Search results

This paper investigates the relationship between health and labour market participation considering the potential role played by the presence of children and elderly persons (with/without disabilities) in Italian households.

The authors use longitudinal data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions and full-information maximum likelihood to estimate a two-equation model (one equation for labour force participation and one for health status) with instruments to address the endogeneity of the labour force participation choice. The model is estimated separately by gender.

The authors find that while the presence of children, elderly persons or both is positively associated with the health status of both genders, the presence of disabled elderly persons exerts a negative role. As for participation, interesting differences emerge. The presence of children discourages women's participation but is positively associated with men's labour force participation. Interestingly, a caring role for elderly persons without disability emerges for both genders when the presence of children is combined with that of elderly people. Gender differences are also at work for the role of childcare services and elderly and/or disabled home care/assistance.

The findings indicate a possible caring role for elderly persons without disabilities, neutralizing the effect of the presence of children on the labour force participation of both genders. The results also suggest that greater coverage of care services should increase the active participation of women in the labour market.

Labor force transitions are empirically examined using Current Population Survey (CPS) data matched across months from 1996 to 2012 for Hispanics, African-Americans, and whites. Transition probabilities are contrasted prior to the Great Recession and afterward. Estimates indicate that minorities are more likely to be fired as business cycle conditions worsen. Estimates also show that minorities are usually more likely to be hired when business cycle conditions are weak. During the Great Recession, the odds of losing a job increased for minorities although cyclical sensitivity of the transition declined. Odds of becoming re-employed declined dramatically for blacks, by 2–4%, while the probability was unchanged for Hispanics.

This paper explores the labour‐market status and experience of racial minorities in Canada, and examines and criticises labour‐market policy which ignores the employment and socio‐economic disadvantage of this group. The main argument of this discussion is that racial minorities as a whole encounter racial discrimination in the Canadian labour market, and new racial minority immigrants face compounded obstacles. This is due to the lack of adequate policy initiatives to combat the racism they experience in the attempt to find suitable employment, and to labour‐market policies which exclude services to immigrants. Examples of such obstacles are evident in the Canadian Job Strategy to be discussed below.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the different employment statuses of under‐employment, temporary employment, unemployment and non‐participation in the labor force are associated with perceived well‐being among persons with disabilities.

The authors used data from the 2006 Participation and Activity Limitation Survey (PALS) conducted by Statistics Canada to develop six categories of employment status. OLS regression analysis was used for hypothesis testing.

Findings indicated that fully utilized permanent employees show the highest level of life satisfaction while unemployed persons searching for work have the lowest levels of life satisfaction and the highest levels of perceived workplace discrimination. Permanent employees whose skills are greatly underutilized show the second‐lowest level of life satisfaction and equally high perceived workplace discrimination as unemployed persons. Non‐participants in the labor force show life satisfaction levels similar to those of permanent moderately underutilized employees as well as temporary employees, but report relatively little workplace discrimination.

The study links vocational status to the psychological well‐being of persons with disabilities in a large representative sample covering the full spectrum of disability types and occupational statuses. As such, it validates conclusions from smaller studies examining single organizations or focusing on workers with specific types of disabilities.

The purpose of this paper is to enhance the understanding of labour force participation behaviour of married Australian women, with a focus on identifying the sources of observed inter-temporal labour force participation persistence.

A dynamic Probit model is applied to the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, a national representative panel survey of Australian households. The model used accounts for observed and unobserved individual heterogeneity and serially correlated transitory shocks to labour supply.

The results show that both observed and unobserved individual heterogeneity contributes to observed inter-temporal persistence of labour force participation of married Australian women, but the persistence remains even after controlling for these factors. It is also found that failing to control for serially correlated unobserved transitory shocks would lead to underestimation of genuine state dependence of labour force participation; and that state dependence of labour force participation varies with age, education, health, immigration status and the number of children under the school age.

This study adds to the international literature on labour force dynamics of women by providing Australian empirical evidence and through a flexible modelling framework. The result that there exists genuine positive state dependence in married Australian women’s labour force participation suggests that policy intervention that increases married women’s labour supply would have a long-lasting effect.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the dynamics of women labor considering their unpaid work status. The intention is to understand the precise meaning of unpaid work and its magnitudes and trends in India. This study explores the causes of women to be engaged in unpaid work and the reason behind the non-reduction of unpaid labor as prophesied by the standard theories of economic development. Furthermore, this study aims to examine the nexus of the work status of women and its impact on poverty to give possible recommendations for promoting faster and more inclusive growth of the Indian economy.

For addressing the above-mentioned issues, this study has used the data of 50th, 55th, 61st and 68th surveys conducted from 1993–1994 to 2011–2012 by National Sample Survey Office. In the first stage of analysis, the magnitude of unpaid work by women has been estimated. Subsequently, the relative contributions of socio-economic and demographics on the work status of women (paid and unpaid) in India have been assessed by using logistic regression model. In the second stage, the level of poverty among paid and unpaid women has been measured by using poverty estimation methodology. Furthermore, the incidence of poverty among unpaid women has been decomposed, and the contribution of socio-economic predictors has been measured.

The study reveals that the participation of women in paid activities has been consistently declined. During the study period, it is observed that the amount of unpaid work activities of women has significantly increased. Moreover, the increase of unpaid activities is more intense for those women who are less educated, marginalized and belong to the poorer household.

The key contributions of this study are to underpin the issue of low and declining participation of female labor force in India as well as to understand the dynamics of changing work status (paid to unpaid) of females in the neo-liberal development framework. Furthermore, this study explores the consequences of the increase in unpaid work on poverty, which has not been the focus of previous studies.

Prior to 1982, work life tables in the United States could be viewed as the labor force counterpart of life tables. Most work in this area emanated from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and was based on the assumptions that men entered and left the labor force only once in their lives and women only entered and left the labor force as a result of a change in their marital or parental status. The work life model for men especially was demographic in nature since departure from the labor force was akin to death in a life table in the sense that labor force reentry was not possible, just as reentry into a life table cannot occur after death. We now refer to this type of construct as the conventional model of work life. Tables produced by Fullerton and Byrne (1976), using data from 1970, illustrate this approach to work life expectancy (WLE).

The purpose of this paper is to use the Health and Retirement Study to examine the social security (SS) claiming decision of older Americans, with a focus on the behavior of the unemployed.

Using a duration model first, and a bivariate probit framework then, the author investigates whether older unemployed individuals lacking liquidity use SS benefits as a safety net in order to finance consumption during an unemployment episode, even if they do not retire at the same time. In this way, SS might be thought as a form of unemployment insurance (UI) which would allow them to maintain their standard of living during their job search.

The author finds evidence of a claiming pattern specific to the unemployed: they claim sooner than full-time workers, even when they do not retire at the same time. They also seem to discontinue this behavior when their access to UI is extended, which gives support to the author’s hypothesis that the unemployed workers, who lack liquidity, claim their SS benefits even if they do not wish to retire, as a source of alternative unemployment benefits.

By focusing on the SS claiming behavior of the unemployed rather than on their retirement patterns, this paper sheds light on the social insurance role of SS retirement benefits for unemployed workers who are not willing to retire, but need a new source of income while they continue looking for a job.

The purpose of this paper is to examine female labour force participation (FLFP) and their employment choice between the formal and informal sectors after several institutional and social reforms such as Millennium Development Goal 3 aimed at promoting gender equality and empowerment of women by 2015, using data from Ghana’s 2010 Population and Housing Census.

In this paper, logit regression and multinomial logit techniques were employed.

The results show that FLFP has declined marginally from the 2005 figures; education remains the important factor in determining women’s participation in the formal sector. Strikingly 91 per cent of the FLFP is engaged in the informal sector of the Ghanaian economy, a sector with a very low contribution per head.

Interventions such as encouraging female education and retraining of self-employed females to improve upon their efficiency ought to be pursued vigorously; whiles developing rural areas for females to get equal labour opportunities and many others aimed at enhancing the efficiency and by inference earning per head of the informal sector is highly recommended.

The literature on the FLFP is thin in Ghana. The current study uses a census data unlike the previous studies and as such employed a huge sample size that reflects the reality in Ghana. The study contributed immensely to policy having established that 91 per cent of the female labour force is engaged in the informal sectors of the economy, and therefore any intervention targeting at reducing poverty and meeting the MDG 3 should be targeted at the informal sector of the Ghanaian economy.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the labour force participation among the elderly population (aged 60 and above) in India from data available for the most recent time periods. The paper reviews the types of employment, industries and occupations that the elderly in India are employed in presently and also examines the impact of different factors on the decision of the elderly to be a part of the labour force.

Unit-level data has been extracted from the most recent data available on employment and labour force in India provided by the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), from 2017 to 2018 to 2019–2020. Binary logistic regression model has been used to identify some of the socio-economic and demographic factors that influence the odds of the elderly being a part of the labour force along with the extent of their influence, and Wald statistic has been used to examine the dynamics.

The study finds that among the elderly population, males, individuals living in rural areas, those living alone, those who are currently married and those with low educational attainment are more likely to be a part of the labour force. Again, elderly females are found to be employed mostly in the informal or unorganised sector which provide minimal or nil social security benefits. Between 2017–2018 and 2019–2020, the coefficients for sector, gender, marital status, education and income are found to be significantly different.

This paper attempts to shed some light on the scanty literature with regards to studies on the elderly in India, and also to reveal the possible factors which induce the elderly in India to participate in the labour force with the help of the most recent data available.

The peer-review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-06-2021-0350.