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COVID-19 has had various effects on women’s labour supply worldwide. This study investigates how women’s labour market outcomes in the MENA region have been affected by the stringency of governments’ COVID-19 responses and school closures. We examine whether women, particularly those with children at young age, reduced their labour supply to take care of their families during the pandemic.

To investigate whether having a family results in an extra penalty to women’s labour market outcomes, we compare single women to married women and mothers. Using the ERF COVID-19 MENA Monitor Household Surveys, we analyse the key conditions underlying women’s labour market outcomes: (1) wage earnings and labour market status including remaining formally employed, informally, unpaid or self-employed, unemployed or out of the labour force and (2) becoming permanently terminated, being suspended, seeing a reduction in the hours worked or wages, or seeing a delay in one’s wage payments because of COVID-19. Ordered probit and multinomial logit are employed in the case of categorical outcomes, and linear models for wage earnings.

Women, regardless of whether they have children or not, appear to join the labour market out of necessity to help their families in the times of crisis. Child-caring women who are economically inactive are also more likely to enter the labour market. There is little difference between the negative experiences of women with children and child-free women in regard to their monthly pay reduction or delay, or contract termination, but women with children were more likely to experience reduction in hours worked throughout the pandemic.

These findings may not have causal interpretation facilitating accurate inference. This is because of potential omitted variables such as endogenous motivation of women in different circumstances, latent changes in the division of domestic work between care-giving and other household members, or selective sample attrition.

Our analysis explores the multiple channels in which the pandemic has affected the labour outcomes of MENA-region women. Our findings highlight the challenges that hamper the labour market participation of women, and suggest that public policy should strive to balance the share of unpaid care work between men and women and increase men’s involvement, through measures that support child-bearing age women’s engagement in the private sector during crises, invest in childcare services and support decent job creation for all.

This study deals with the main issues concerning the interplay between homeownership and labour market outcomes, namely (1) the relation between homeownership and labour market outcomes, at both the individual level and the aggregate level, and (2) the relation between homeownership and human capital.

This paper is both theoretical and empirical. A search and matching model of the labour market is developed to explain the strong relation between mortgage markets and wages. A regional panel analysis in Italy is used to verify the interplay between homeownership and wages.

Homeownership is not, by itself, a condition for receiving higher wages, but rather higher wages increase the probability to become a homeowner, since they positively affect the probability of acquiring a mortgage from the bank. Eventually, wages cause homeownership, but the reverse may not be true.

The paper focuses on the labour market, while the housing market model is restricted to the mortgage market.

The positive effect of homeownership on wages is hard to theoretically formalise and is not empirically proven. Before investigating a (potential) bidirectional relationship between homeownership and labour market outcomes, therefore, the related literature should assume a new theoretical link between homeowners and wages.

The result that “homeownership is not, by itself, a condition for receiving higher wages” has positive implications for human and social development. If homeownership could lead to better labour market outcomes, indeed, socio-economic inequalities would increase in the society, because homeownership would be the starting point of a “lucky” circle that increases the well-being of people who are already wealthy.

First, this study clearly explains why the microeconomic result that homeowners are more likely to be employed than tenants is consistent – at the aggregate level – with a negative relation between homeownership and better labour market outcomes. Second, the related literature has largely ignored the social implications of the topic. A potential bidirectional relation between homeownership and (better) labour market outcomes, indeed, could imply an increase in the well-being of people who are already wealthy.

The efficient functioning of the labour market is an important factor that affects long-term economic growth. The interaction of supply and demand on the labour market is influenced by institutions which change the motivations and behaviour of economic actors and, ultimately, the flexibility of the labour market. There is no consensus in the literature on the effect these institutions have on labour market outcomes. This chapter focuses on a set of selective labour market institutions (employment protection legislation, minimum wages, unemployment benefits, labour taxation, trade unions and active labour market policies), compares their relevance to other European Union (EU) countries and through the lens of the Beveridge curve it tries to evaluate their impact on effectiveness of the Czech labour market. The international comparison shows that most of the considered institutions/regulations do not reach such importance (except employment protection legislation) and that they have a significant negative effect on labour market outcomes. Even the model of the Beveridge curve does not indicate that the Czech labour market is characterised by rigidities that would impair the effectiveness of a matching process at the aggregate level.

The work compares across cohorts and different levels of education the early-stage evolution of several labour market outcomes, with the aim of studying whether and to what extent education matters for the level, growth and stability of earnings.

By using a rich longitudinal dataset developed from merging survey and administrative data, this article describes the evolution of the early career – five years following the education completion – in Italy comparing differently educated workers born between 1970 and 1984.

The authors find evidence of an "education premium” during the first five years after education completion in terms of faster school-to-work transition, higher employability and higher earnings; moreover, education is associated with positive, faster and more volatile earnings growth, while for those experiencing a downward trend education does not appear to play any role. However, no clear-cut changes across cohorts in the association between the various outcomes and the level of education emerge, thus signalling that no continuous rise of skill premia in the first phase of the working career across cohorts characterises the Italian economy.

The main originality consists in investigating the early career stage by cohort and by the level of education with a focus on many multi-year individual outcomes. Besides investigating the evolution of aggregate outcomes for differently educated individuals born in different cohorts, the authors also focus on individual earnings dynamics along the five years after the education completion.

In this paper, the authors attempt to understand how labour market attachment during the ages of 30–59 influences individuals' transition out of the labour market.

Using high-quality Swedish register data, the authors follow individuals born in 1950 and observe their labour market attachment during mid-life and their exit from the labour market.

The authors find evidence that labour market attachment in different stages of the career is differently related to exit from the labour market. At the age of 30, as well as between the ages 50–59, low attachment is related with earlier exit from the labour market. On the contrary, low labour market attachment during the ages 40–49 is related with later exit from the labour market. However, regardless of age, lower labour market attachment increases the risk of work-related benefit receipt in the exit year. The authors also find evidence that gender, migration status and childhood socioeconomic disadvantages may represent obstacles to longer working lives, while high education is a consistent factor in avoiding early exit from the labour market.

This study provides insights on the link between labour market attachment in different stages of the career and the exit from the labour market as well as work-related benefits dependency in the year of exit.

Participation of women in engineering education is considerably low in India, although it is increasing in recent years. Also, engineering is primarily treated as a male-dominated profession, and the authors do not find many women in this sector. What factors contribute to this significant gender differences in engineering education and labour market in India? In this context, this study aims to examine the factors that explain the gender variations in academic performance and labour market outcomes (placement and earnings) of engineering graduates in India.

The paper is based on primary survey data from fourth-year engineering students in Delhi, collected in 2018–2019, with a total sample size of 3186. The study uses Ordinary least square method (OLS) and Heckman selection model to analyse gender differences in academic performance and labour market outcomes of engineering graduates, respectively.

The study finds that academic performance of male students is around 10.4% more than female students. However, this difference is heavily influenced by various socioeconomic and institutional factors. Interestingly, 3% of female engineering graduates have received more job offers than males, which contradicts the common belief that women engineers face job discrimination in the labour market in India. However, the authors find that male engineers earn around 7% more than female engineers shows the evidence of pro-male gender wage inequality in earnings. The findings support that there is a considerable variation in academic performance and earnings between male and female engineering graduates.

While the authors find some literature in the area of gender difference in the academic performance and labour market among university graduates in India, studies in the field of engineering education are sparse. In a context where fewer women are found in the field of engineering education along with low participation in the labour market, the findings of this study significantly contribute to the policy making.

Moral consideration is significantly important as social responsibility of economic actions. This article aims to analyze the moral embeddedness of labor market using the typology of moral behavior in market exchange by Beckert (2005).

This study contributes to methodological novelty through a digital research design using Gephi and NVIVO software. Textual Network Analysis (TNA) is used to analyze the moral embeddedness of labor market transaction of Chinese migrant workers.

Overall, the results show that the presence of Chinese migrant workers in Indonesia is a form of Trojan altruism and harmful to local labor market. This study also provides a theoretical debate that morals are always embedded in markets.

The data and focus of this study are the Indonesian side, particularly the local labor market. In addition, access to interviews with the Chinese government and companies is very challenging and cannot be done because they cannot carelessly provide information to journalists and researchers.

In contrast to previous studies on Chinese migrant workers that tend to use the economic perspective, this study applies the moral perspective that is more sociological and discusses social responsibility of market actions.

The peer-review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-11-2022-0737

Many European countries suspended mandatory conscription after the Cold War, and especially between 2000 and 2010. However, with the changing security situation in Europe, more and more countries are considering the re-introduction of the draft. That is why, it is important to evaluate the impact of conscription on draftees, including its effect on fertility outcomes. Additionally, fertility is of particular interest because birth rates have been below replacement levels in most European countries at least in the last two decades. This, combined with the increase in life expectancy, has contributed to aging population and raises concerns about the future economic prospects and sustainability of the continent. Military service could be related to fertility in several ways. Compulsory service for men would affect the marriage market and subsequently child-bearing outcomes. For example, men who serve in the military would have to delay higher education at least by a year, given that they plan to continue their education after high school. One possibility is that this leads to older men meeting younger women if partners meet at college. Alternatively, in case the partners know each other prior to the draft, service could delay marriage by up to a year due to the conscription, postponing planning and having children, and potentially having fewer children as women might be less able or less willing to have a child after a certain age. Finally, some men who plan and would otherwise continue their education might choose to not do so or to further postpone it once they disattach from studying during their service. For some men, this might influence their marital and subsequent fertility outcomes. In either of these scenarios, a draft or its suspension is likely to be connected to fertility.

This study examines the effect of the suspension of the draft in Spain in December 2001 on three fertility outcomes of men that would have been drafted in the absence of the suspension. The author performs the analysis in a difference-in-differences framework. Potential concerns and policy implications are also discussed.

The findings suggest that after the suspension of the draft, individuals started to have their first child earlier given that they decide to have children. Consistent with the overall time trend, they became less likely to have a child and started to have fewer children. However, the age at birth of the first child decreased while the number of children and the likelihood of having a child increased for men relative to women, after compared to before the suspension of the mandatory draft.

The author extends prior literature by investigating the effect of the abolition of compulsory military service in Spain in December 2001 on fertility. This is novel is several ways. First, to the best of the author’s knowledge, previous literature has examined the effect of this Spanish reform only on labor market outcomes prior to men's conscription. Second, even for other countries that terminated the compulsory draft, fertility has been under-studied, providing an opportunity for further exploration. Third, this analysis is based on rich Census data, representative of the population in Spain. Finally, given the inconclusive findings of previous studies for other countries and the proposed re-introduction of the draft in some parts of Europe, additional evidence of the effect of the conscription has important policy implications necessary for the evaluation of future military service policy decisions.

Persons with disabilities (PwD) are generally less likely to be employed than the general population. The paper aims to investigate whether access to assistive technologies (AT) impacts labour force participation in the disabled population.

The study utilises the nationally representative survey on disability in India conducted in 2018 through multi-stage sampling by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI), Government of India. The instrumental variable (IV) approach has been employed to infer causality between AT and labour market participation.

The study found that the labour force participation rate (LFPR) in India amongst the disabled population was 29% in the age group of 15–65 years in 2017–2018, as compared to 52% in the general population. Around two-thirds of the PwD respondents who were advised to acquire aid appliances acquired them, implying limited access to AT. The probability of LFPR in disabled population increases by 26.6% with access to AT particularly in urban areas.

Persistent issues such as lack of adequate amenities, poor literacy and a lack of vocational skills need to be addressed to improve labour market outcomes for the disabled population in rural areas.

Despite its role in promoting distributive justice and inclusive development, research on equity gaps in access to AT and its impact on labour market outcomes is scant. This is the first paper that provides empirical evidence on the impact of access to AT on LFPR in the context of low- and middle-income countries.

There is extensive literature on the determinants of job tenure insecurity. However, very little is known about the individual drivers of labour market insecurity. Additionally, while a piece of literature shows that volunteering improves workers' income, no study considers volunteering as an activity which could help workers to feel more confident about their perception of labour market insecurity if they lost or resigned their jobs. Therefore, purpose of this paper is to study whether workers who volunteer are less likely to perceive labour market insecurity.

The paper employs data from the sixth European working conditions survey which provides a great deal of information on working conditions. For the empirical investigation, probit model as well as robustness analysis have been implemented.

Results show that employees who do voluntary activities have a greater likelihood of declaring perceived labour market insecurity, which is nearly 3 percentage points lower, than employees who do not volunteer. Findings suggest that governments need to improve the relationship between for-profit and non-profit sectors to encourage volunteering.

This is the first study which considers volunteering as an activity which could help workers to feel more confident about their perception of “labour market insecurity”. Most of the studies on “labour market insecurity” do not focus on the workers individual characteristics but mainly on the labour markets institutional characteristics and welfare regimes differences.