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Articles 1 - 27 of 27
Full-Text Articles in Income Distribution
Abundance Strategies Should Promote Abundant Jobs In Distressed Places, Timothy J. Bartik
Abundance Strategies Should Promote Abundant Jobs In Distressed Places, Timothy J. Bartik
Upjohn Institute Policy Papers
A prominent recent policy debate is about “abundance policies”: policies to make it easier to build housing or infrastructure, deliver government services more quickly and more efficiently, and expedite the public funding of the most innovative and socially impactful research. In this essay, I argue that abundance advocates often mistakenly ignore or have a negative attitude toward “place-based policies.” These place-based policies would seek to increase employment rates, particularly in good jobs, in two types of distressed places that lack abundant job opportunities: distressed local labor markets and distressed neighborhoods. Both the goals and means of place-based policies fit into …
The Political Economy Of Inequality: U.S. And Global Dimensions, Sisay Asefa Editor, Wei-Chiao Huang Editor
The Political Economy Of Inequality: U.S. And Global Dimensions, Sisay Asefa Editor, Wei-Chiao Huang Editor
Upjohn Press
The contributors to this book discuss a variety of forms of social inequality which include large gaps in accumulated assets, discrepancies in access to quality education, unstable family life, lack of access to banking services, poor employment prospects, lack of health care services, and underrepresentation for political and legal matters. Together, they show how these forms of inequality are interrelated with income inequality and that, taken together, they pose the risk for societal and political unrest should they be left unresolved.
Adverse Life Events And Intergenerational Transfers, Jessamyn Schaller, Chase Eck
Adverse Life Events And Intergenerational Transfers, Jessamyn Schaller, Chase Eck
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
While there has been broad interest in the direct effects of major life events on older households that experience them, little attention has been paid to the intergenerational transmission of those effects— how negative shocks in parents’ households affect the outcomes of their adult children—or to the role that grown children play in helping their parents recover from adverse events. We use regression and event study approaches to examine within-family changes in monetary transfers and informal care following wealth loss, involuntary job displacement, spousal death, and health shocks in retirement-aged households. We find that giving to adult children is responsive …
The Effects Of Increasing The Minimum Wage On Prices: Analyzing The Incidence Of Policy Design And Context, Daniel Macdonald, Eric Nilsson
The Effects Of Increasing The Minimum Wage On Prices: Analyzing The Incidence Of Policy Design And Context, Daniel Macdonald, Eric Nilsson
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
We analyze the price pass-through effect of the minimum wage and use the results to provide insight into the competitive structure of low-wage labor markets. Using monthly price series, we find that the pass-through effect is entirely concentrated on the month that the minimum wage change goes into effect, and is much smaller than what the canonical literature has found. We then discuss why our results differ from that literature, noting the impact of series interpolation in generating most of the previous results. We then use the variation in the size of the minimum wage change to evaluate the competitive …
Wage Insurance As A Policy Option In The United States, Stephen A. Wandner
Wage Insurance As A Policy Option In The United States, Stephen A. Wandner
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
Wage insurance is a program that attempts to help permanently displaced workers transition to employment rapidly, effectively, and equitably. Because displaced workers have been found to suffer substantial earnings losses when they become reemployed, a wage insurance program provides a temporary wage supplement that partially reduces the wage loss experienced by targeted, newly reemployed workers. While participating workers receive a “wage supplement,” the program is called “wage insurance” because of its design as a social insurance program rather than an income transfer program. This paper provides a discussion of the development of wage insurance as a policy option in the …
Domestic Outsourcing Reduces Wages And Contributes To Rising Inequality, Johannes Schmieder, Deborah Goldschmidt
Domestic Outsourcing Reduces Wages And Contributes To Rising Inequality, Johannes Schmieder, Deborah Goldschmidt
Employment Research Newsletter
No abstract provided.
The Rise Of Domestic Outsourcing And The Evolution Of The German Wage Structure, Deborah Goldschmidt, Johannes Schmieder
The Rise Of Domestic Outsourcing And The Evolution Of The German Wage Structure, Deborah Goldschmidt, Johannes Schmieder
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
The nature of the relationship between employers and employees has been changing over the last three decades, with firms increasingly relying on contractors, temp agencies, and franchises rather than hiring employees directly. We investigate the impact of this transformation on the wage structure by following jobs that are moved outside of the boundary of lead employers to contracting firms. For this end we develop a new method for identifying outsourcing of food, cleaning, security, and logistics services in administrative data using the universe of social security records in Germany. We document a dramatic growth of domestic outsourcing in Germany since …
Effects Of The Minimum Wage On Employment Dynamics, Jonathan Meer, Jeremy West
Effects Of The Minimum Wage On Employment Dynamics, Jonathan Meer, Jeremy West
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
The voluminous literature on minimum wages offers little consensus on the extent to which a wage floor impacts employment. We argue that the minimum wage will impact employment over time, through changes in growth rather than an immediate drop in relative employment levels. We conduct simulations showing that commonly-used specifications in this literature, especially those that include state-specific time trends, will not accurately capture these effects. Using three separate state panels of administrative employment data, we find that the minimum wage reduces job growth over a period of several years. These effects are most pronounced for younger workers and in …
Who Benefits From A Minimum Wage Increase?, John W. Lopresti, Kevin J. Mumford
Who Benefits From A Minimum Wage Increase?, John W. Lopresti, Kevin J. Mumford
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
This paper addresses the question of how a minimum wage increase affects the wages of low-wage workers. Most studies assume that there is a simple mechanical increase in the wage for workers earning a wage between the old and the new minimum wage, with some studies allowing for spillovers to workers with wages just above this range. Rather than assume that the wages of these workers would have remained constant, this paper estimates how a minimum wage increase impacts a low-wage worker’s wage relative to the wage the worker would have if there had been no minimum wage increase. The …
The New Minimum Wage Research, Dale Belman, Paul J. Wolfson
The New Minimum Wage Research, Dale Belman, Paul J. Wolfson
Employment Research Newsletter
No abstract provided.
What Does The Minimum Wage Do?, Dale Belman, Paul J. Wolfson
What Does The Minimum Wage Do?, Dale Belman, Paul J. Wolfson
Upjohn Press
This book attempts to make sense of the research on the minimum wage that began in the early 1990s. The authors look at who is affected by the minimum wage, both directly and indirectly; which observable, measurable variables (e.g., wages, employment, school enrollment) the minimum wage influences; how long it takes for the variables to respond to the minimum wage and the size and desirability of the effect; why the minimum wage has the results it does (and not others); and the workers most likely to be affected by changes to the minimum wage.
Strategies For Improving Economic Mobility Of Workers: Bridging Research And Practice, Maude Toussaint-Comeau Editor, Bruce D. Meyer Editor
Strategies For Improving Economic Mobility Of Workers: Bridging Research And Practice, Maude Toussaint-Comeau Editor, Bruce D. Meyer Editor
Upjohn Press
The contributors to this book provide a provocative assessment of the effectiveness of various policies and practices designed to help disadvantaged segments of our population overcome the obstacles in their path to upward economic mobility.
Strategies For Improving Economic Mobility Of Workers, Maude Toussaint-Comeau
Strategies For Improving Economic Mobility Of Workers, Maude Toussaint-Comeau
Employment Research Newsletter
No abstract provided.
Building Equitable Communities: A New Role For City Hall, Kiran Cunningham, Hannah J. Mckinney
Building Equitable Communities: A New Role For City Hall, Kiran Cunningham, Hannah J. Mckinney
Employment Research Newsletter
No abstract provided.
The Effect Of Minimum Wages On The Employment And Earnings Of South Africa's Domestic Service Workers, Tom Hertz
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
Minimum wages have been in place for South Africa's one million domestic service workers since November of 2002. Using data from seven waves of the Labour Force Survey, this paper documents that the real wages, average monthly earnings, and total earnings of all employed domestic workers have risen since the regulations came into effect, while hours of work per week and employment have fallen. Each of these outcomes can be linked econometrically to the arrival of the minimum wage regulations. The overall estimated elasticities suggest that the regulations should have reduced poverty somewhat for domestic workers, although this last conclusion …
Living Wages And Local Governments, Timothy J. Bartik
Living Wages And Local Governments, Timothy J. Bartik
Employment Research Newsletter
No abstract provided.
Thinking About Local Living Wage Requirements, Timothy J. Bartik
Thinking About Local Living Wage Requirements, Timothy J. Bartik
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
This paper reviews what we currently know about the benefits and costs of different varieties of a "living wage": a local government requirement, now adopted by over 50 local governments, for wages above the federal minimum imposed on employers with some financial link to the local government. The review includes economic theory, empirical research on local labor markets, and empirical research on the living wage. The paper concludes that moderate living wage requirements applied to the local government's own employees, and contractors' and grantees' employees who are funded by the local government, may do more good than harm. Excessive living …
Working Time In Comparative Perspective: Volume I - Patterns, Trends, And The Policy Implications For Earnings Inequality And Unemployment, Ging Wong Editor, W. G. Picot Editor
Working Time In Comparative Perspective: Volume I - Patterns, Trends, And The Policy Implications For Earnings Inequality And Unemployment, Ging Wong Editor, W. G. Picot Editor
Upjohn Press
The chapters in this volume focus on weekly hours worked by individuals, including the recent changes in the distribution of weekly working time in Canada and the United States, the implications of the changing distribution of hours worked for earnings inequality, and efforts to reduce unemployment through mandated hours reductions.
Rising Wage Inequality In Urban Labor Markets, Thomas Hyclak
Rising Wage Inequality In Urban Labor Markets, Thomas Hyclak
Employment Research Newsletter
No abstract provided.
Rising Wage Inequality: The 1980s Experience In Urban Labor Markets, Thomas Hyclak
Rising Wage Inequality: The 1980s Experience In Urban Labor Markets, Thomas Hyclak
Upjohn Press
Hyclak analyzes information not utilized in previous studies of wage inequality. Whereas researchers previously relied on data derived from the national labor market, Hyclak draws on data from the Area Wage Surveys (AWS), which allows him to focus on changes in the wage structure in a sample of 20 local labor markets for the period of 1974 to 1991. This source also allows him to examine changes in the structure of wages paid for some 40 different jobs found in four different occupational groups. In addition, Hyclak is able to concentrate on jobs and the skills required as the primary …
Changes In Income Inequality Within U.S. Metropolitan Areas, Janice Fanning Madden
Changes In Income Inequality Within U.S. Metropolitan Areas, Janice Fanning Madden
Upjohn Press
In studying MSA data that link the characteristics of metropolitan economies to significant changes in income inequality, Madden is able to study changes in poverty rates, household income inequality, and wage inequality within 182 of the largest MSAs and to identify what she says are the three factors most likely to influence changes in income inequality in metropolitan areas.
Poverty And Inequality: The Political Economy Of Redistribution, Jon Neill Editor
Poverty And Inequality: The Political Economy Of Redistribution, Jon Neill Editor
Upjohn Press
Despite the nation's significant and prolonged economic growth during the 1990s, the portion of aggregate income going to the poorest 20 percent of the population declined, while that of the richest 20 percent grew. The contributors to this volume examine the extent and reasons behind this distribution.
Earnings Inequality In Germany, Katharine G. Abraham, Susan N. Houseman
Earnings Inequality In Germany, Katharine G. Abraham, Susan N. Houseman
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
Recent studies have documented the growth of earnings inequality in the United States during the 1980s. In contrast to these studies' findings, our analysis of micro data for the former West Germany yields virtually no evidence of growth in earnings inequality over the same period. Between 1978 and 1988, a reduction in the dispersion of earnings among workers in the bottom half of the earnings distribution led to a narrowing of the overall dispersion of earnings in Germany. Earnings differentials across education and age groups remained roughly stable, and there was no general widening of earnings differentials within either education …
Profit Sharing: Does It Make A Difference?: The Productivity And Stability Effects Of Employee Profit-Sharing Plans, Douglas L. Kruse
Profit Sharing: Does It Make A Difference?: The Productivity And Stability Effects Of Employee Profit-Sharing Plans, Douglas L. Kruse
Upjohn Press
Kruse details the reasons profit sharing plans are implemented and the systemic factors within firms, particularly in relation to unions, that influence whether or not they are successful. Presented is evidence based on a unique database developed from 500 public U.S. firms - matched to firm performance over the period of 1979-1991 - on the two central theories related to profit sharing: 1) The Productivity Theory, and 2) the Stability Theory
Essays On The Economics Of Discrimination, Emily P. Hoffman Editor
Essays On The Economics Of Discrimination, Emily P. Hoffman Editor
Upjohn Press
This book explores the effects of discrimination on the economic outcomes of various societal groups.
The Economics Of Comparable Worth, Mark R. Killingsworth
The Economics Of Comparable Worth, Mark R. Killingsworth
Upjohn Press
Killingsworth provides a clear statement of the definitional and conceptual issues surrounding comparable worth as well as an examination of its actual and potential effects. He also shows how comparable worth might work in alternative labor market settings and provides evidence of the effects of the comparable worth measures implemented in San Jose, Calif., the State of Minnesota, and Australia.
Two-Tier Compensation Structures: Their Impact On Unions, Employers, And Employees, James Martin, Thomas D. Heetderks
Two-Tier Compensation Structures: Their Impact On Unions, Employers, And Employees, James Martin, Thomas D. Heetderks
Upjohn Press
Martin conducted a study at a large company where its various wage tier systems allowed assessment of the long-term impact of tiers. Part of this study included the development of a survey designed to explore eight research questions related to tiers and to test five hypotheses of low-tier v. high-tier employees.