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Using a regression discontinuity design in tandem with a difference-in-discontinuities analysis, the study finds that increasing the minimum wage reduces the employment probability of young males by 2.5–3.1 percentage points.

The authors exploit an age-specific minimum wage rule – which sets a lower minimum wage for workers of age 15 than the adult minimum wage paid to workers of age 16 and above – and its abolition to estimate the causal effect of a minimum wage increase on youth employment and education in Turkey.

The authors also document that, initially, the minimum wage increase does not lead to a major change in high school enrollment, while the likelihood of transitioning into “neither in employment nor in education and training” (NEET) category notably increases. However, in the medium term, the NEET effect is transitory; school enrollment increases over time and absorbs the negative employment effect.

The authors argue that policy effects have mostly been driven by demand-side forces rather than the supply side.

High rates of youth unemployment, worldwide, have led governments to advocate a range of policies designed to increase job offers to young workers. For example, the Australian Government is currently introducing a system of “training wages” which will see effective youth wages set well below adult award wages for a designated training period. This policy is designed to simultaneously increase the human capital of young workers as well as help to overcome the initial barriers to entry into the labour market. However, youth‐specific wages have been criticized on the basis of age discrimination and on equity grounds. Also, some US data question the employment‐boosting potential of reduced minimum youth wages. In this paper recent international findings on the relationship between youth wages and employment are presented and compared with empirical tests of the relationship using labour market data for Australia as a whole as well as the State of Queensland. The results are used to examine the likely impact of the introduction of the training wage on the youth labour market in Australia and to provide further generalizations on the wider issue of employment and youth‐specific wages.

Long-run changes in living standards occupy an important place in development and growth economics, as well as in economic history. An extensive literature uses heights to study historical living standards. Most historical heights data, however, come from selected subpopulations such as volunteer soldiers, raising concerns about the role of selection bias in these results. Variations in sample mean heights can reflect selection rather than changes in population heights. A Roy-style model of the decision to join the military formalizes the selection problem. Simulations show that even modest differential rewards to the civilian sector produce a military heights sample that is significantly shorter than the cohort from which it is drawn. Monte Carlos show that diagnostics based on departure from the normal distribution have little power to detect selection. To detect height-related selection, we develop a simple, robust diagnostic based on differential selection by age at recruitment. A companion paper (H. Bodenhorn, T. Guinnane, and T. Mroz, 2017) uses this diagnostic to show that the selection problems affect important results in the historical heights literature.

In large parts of the world, income inequality has been rising in recent decades. Other regions have experienced declining trends in income inequality. This raises the question of which mechanisms underlie contrasting observed trends in income inequality around the globe. To address this research question in an empirical analysis at the aggregate level, we examine a global sample of 73 countries between 1981 and 2010, studying a broad set of drivers to investigate their interaction and influence on income inequality. Within this broad approach, we are interested in the heterogeneity of income inequality determinants across world regions and along the income distribution. Our findings indicate the existence of a small set of systematic drivers across the global sample of countries. Declining labour income shares and increasing imports from high-income countries significantly contribute to increasing income inequality, while taxation and imports from low-income countries exert countervailing effects. Our study reveals the region-specific impacts of technological change, financial globalisation, domestic financial deepening and public social spending. Most importantly, we do not find systematic evidence of education’s equalising effect across high- and low-income countries. Our results are largely robust to changing the underlying sources of income Ginis, but looking at different segments of income distribution reveals heterogeneous effects.

This study aims to examine the unemployment hysteresis effects from the perspective of the heterogeneity of genders within Asian countries.

The authors use the annual unemployment rate dataset of 12 Asian countries ranging from 1991–2020. Traditional unit root tests are initially employed to investigate the unemployment hysteresis effect. Considering the structural break and cross-section dependence problems, the sequential panel selection method (SPSM) and the Kapetanios–Snell–Shin (KSS) panel unit root test with Fourier functions have proven to be more applicable.

The empirical results indicate that the unemployment rate is stationary in most Asian regions for both females and males, which confirms the mean reversion process of the natural unemployment hypothesis. This suggests that these countries' unemployment rates are flexible to quickly revert to its long-run equilibrium determined by the labor markets. However, only the female unemployment rate in Pakistan and Nepal and adult female unemployment rates in these two economies present non-stationary series. In line with the unemployment hysteresis effect, it means shocks will leave a permanent impact on their labor market.

On the one hand, in most of the Asian countries, it can be inferred that the trade-off between inflation and unemployment is temporary because the natural unemployment hypothesis holds. Therefore, policymakers may consider using monetary policy as a tool to control inflation and stimulate growth during a recession. Such policy measures should not have a long-run impact on unemployment or cause a permanent shift in the natural unemployment rate. On the other hand, the government should implement active labor protective programs such as education or training schemes, job search assistance programs and maternity protection, especially for female adults, to reduce the negative shocks in the economic downturn, which is beneficial for them away from being long-term unemployed. It is also necessary to improve the labor unions to reduce the discrimination between female and male labors.

This paper innovatively concentrates on the heterogeneity performances between genders about the unemployment hysteresis effect within Asian countries. Furthermore, taking into account the age-specific characteristics, the youth and adult unemployment rates have been investigated. Additionally, the approximation of bootstrap distribution and the advanced panel KSS unit root test with a Fourier function are employed. Thereby, targeted policies for the government can be applied to reduce the discrimination and negative shocks on female adults in the labor market.

This research aims to illustrate the differential treatment of children and pensioners in Russia and to explain why this has not led to age group conflict through an illustration of age group interdependency.

Age group conflict is revealed through analysis of the government's policies to age groups and expenditure preferences. Interdependency is analysed by the calculation of poverty rates and contribution of age specific benefits, using nationally representative sample survey data.

The Russian government treated pensioners preferentially to children, even though children were at higher risk of poverty. However, within each age group poverty rates are mediated by household structures. Pensioners who live with children face higher poverty rates than the average for pensioners and those who co‐reside with lone mothers face the highest poverty rates of all pensioners, while their pension contribution to the household is of vital significance. Children living with one grandparent face higher poverty rates than average, whereas and those living with two grandparents face lower poverty rates.

The structure of intergenerational relationships and financial solidarity between generations provide essential context for understanding individual welfare in Russia.

Children's downgraded status in Russian society needs to be urgently addressed. Lone mothers, their children and their parents face the highest poverty rates and need of support. Amongst pensioners, women pensioners are particularly at risk.

The originality is in using two opposing perspectives on relations between age groups to show that preferential treatment of pensioners coexists with a high degree of financial linkage between generations.

We apply a recently suggested econometric approach to measure the effects of active labor market programs on employment, unemployment, and wage histories among participants. We find that participation in most of these training programs produces an initial locking-in effect and for some even a lower transition rate from unemployment to employment upon completion. Most programs, therefore, increase the expected duration of unemployment spells. However, we find that the training undertaken while unemployed successfully increases the expected duration of subsequent spells of employment for many subpopulations. These longer spells of employment come at a cost of lower accepted hourly wage rates.

We model the conditions under which parents optimally reallocate time to childcare when an outside agent exogenously restricts the number of hours an employer can demand of a working parent. Theoretically, when the restriction binds, a parent's available time increases. We exploit a series of voluntary and mandated labor-market reforms in South Korea that regulated the statutory and maximum work hours of parents. The government implemented the laws in stages by industry and size of firms. This implementation process generates exogenous variation across families where one or both partners worked at jobs that were or were not affected by the reform. We show the reforms affected work hours and use the predicted changes to investigate the total amount they spent on paid childcare and whether or not they changed the relative use of market and parental care. When fathers get more time (work less), parents spend less money on childcare. A change in mother's work time does not affect expenditures. When parents get more time, they are more likely to spend money on paid childcare for school-age children and more likely to use private academies.