Showing papers in "Journal of Human Resources in 1988"
TL;DR: In this paper, the linkage of empirical estimates of wage discrimination between two groups, introduced by Oaxaca (1973), to a theoretical model of employers' discriminatory behavior is considered, and the estimators are compared empirically in an application to male-female wage differentials.
Abstract: This paper considers the linkage of empirical estimates of wage discrimination between two groups, introduced by Oaxaca (1973), to a theoretical model of employers' discriminatory behavior. It is shown that, conditional on different assumptions about employers' discriminatory tastes, Oaxaca's estimators of wage discrimination can be derived. That the approach is more generally useful is demonstrated by deriving an alternative estimator of wage discrimination, based on the assumption that within each type of labor (e.g., unskilled, skilled) the utility function capturing employers' discriminatory tastes is homogeneous of degree zero with respect to labor inputs from each of the two groups. The estimators are compared empirically in an application to male-female wage differentials.
895 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors show that marriage markets will be characterized by positive assortative mating on wealth when spouses differ only in endowments and the gains to marriage result only from public goods.
Abstract: This paper analyzes marriage market equilibria when the gains from marriage result from joint consumption of household public goods. Assuming transferable utility within marriage, the paper proves that marriage markets will be characterized by positive assortative mating on wealth when spouses differ only in endowments and the gains to marriage result only from public goods. When spouses differ in wages and household public goods are produced at home, the results imply offsetting effects, with public good economies creating an incentive for positive assortative mating on wages and gains from specialization creating an incentive for negative assortative mating on wages. The results help explain the persistent lack of empirical support for Becker's prediction of negative assortative mating on wages, and have implications for empirical analysis of all joint living arrangement decisions.
380 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyse the various theoretical and methodological problems causing the lack of consensus on poverty measurement, and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of a number of poverty definitions, and present empirical studies in which the composition and size of the population of poor is compared using different definitions of poverty.
Abstract: This chapter analyses the various theoretical and methodological problems causing the lack of consensus on poverty measurement. It deals with the identification of poverty and the aggregation of poverty across individuals. The chapter concentrates on the various methods applied to identify poverty at the household level. It reviews empirical studies in which the composition and size of the population of poor is compared, using different definitions of poverty. It is seen that both in the identification and in the aggregation stage, some welfare judgments are made, either explicitly or implicitly. The chapter discusses the advantages and disadvantages of a number of poverty definitions. It reviews empirical studies in which the composition and size of the population of poor is compared, using different definitions of poverty. Although welfare is theoretically the best basis for a poverty line definition, in practice both the measurement problems and the essentially subjective nature of welfare cause a new set of problems.
313 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the effects of systematic underreporting of income and of sample selectivity on the estimated levels of two subjective definitions of poverty were investigated, and the resulting adjusted poverty lines prove to be quite accurate.
Abstract: This paper discusses an investigation of the effects of systematic underreporting of income and of sample selectivity on the estimated levels of two subjective definitions of poverty: the so-called subjective poverty line and the Leyden poverty line. Both turn out to have substantially biasing effects. We present methods to remedy the biases. The resulting adjusted poverty lines prove to be quite accurate. Furthermore, we make suggestions for the design of questionnaires that are used in the surveys on which these poverty definitions are based.
173 citations
TL;DR: This paper found that English language proficiency has a significant positive influence on earnings for all ethnic groups, and that the earnings of foreign-born Hispanic and Asian men relative to foreignborn men of European ethnicity are most affected by English language skills.
Abstract: English language proficiency, a relatively new variable which has not been well specified in recent studies, is used to explain differences in earnings among foreign-born men based on the 1976 Survey of Income and Education. Taking into account the standard human capital and personal characteristics, English language proficiency is found to have significant positive influence on earnings for all ethnic groups. In particular, the earnings of foreign-born Hispanic and Asian men relative to foreign-born men of European ethnicity are most affected by English language proficiency.
164 citations
TL;DR: This paper tests two hypotheses about the relationship between poor quality and Medicaid patients in the nursing home and the reimbursement rates paid for Medicaid patients using Wisconsin data from 1979 and finds evidence favoring the former.
Abstract: Most empirical studies of the determinants of the quality of nursing home care find a strong relationship between poor quality and a high percentage of Medicaid patients in the nursing home. These findings are often interpreted as evidence that the reimbursement rates paid for Medicaid patients are constraining nursing homes from providing higher quality care. Alternatively, this relationship can be attributed to the presence of excess demand eliminating the need to engage in quality competition for the less lucrative Medicaid patients. This paper tests these two hypotheses using Wisconsin data from 1979 and finds evidence favoring the latter.
136 citations
TL;DR: In this article, an illustrative dynamic model of intra-family allocative behavior incorporating variations in individual child characteristics was formulated to show how both the timing of childbearing and childspecific allocations vary with both family and child-specific health endowments.
Abstract: Data were collected in Candelaria Colombia from 1968 to 1974 to evaluate the impact of child health services in all households in which there were any children under 6 years old. To estimate the birth outcome equation and post-birth health equation a subsample of 109 households was selected in which at least 2 children were born during the 7-year program. The sample size was 238 children. Estimates of the parameters of the normalized weight equations were obtained using seemingly-unrelated-regression (SUR) the family fixed effects procedure (FFE) and the lagged instrumental fixed effects technique (LIFE). An illustrative dynamic model of intra-family allocative behavior incorporating variations in individual child characteristics was formulated to show how both the timing of childbearing and child-specific allocations vary with both family and child-specific health endowments. The information restrictions were used in the model associated with the sequencing of births to develop an estimation procedure which takes into account both intrafamily and interfamily heterogeneity. Longitudinal data on children and households compared estimates of the effects of birth order birth spacing and timing per capita food consumption inoculations and the incidence of breast feeding on the age-standardized weight of children at 2 life-cycle points: at birth and within 6 months after birth. The estimates indicated that healthier families for given income had more children and more closely spaced children but consumed no more food per capita than did less well-endowed families. These results imply that families behave so as to reduce inherent interfamily inequalities in child health. However while the estimates suggest that the healthier the prior surviving child the more quickly parents are likely to have a subsequent child parents are also more likely to breastfeed an inherently healthier child.
135 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors presented an econometric model to estimate annual fluctuations in the birth rate in the United Kingdom since 1950, using the theory of cointegrated series to deal with the nonstationarity of most of the data.
Abstract: The author presents an econometric model to estimate annual fluctuations in the birth rate in the United Kingdom since 1950. The new model has been improved by "(1) adding additional economic variables to the model particularly child allowances real house prices and following Easterlin (1980) womens cohort size; (2) using mens and womens net (after tax) wages rather than gross wages; and (3) employing econometric techniques developed from the theory of cointegrated series to deal with the nonstationarity of most of the data." (EXCERPT)
112 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a simple method to estimate household cost functions and family equivalence scales is described, which is an alternative to standard methods as it does not assume strong postulates about utility maximization nor any functionally specified model equations.
Abstract: We describe a simple method to estimate household cost functions and family equivalence scales. It is an alternative to standard methods as it does not assume strong postulates about utility maximization nor any functionally specified model equations. The data requirements are extremely modest. We assume interpersonal ordinal comparability in the sense of Sen (1976) and use empirical evidence for eight European countries and the U.S. to show the feasibility of the method and the stability of its results. We also show that subjective data like those provided by income evaluation questions may be used without adopting a cardinal utility framework.
99 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors compared lifecycle data from a retrospective marital history with those derived for the same individuals from panel information, utilizing data from the Young Women's cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Work Experience (NLS), which was initiated in 1968.
Abstract: This paper compares lifecycle data from a retrospective marital history with those derived for the same individuals from panel information, utilizing data from the Young Women's cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Work Experience (NLS) which was initiated in 1968. The results indicate that when a marital event is reported in both sources there is substantial agreement about the date of the event. The errors are systematic and seem to relate to factors that increase the difficulty of recall in retrospective histories. The two data sources seem to do equally well in estimating hazard rate models of first marriage and give qualitatively similar results for hazard rate models of divorce and remarriage.
95 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a structural model of household health production that jointly determines the demand for leisure and demand for consumption for elderly males is developed and estimates a statistical model for household health.
Abstract: Our article develops and estimates a structural model of household health production that jointly determines the demand for leisure and the demand for consumption for elderly males. We use a stochastic dynamic programming framework based on the ...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the earnings of union and non-union truck drivers during and after ICC regulation of the motor carrier industry and found that significant narrowing of the union-nonunion wage differential occurred primarily in the previously regulated for-hire sector of the trucking industry and in those regions with the most extensive nonunion operations.
Abstract: Current Population Survey (CPS) data for the years 1973 to 1985 are used to examine the earnings of union and nonunion truck drivers during and after ICC regulation of the motor carrier industry. Hourly earnings for union drivers fell following deregulation, whereas changes among nonunion drivers closely mirrored economy-wide changes among nonunion operatives. Significant narrowing of the union-nonunion wage differential occurred primarily in the previously regulated for-hire sector of the trucking industry and in those regions with the most extensive nonunion operations. Despite some narrowing, the union premium remained sizable following deregulation. Significantly larger wage concessions would have been necessary to have prevented the marked decline in union trucking and Teamster membership that followed deregulation.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors review the microeconomic models of marital status and childbearing that have implictions for female labor supply, focusing on developed countries primarily in the United States.
Abstract: The authors review the microeconomic models of marital status and childbearing that have implictions for female labor supply. The geographic focus is on developed countries primarily the United States. "Section 2 contains a review for the United States of trends in those demographic variables which are strongly associated with female labor supply: age at first marriage marital dissolution age at first birth the number of children born over the life cycle and the age pattern of fertility." Section 3 is concerned with demographic models and the empirical regularities in demographic behavior. The microeconomic models that attempt to explain the facts described in Sections 2 and 3 are then considered. "Section 4 explores models of marital status and in Section 5 the single-period models of lifetime fertility decisions are reviewed. Section 6 is concerned with the efforts of Wolpin (1984) Newman (1985) and Hotz and Miller (1985) to extend the single-period fertility models to dynamic settings with uncertainty." (EXCERPT)
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated empirically the impact of parental education level, family income, ability, and expectations on earnings and employment on the demand for higher education in the Netherlands.
Abstract: This paper investigates empirically the impact of parental education level, family income, scholastic ability, and expectations on earnings and employment on the demand for higher education in the Netherlands. In theory the factors mentioned are important determinants of educational choice. The Wald or distance test is used to discriminate between direct and indirect effects of the parental education level and other background variables on the demand for higher education. We find that family income, ability, and expectations have a direct effect on earnings and employment, while the parental education level exerts indirect effects only.
TL;DR: The results indicate that there are economies of scale in the production of nursing home care, suggesting that many states could serve the same number of Medicaid patients at a lower total cost if occupancy rates were higher, and that a fixed rate reimbursement policy could lower costs.
Abstract: This paper examines costs in the nursing home industry, an issue of concern to policymakers because Medicaid pays about half of the expenditures on nursing home care. The paper estimates two cost functions for a sample of Texas nursing homes in 1983: one assumes that all homes provide the same quality of care, the other considers quality differences. The results indicate that there are economies of scale in the production of nursing home care. This suggests that many states could serve the same number of Medicaid patients at a lower total cost if occupancy rates were higher, and that a fixed rate reimbursement policy could lower costs.
TL;DR: Home-based work differs from other employment because the work site is the home itself as discussed by the authors, and the fixed costs of working at home are less than those of working on site.
Abstract: Home-based work differs from other employment because the work site is the home itself. This difference means that the fixed costs of working at home are less than the fixed costs of working on site and that home-based workers may engage in joint market ...
TL;DR: In this paper, a comparison of the correlations between brothers and neighboring boys in their adult earnings suggests that the earnings resemblance between brothers stems more from growing up in the same family rather than from being from the same neighborhood.
Abstract: A comparison of the correlations between brothers and neighboring boys in their adult earnings suggests that the earnings resemblance between brothers stems more from growing up in the same family than from growing up in the same neighborhood. Much of ...
TL;DR: In this paper, the female-male earnings differences are decomposed into their coefficients, attributes, and interaction components, revealing that the differences are adequately represented in the full-sample regression by the coefficient on gender.
Abstract: Earnings functions are estimated for a sample of 428 male and 256 female middle managers in one Canadian firm. For the full sample, human capital, behavioral, and organizational factors all have significant impacts on earnings differences, as does the gender coefficient, which accounts for a 10 percent differential against females. The female-male earnings differences are also decomposed into their coefficients, attributes, and interaction components, revealing that the differences are adequately represented in the full-sample regression by the coefficient on gender. A static model, in which returns are independent of attributes, appears to be an adequate representation of the relevant earnings function.
TL;DR: The authors found evidence that both white and nonwhite youths practice employee discrimination, although the form of this discrimination differs by race, and the hypothesis of employee discrimination by sex was also examined but rejected.
Abstract: According to the theory of employee discrimination, if members of one group have a taste for discrimination against another group, they will demand a compensating wage premium for working with members of the other group. This study is the first to directly test this theory at the micro level. We find evidence that both white and nonwhite youths practice employee discrimination, although the form of this discrimination differs by race. Results hold for both the South and non-South, as well as for the country as a whole. The hypothesis of employee discrimination by sex was also examined but rejected.
TL;DR: A large national data set is retested to retest the result found by Reinhardt that office-based physicians underutilize aides and finds that groups are more productive than solos and that physicians typically do not use aides efficiently.
Abstract: This paper utilizes a large national data set to retest the result found by Reinhardt that office-based physicians underutilize aides. Employing the transcendental-exponential form of the production function, it finds that groups are more productive than solos and that physicians typically do not use aides efficiently. Specifically, except for physician assistants used in groups, nonnurse aides were found to be overemployed. The policy implications are that for physicians to produce more efficiently, they must use fewer secretarial, administrative, and technician hours. A trend in this direction is already in evidence.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors apply a pension acceptance model to acceptance of an early retirement pension bonus; probabilities of acceptance range from.18 to.33, and also simulate acceptance behavior without the bonus, with probability of acceptance ranging from.11 to.30.
Abstract: The presence of special early retirement bonuses can change the work incentives of older workers. This study applies a pension acceptance model to acceptance of an early retirement pension bonus; probabilities of acceptance range from.18 to.33. It also simulates acceptance behavior without the bonus, with probabilities of acceptance ranging from.11 to.30.
TL;DR: A review of Hagenaars' The Perception of Poverty gives a lengthy presentation and evaluation of the Leyden approach of measuring the individual welfare function of income as discussed by the authors, which is the key feature of the approach is the claim that welfare can be measured on a 0-1 scale.
Abstract: This review of Hagenaars' The Perception of Poverty gives a lengthy presentation and evaluation of the Leyden approach of measuring the individual welfare function of income. The key feature of the approach is the claim that welfare can be measured on a 0,1 scale. The review discusses the book's wealth of material on poverty in Europe within this theoretical framework.
TL;DR: This paper found that changes in observables are important, but a residual effect dependent solely on marital status remains, and that observable changes in the wife's environment account for even less of the total shift in labor supply.
Abstract: How much of the rise in women's labor supply associated with divorce can be attributed to observable changes in the wife's environment? Such changes include a reduction in nonwage family income, a rise in her after-tax wage rate, changes in the number of children present, and a reduction in husband's hours at home. We use panel data to address this question. When we do not account for individual effects, we find that changes in observables are important, but a residual effect dependent solely on marital status remains. In estimates that do control for individual heterogeneity, observable changes in the wife's environment account for even less of the total shift in labor supply.
TL;DR: In this paper, a two-period nested logit migration model with selectivity is specified and applied to a sample of young U.S. male workers from nine different census divisions to study the choices they faced in the first two years after completing full-time schooling.
Abstract: A two-period nested logit migration model with selectivity is specified. The model is then applied to a sample of young U.S. male workers from nine different census divisions to study the choices they faced in the first two years after completing full-time schooling. "We find evidence of the existence of unobserved similarities in the divisions within each census region. We find that locational choices in one period affect locational choices of individuals in subsequent periods. We test for selectivity in division-specific wage equations and find little evidence of selectivity in the wage equations of most divisions and evidence of negative selection in the wage equations of two divisions." (EXCERPT)
TL;DR: This paper examined the returns to investments in education by registered nurses during the period 1970-84 using four large micro data sets, and found that returns to positions of responsibility were substantial for nurses.
Abstract: Using four large micro data sets, this paper examines the returns to investments in education by registered nurses during the period 1970-84. Wage models are estimated by a maximum likelihood technique that accounts for selection bias. No wage difference existed between associate and diploma degree nurses. Modest hourly wage premiums were found for baccalaureate (BS) compared with associate degree nurses. Returns to positions of responsibility were substantial. However, when career patterns of promotion were examined in a multinomial logit model, and although statistically significant differences existed in favor of the baccalaureate nurses, the differences were small. Blacks made substantial gains over the period while males consistently earned large wage premiums.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors synthesize two models of search in the labor market: systematic and random, and test a theoretical model in which the searcher is endowed with information on some (possibly zero or all) individual firms and the overall wage offer distribution.
Abstract: This paper synthesizes two models of search in the labor market: systematic and random. We construct and test a theoretical model in which the searcher is endowed with information on some (possibly zero or all) individual firms in the labor market, as well as the overall wage offer distribution. We test the model using a special wave of the 1976 Current Population Survey. The major theoretical results of our model are as follows: searchers with lower stocks of knowledge (about individual firms), higher discount rates, or having lower coverage by unemployment insurance are more likely to engage in random search activities.
TL;DR: This article used the translog-LES indirect utility function to analyze the demand for education within a multicommodity framework for annual U.S. consumption expenditures for the period 1958-82.
Abstract: This paper presents new evidence on the estimation of the demand for education. Unlike previous studies, this study uses the translog-LES indirect utility function to analyze the demand for education within a multicommodity framework for annual U.S. consumption expenditures for the period 1958-82. Various restrictive existing specifications of the demand for education are tested and rejected. Income and price elasticities of education are estimated that are larger than those of existing studies. Taste change has moved toward the consumption of education, and the consumer has suffered from a loss in welfare due to increases in prices over time.
TL;DR: This article used data on displaced workers from the January 1984 Displaced Worker Survey and data on a comparison group of "nondisplaced" workers constructed from the Current Population Survey to measure how worker characteristics affect the distribution of losses from displacement for workers displaced between January 1983 and January 1984.
Abstract: This paper uses data on displaced workers from the January 1984 Displaced Worker Survey and data on a comparison group of "nondisplaced" workers constructed from the Current Population Survey to measure how worker characteristics affect the distribution of losses from displacement for workers displaced between January 1983 and January 1984. Displaced blue collar workers, industry changers, white women, and black men who are displaced incur the greater losses. Anomolous findings in previous studies are shown to be the result of failure to include a comparison group and to specify losses correctly.
TL;DR: This paper developed an individual optimization model with persistent intergenerational immobility and found that training costs are negatively correlated with family background, leading to differences in privately optimal training levels across population groups.
Abstract: This paper develops an individual optimization model with persistent intergenerational immobility Its key feature is that training costs are negatively correlated with family background, leading to differences in privately optimal training levels across population groups Heterogeneity of innate abilities is shown to reduce but not eliminate the importance of family backgrounds Conversely, wage thresholds which result from indivisibilities in the production or training functions or noncompetitive elements in the economy (such as segmented labor markets) increase the scope for inequality in the steady-state
Journal Article•