This paper investigates the relationship between the probability of divorce and marriage specific investments. As these investments in terms of childcare and household activities are likely to increase the marital surplus, they are consequently likely to decrease the risk of divorce. All such activities, however, are characterized by gender role bias through, for example, social norms. In periods in which married women enjoy greater outside options (e.g., by increasing their labor force participation), it is expected that households in which the husband takes on typically female chores are less likely to dissolve, while couples in which the wife takes on typically male chores are more likely to divorce. The paper tests this hypothesis using data from the National Longitudinal Survey (NLS) of Mature Women, the NLS Young Women, and the NLSY79. The prediction is strongly supported by the data with respect to older cohorts while it loses empirical relevance when tested on younger individuals. Furthermore, asymmetric effects between genders gain importance over time. Finally, an explanation for the relationship between divorce and marital investments is offered in terms of increasing intra-household time consumption complementarities. To this end, data from the American Time Use Surveys from 1965 to 2005 are studied to illustrate how time spent together by partners in the same household has become increasingly crucial in the American family.
Increasing educational attainment is generally tied to better employment outcomes. The vocational education and training (VET) sector is often used as an entry point into post-compulsory education for individuals who have experienced disadvantage in their lives. But does increasing participation in VET by disadvantaged individuals necessarily lead to the same benefits as experienced by their non-disadvantaged peers? Specifically, do disadvantaged learners have similar completion rates and employment outcomes as their non-disadvantaged peers? Using data from NCVER's National VET Provider Collection and the Student Outcomes Survey, the authors find both completion and employment gaps exist between different groups of disadvantaged learners and their non-disadvantaged peers, but that closing the completion gap will not necessarily result in the closing of the employment gap.
This paper addresses the applicability of the theory of equalizing differences (Rosen, 1986) in a market in which temporary and permanent workers co-exist. The assumption of perfect competition in the labour market is directly questioned and a model is developed in which the labour market is described as a duopsony and the relation between wage and non-monetary job characteristics is studied for workers with different contract lengths. The empirical analysis, based on several waves of the UK Labour Force Data, confirms several of the hypotheses suggested by the model and emphasizes how in the short run workers who have experienced a change in their employer can expect a career trajectory in line with the theory on compensating differentials. In particular, while the wage dynamic related to workers shifting from a temporary contract to another temporary position cannot be exactly predicted, shifts from temporary to permanent contracts tend to be linked to a reduction in wages and a simultaneous increase in travel-to-work distance. Nonetheless, when unobserved characteristics are accounted for in the selection process into temporary contracts, these results lose significance and only a positive relation between wage and commuting time persists, irrespective of the type of contract."--Abstract.
Despite efforts to engage youth in education, there have been only modest improvements in the rates of school completion across OECD countries since the mid- 1990s. These modest improvements underline the importance of programs that encourage early school leavers to return to post-school education. The objective of this paper is to better understand the factors that affect the chances of re-engaging early school leavers in education, with a particular focus on the importance of time out from school (duration dependence) and school-related factors. Using data from three cohorts of the Longitudinal Survey of Australian Youth and duration models that control for unobserved heterogeneity, our results suggest that programs that encourage an early return to study and programs that develop post-school career plans may be more effective than programs that concentrate on improving numeracy and literacy scores." --Abstract.
This paper studies the respective influence of intergenerational transmission and the environment in shaping individual trust. Focusing on second generation immigrants in Australia and the United States, we exploit the variation in the home and in the host country to separate the effect of the cultural background from that of the social and economic conditions on individual trust. Our results indicate that trust in the home country contributes to the trust of second generation immigrants in both host countries, but particularly so in the United States. Social and economic conditions in the host country, such as crime rate, economic inequality, race inequality and segregation by country of origin, also affect trust. Evidence for first generation immigrants confirms that the transmission of trust across generations is primarily important in the United States, and, that differences in trust levels between the two host countries increase with acculturation.
What would prompt people to undertake education and training in their mid-20s and beyond and what are the benefits? The authors investigate what motivates people to undertake education and training at more mature ages and the impact of this on their labour market outcomes. They found that males who undertake further education and training after the age of 25 years did so for reasons related to their current employment (for example, towards promotion or a different job), whereas for females a key motivator was simply getting a job. For both males and females, a sustained increase in job satisfaction following completion of the study was also found. Data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics of Australia Survey and the Survey of Education and Training was used in this report." - NCVER website.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.