Customize Consent Preferences

We use cookies to help you navigate efficiently and perform certain functions. You will find detailed information about all cookies under each consent category below.

The cookies that are categorized as "Necessary" are stored on your browser as they are essential for enabling the basic functionalities of the site. ... 

Always Active

Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of this site, such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data.

No cookies to display.

Functional cookies help perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collecting feedback, and other third-party features.

No cookies to display.

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

No cookies to display.

Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.

No cookies to display.

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customized advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyze the effectiveness of the ad campaigns.

No cookies to display.

July 2023

Relationship between Social Security Programs and Elderly Employment in Japan

By Takashi Oshio, Satoshi Shimizutani & Akiko S. Oishi  This study examines how elderly employment is associated with social security programs and how it responds to recent reforms in Japan. To this end, we employed a rich and longitudinal dataset of middle-aged and older individuals collected between 2005 and 2018. By incorporating various factors related to social security incentives into a single index of implicit tax (ITAX), we confirmed that the index successfully captured the incentives and their changes incorporated...

Early Retirement Provision for Elderly Displaced Workers

By Herman Kruse & Andreas Steinvall Myhre This paper studies the economic effects on re-employment and program substitution behavior among elderly displaced workers who exogenously lose eligibility for their early retirement option. We use detailed Norwegian matched employer-employee data containing information on bankruptcy dates and individual income, wealth, pensions and social security benefits. As job displacement before a certain age cut-off results in the loss of eligibility for early retirement benefits between ages 62–67 years in Norway, we are able...

How the 1963 Equal Pay Act and 1964 Civil Rights Act Shaped the Gender Gap in Pay

By Martha J. Bailey, Thomas E. Helgerman & Bryan A. Stuart In the 1960s, two landmark statutes—the Equal Pay and Civil Rights Acts—targeted the long-standing practice of employment discrimination against U.S. women. For the next 15 years, the gender gap in median earnings among full-time, full-year workers changed little, leading many scholars and advocates to conclude the legislation was ineffectual. This paper uses two different research designs to show that women’s relative wages grew rapidly in the aftermath of this...

National survey of gig workers paints a picture of poor working conditions, low pay

By Ben Zipperer, Celine McNicholas, Margaret Poydock, Daniel Schneider & Kristen Harknett  While the concept of nontraditional, short-term, and contract work has been around since well before the digital age, it wasn’t until the 2010s that digital platform companies like Uber, DoorDash, Instacart, and TaskRabbit began to rise to prominence and shape the way we define gig work today. In the most basic terms, gig work can be defined as work done by individuals who are classified as self-employed, freelancers,...

Trapped in the platform: Migration and precarity in China’s platform-based gig economy

By Yang Zhou Recent studies on precarity among gig workers has turned away from labour process factors to explore the role of the wider social, cultural and institutional environment. Existing westerncentred studies in this aspect argue that platforms reproduce racialised and gendered hierarchies to leverage control over vulnerable populations. This study extends this literature by focusing on the migration factor in a non-western context. Using the case of Didi, drawing on ethnographic and interview data, it is argued that migrant...

June 2023

Sexual orientation and labor market outcomes

By Nick Drydakis  Currently, being gay or lesbian is illegal in almost 80 countries, meaning that 2.7 billion people live in countries where having a minority sexual orientation is a crime. Additionally, fewer than 20% of countries have adopted employment anti-discrimination laws to protect gay and lesbian employees. On average, Australia, Canada, the US, and the EU have the strongest protection of sexual orientation rights, including workplace anti-discrimination laws and some studies in these countries have examined labor market outcomes...

The Wage Gap Among LGBTQ+ Workers in the United States

By HRC Foundation  In an HRC Foundation analysis of nearly 7,000 full-time LGBTQ+ workers, median earnings were about $900 weekly, about 90% of the $1,001 median weekly wage a typical worker earns in the United States, as reported recently by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Put another way, LGBTQ+ workers earn about 90 cents for every dollar that the typical worker earns. LGBTQ+ people of color, transgender women and men and non-binary individuals earn even less when compared to the...

May 2023

Social Security of Labour in India

By Ishita Arora The social security of labour in India is a critical issue that needs to be addressed. The country's labour force is massive, and ensuring their protection and well-being is crucial to their quality of life and the country's economic development. This research paper aims to explore the current state of social security for workers in India, including policies and programs aimed at providing protection and support to individuals and families against social and economic risks such as...

“The Great Retirement Boom”: The Pandemic-Era Surge in Retirements and Implications for Future Labor Force Participation

By Joshua Montes, Christopher L. Smith & Juliana Dajon As of October 2022, the retired share of the U.S. population was nearly 1-½ percentage points above its pre-pandemic level (after adjusting for updated population controls to the Current Population Survey), accounting for nearly all of the shortfall in the labor force participation rate. In this paper, we analyze the pandemic-era rise in retirements using a model that accounts for pre-pandemic trends in retirement, the cyclicality of retirement, and other factors....

The Limited Role of Intergenerational Transfers for Understanding Racial Wealth Disparities

By John Sabelhaus & Jeffrey P. Thompson Transfers of wealth between generations—whether through inheritances or inter vivos gifts—are less important in explaining racial disparities in wealth than might be expected. While this factor looms large in the media’s discussions of racial inequality, it explains relatively little of the disparities evident in the data. One reason is that most people, regardless of race, receive no inheritance or other transfer of substantial value. In addition, most recipients of inheritances ultimately consume those...