategic Knowledge Cluster Research/Policy Brief

The annual level of immigration is a critical component of a country’s immigration policy. This study considers the influence of immigration levels on immigrant entry earnings in Canada. We find that from 1982-2010, a 10% increase in the size of a cohort of entering immigrants is associated with a 0.8% decline in entry earnings among immigrant men from that cohort, and a 0.3% earnings decline among immigrant women.

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Policy Brief No. 15 - Quebec, Daycare, And Household Strategies Of Couples With Young Children, Glenn Stalker, Michael Ornstein Apr 2016

Policy Brief No. 15 - Quebec, Daycare, And Household Strategies Of Couples With Young Children, Glenn Stalker, Michael Ornstein

Population Change and Lifecourse Strategic Knowledge Cluster Research/Policy Brief

In 1997, Quebec adopted a policy providing universal pre-school daycare for five dollars per day. Comparing Quebec to the rest of Canada, we use 1996, 2001, and 2006 Canadian census data to determine the impact of this policy on couples’ strategies for combining employment and child care. We find that, in addition to increasing mothers’ labour force participation, the policy reduced the number of families in Quebec with a traditional division of labour, particularly for common-law couples. However, we also find that the policy does not increase the proportion of families with egalitarian work and child care arrangements.

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Policy Brief No. 14 - The Underutilization Of Immigrant Skills: Trends And Policy Issues, Jeffrey G. Reitz, Josh Curtis, Jennifer Elrick Apr 2016

Policy Brief No. 14 - The Underutilization Of Immigrant Skills: Trends And Policy Issues, Jeffrey G. Reitz, Josh Curtis, Jennifer Elrick

Population Change and Lifecourse Strategic Knowledge Cluster Research/Policy Brief

Since 1996, the problem of underutilization of immigrant skills in Canada has grown significantly. University-educated immigrants are more numerous, yet our census analysis shows that their access to skilled occupations in the professions and management declined between 1996 and 2006. In these years, the value of work lost to the Canadian economy from immigrant skill underutilization grew from about $4.80 billion to $11.37 billion, annually. Given the significance of immigration for economic development, the evaluation of current policies and consideration of future directions seem urgent.

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Research Brief No. 17 - Rethinking Retirement, David K. Foot, Rosemary A. Venne Apr 2016

Research Brief No. 17 - Rethinking Retirement, David K. Foot, Rosemary A. Venne

Population Change and Lifecourse Strategic Knowledge Cluster Research/Policy Brief

Current pension policies in Canada do not take into account rising life expectancy. A Canadian worker in 1950 who retired at age 65 could expect to live 4 years in retirement. In 2006, a Canadian retiring at age 65 can now expect to have 16 years in retirement. Older workers can be a valuable resource with their years of experience that can be used to train younger replacement workers through the use of partial retirement schemes. Since many older workers would prefer to keep working after age 65, employers would benefit by offering flexible retirement schemes, such as a reduced …

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Research Brief No. 12 - The Effect Of Work Arrangements On Perceived Work-Family Balance, Karen A. Duncan, Rachael N. Pettigrew Apr 2016

Research Brief No. 12 - The Effect Of Work Arrangements On Perceived Work-Family Balance, Karen A. Duncan, Rachael N. Pettigrew

Population Change and Lifecourse Strategic Knowledge Cluster Research/Policy Brief

The combined demands of the modern work world and raising a healthy family have many Canadian struggling to find enough time. Canadians are working more and more hours while wages largely remain stagnant. In order to address this growing concern, alternate work arrangements have been increasingly used to help employees strike some degree of work-family balance and decrease related issues of absenteeism and turnover in the workplace. This research explores the effect of three unique work strategies — flexible schedules, shift work and self-employment — on men and women in dual-earner families. It examines each arrangement’s impact on reported satisfaction …

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Policy Brief No. 12 - Quebec’S Family Policies Benefit Childbearing And Work, Roderic Beaujot, Du Ching Jiangqin, Zenaida Ravanera Apr 2016

Policy Brief No. 12 - Quebec’S Family Policies Benefit Childbearing And Work, Roderic Beaujot, Du Ching Jiangqin, Zenaida Ravanera

Population Change and Lifecourse Strategic Knowledge Cluster Research/Policy Brief

The uniqueness of Quebec in Canada, and its attempt to be in control of its own destiny, also applies to family policy. Specifically, Quebec family policies have helped to increase fertility rates, promote more favourable attitudes toward child care, led to more people using child care in Quebec than the rest of Canada, improved people’s satisfaction with child care, and allowed more women with young children to participate in paid work than the rest of Canada. However, the child development indicators have not progressed as positively in Quebec when compared to the rest of Canada. This suggests that universal programs …

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Research Brief No. 10 - Analyzing Canadian Women Working After Childbirth As Lifecourse Transition, Stéphanie Gaudet, Martin Cooke, Joanna Jacob Apr 2016

Research Brief No. 10 - Analyzing Canadian Women Working After Childbirth As Lifecourse Transition, Stéphanie Gaudet, Martin Cooke, Joanna Jacob

Population Change and Lifecourse Strategic Knowledge Cluster Research/Policy Brief

This research focused on Canadian mothers who had a first child between 1970 and 1999, and the probability of these mothers working shortly after childbearing. Authors Stéphanie Gaudet, Martin Cooke and Joanna Jacob studied the change and underlying dynamics with two main questions. First, what are the characteristics that affect Canadian women’s employment? And how have women’s employment transitions after the birth of a first child changed over time? The investigators probed the effects of socioeconomic characteristics on labor force withdrawal using the 2001 General Social Survey, Cycle 15 on Family History. Employment transition was viewed through a type of …

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Research Brief No. 6 - Family Background And Economic Mobility In The United States And Canada, Miles Corak, Lori Curtis, Shelley Phipps Apr 2016

Research Brief No. 6 - Family Background And Economic Mobility In The United States And Canada, Miles Corak, Lori Curtis, Shelley Phipps

Population Change and Lifecourse Strategic Knowledge Cluster Research/Policy Brief

Canadians and Americans have very similar notions of what constitutes the “good life”: largely economic success, stability, health and freedom. They also both believe that the way to achieve that success is through hard work, ambition and personal choices. However, there is a large gap between the ability of Canadians and Americans to achieve a different economic status than their parents. On average, three times more economic inequality is passed on in the United States than in Canada, and the largest gaps occur at the extremes of the spectrum: the richest segment of the population and the poorest. This gap …

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Policy Brief No. 9 - A Canada-Us Comparison Of The Wage Gap For Highly Educated Immigrants, Aneta Bonikowska, Feng Hou, Garnett Picot Apr 2016

Policy Brief No. 9 - A Canada-Us Comparison Of The Wage Gap For Highly Educated Immigrants, Aneta Bonikowska, Feng Hou, Garnett Picot

Population Change and Lifecourse Strategic Knowledge Cluster Research/Policy Brief

This policy brief focuses on changes in the wages of university educated new immigrants over the 1980-2005 period in Canada and the United States. Generally speaking, wage outcomes for this group were superior in the U.S. Wages of university educated new immigrants relative to domestic born university graduates declined in Canada over that period but rose in the United States. Also, the university wage premium — the difference in the wages of the university and high school educated — for new immigrants was similar in both countries in 1980, but rose over the next two decades in the United States …

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Policy Brief No. 3 - Employment Consequences Of Family/Friend Caregiving In Canada, Janet Fast, Karen Duncan, Chelsea Dunlop, Jacquie Eales, Norah Keating, Donna Lero, Satomi Yoshino Apr 2016

Policy Brief No. 3 - Employment Consequences Of Family/Friend Caregiving In Canada, Janet Fast, Karen Duncan, Chelsea Dunlop, Jacquie Eales, Norah Keating, Donna Lero, Satomi Yoshino

Population Change and Lifecourse Strategic Knowledge Cluster Research/Policy Brief

There are more than 2.3M employed family/friend caregivers in Canada. Their multiple competing demands come with the risk of such negative employment consequences as missing work days, reducing work hours or foregoing job opportunities. These carerelated employment consequences have economic costs for caregivers, their families and their employers. Using Statistics Canada’s 2007 General Social Survey (GSS), we describe the characteristics of employed family/friend caregivers age 45 and older in Canada and the impact caregiving has on their employment.

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The Converging Gender Trends In Earning And Caring In Canada, Beaujot Roderic, Jianye Liu, Zenaida R. Ravanera Jul 2015

The Converging Gender Trends In Earning And Caring In Canada, Beaujot Roderic, Jianye Liu, Zenaida R. Ravanera

Population Change and Lifecourse Strategic Knowledge Cluster Discussion Paper Series/ Un Réseau stratégique de connaissances Changements de population et parcours de vie Document de travail

Following on our earlier work, this article updates the data on the central family activities of earning a living and caring for each other. We consider the gender side of participation in these activities, along with alternate models of the division of earning and caring. Our analysis of the data shows that the trends in earning and caring have moved in the direction of reduced gender inequalities, especially a greater sharing of paid work, and some change toward men’s greater participation in unpaid work. However, the differences remain large, and the inequalities are accentuated by the presence of young children.

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The Cross-Border Migrant Experience In Lang Son Province, Northern Viet Nam, Donald Hickerson Sep 2012

The Cross-Border Migrant Experience In Lang Son Province, Northern Viet Nam, Donald Hickerson

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The crossing of national borders between nations of the developing world provides opportunities for the poor who seek sources of livelihood, while putting migrants, especially women migrants, at risk of exploitation and abuse. It is against the backdrop of these contradictory effects of migration for poor women that this thesis examines the experiences of a group of daily cross-border migrant women in northern Viet Nam. The study focuses on the role of networks in their lives. Based on 22 in-depth interviews with Vietnamese women migrants who work at the Viet Nam-China border region, I develop an analytical framework that seeks …

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Research Brief No. 2 - Models Of Earning And Caring: Trends, Determinants And Implications, Roderic Beaujot, Zenaida Ravanera, Jianye Liu Dec 2009

Research Brief No. 2 - Models Of Earning And Caring: Trends, Determinants And Implications, Roderic Beaujot, Zenaida Ravanera, Jianye Liu

Population Change and Lifecourse Strategic Knowledge Cluster Research/Policy Brief

Families in Canada have undergone changes regarding the ways in which they earn a living and care for each other. Data taken from Statistics Canada time use surveys of 1986, 1992, 1998, and 2005 show changes in the average number of hours of paid and unpaid work completed by men and women.

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Policy Brief No. 1 - Cognitive Function, Aging And Paid Work, Laurie M. Corna, David Haardt Nov 2009

Policy Brief No. 1 - Cognitive Function, Aging And Paid Work, Laurie M. Corna, David Haardt

Population Change and Lifecourse Strategic Knowledge Cluster Research/Policy Brief

In the context of an aging population and aging workforce, we consider the relationship between cognitive function and paid work. Cognitive function is maintained for most adults as they age, and there is evidence of a positive relationship between stimulating and engaging work environments and both levels of cognitive function and their maintenance over time. At the same time, irregular and long work hours are associated with poorer cognitive outcomes. However, the relationship between paid work and cognitive function is complex; education and training as well as health status are also related to cognitive function and work. We discuss implications …

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