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I study the effect of a universal child-related income transfer on the labour supply of married individuals. Using a difference-in-differences estimator, I find the Canadian Universal Child Care Benefit has significant negative income effects. The likelihood of lower-educated mothers to participate in the labour force is reduced 3.3 percentage points when receiving the benefit. Median hours worked per week among lower-educated mothers is reduced by 2.3 hours. The effects on higher-educated mothers are also substantial, though an effect on hours may reflect greater flexibility in hours worked while mothers enjoy job protection and employment benefits until children reach 12 months of age. For men, the evidence suggests small, significant income effects that are consistent with the literature on labour supply elasticities.

I. INTRODUCTION The principal-agent problem of contracting employee work effort that is imperfectly monitored arises in a number of areas of economic theory, including models of remuneration by seniority (Lazear 1979), involuntary unemployment (e.g., Shapiro and Stiglitz 1984), performance-based pay (MacLeod and Malcomson 1998), and labor hoarding (Depken, Redmount, and Snow 2001). Given the importance of this mechanism in the theoretical work, the empirical research on the agency problem is remarkably scant. In part this reflects the limited availability of personnel data, as Baker and Holmstrom argue in their review article "Internal Labour Markets: Too Many Theories, Too Few Facts" (1995). But more fundamentally it reflects the inherent difficulty of empirically capturing the employee effort levels that underlie the models. Using direct measures of employee- or firm-level productivity is unquestionably the preferred approach, but these measures are notoriously problematic and the studies that use them tend to be case studies, introducing external validity issues. It is also unlikely to isolate the type of malfeasant shirking behavior that concerns variants of the models where the employee effort decision entails disciplinary risk. To inform employee incentives to engage in malfeasant behavior, economists have relied on two measures: employee disciplinary rates (e.g., Cappelli and Chauvin 1991; Ichino and Maggi 2000) and absenteeism rates (e.g., Arai and Thoursie 2005; Bradley, Green, and Leeves 2007; Ichino and Riphahn 2005). The difficulty is that disciplinary rates capture only shirking activity that is identified by employers, not that which goes undetected, while reported absenteeism, particularly sickness absenteeism rates, may be entirely legitimate. One can, therefore, never be sure whether differences in these rates across workers facing different shirking costs reflect actual shirking activity, as opposed to differences in employers' willingness or ability to detect and punish shirkers or differences in employee health that may be correlated with these costs. In this paper, we identify a different type of shirking activity that potentially addresses both of these shortcomings--employees misreporting health in order to exploit weather conditions favorable to high-utility outdoor recreation. (1) We begin by considering a shirking model of sickness absenteeism in which employees' marginal utility of outdoor leisure is increasing in the interaction of two state-dependent parameters: health and outdoor weather quality, the intuition being that ideal weather conditions for engaging in outdoor recreation are valued more when one is physically (and perhaps also mentally) healthy. This assumption leads to two main propositions. First, increases in sickness absenteeism associated with marginal improvements in weather quality reflect the decisions of the inframarginal workers (those workers who in the absence of the weather improvement would be present at work) who are the healthiest, implying an increase in absenteeism that is unambiguously illegitimate. Second, comparing across workers, marginal weather improvements should have the largest impact on sickness absenteeism where shirking costs are highest. The reason is that where existing incentives to misreport health are the weakest, such as where sick pay is not offered or job protection is weak, existing sickness absenteeism levels will be lowest and the inframarginal workers will be the healthiest, thereby benefitting most from the weather improvement. We examine the empirical relevance of these propositions using a two-step approach. First, we construct an index of weather preferences by linking temperature, relative humidity, precipitation, wind speed, and cloud cover data to time-use data identifying the weekend and weekday evening outdoor recreational activities of employees with regular daytime work schedules. We then examine the empirical relation between the resulting index of the recreational quality of the weather (hereafter referred to simply as "weather quality") and the incidence of short-term spells of sickness absenteeism reported in survey data, comparing the magnitude of this relation across workers facing different levels of sick pay, job protection, and job-finding rates. …

This article uses recently released data from a national longitudinal sample to present new evidence of the longer term effects of adolescent depression on labor market outcomes. Results suggest reductions in labor force attachment of approximately 5% and earnings reductions of approximately 15% for individuals with depressive symptoms as an adolescent. These effects are only partially reduced when controlling for channels operating through educational attainment, adult depressive symptoms, or co-occurring illnesses. Further, the unique structure of the data allows for high-school fixed effects as well as suggestive evidence using sibling comparisons, which allows controls for potentially important unobserved heterogeneity. Overall, the results suggest that the links between adolescent depression and labor market outcomes are quite robust and important in magnitude, suggesting the need for further investments in treatment options and opportunities during adolescence, which will likely result in long term returns.

A symmetrical family model of two workers or caregivers is a political goal in many western European countries. We explore how common this family type is in Norway, a country with high gender-equality ambitions, by using a multinomial latent class model to develop a typology of dual-earner couples with children based on the partners ' allocations of paid and unpaid work. Using data on 2,617 respondents from the Norwegian Generations and Gender Survey, we estimate 4 classes, of which 2 are characterized by a fairly equal sharing between the partners and 2 have more traditional arrangements. Equal sharing is practiced by 4 out of 10 couples and is most likely when the partners are well educated and work regular hours and the father is in public-sector employment. A traditional practice is likely when the partners have less education, the mother has health problems, the father has private-sector employment, and the partners work irregular hours.Key Words: division of paid and unpaid work, dual-earner couples, gender equality, typologies.An equal division of paid and unpaid work in couples is a central political ambition in many western European countries. The Nordic countries, with their well-developed child-care facilities and large service sectors, are particularly supportive of women's employment, and many researchers look to these countries as ideal models for promoting the dual-eamer/equalsharing family model (Esping-Andersen, 1999; Gornick & Meyers, 2003). There is, however, little knowledge about how common this symmetrical family model is. Numerous studies have investigated the allocation of housework and child care among Norwegian couples (e.g., Bernhardt, Noack, & Lyngstad, 2008; Kjeldstad & Lappegârd, 2009) and the division of paid labor (e.g., Kitterad & R0nsen, 2010). Research concentrating on the allocation of both paid and unpaid work between partners has rarely been done, however, at least not with representative survey data. Hence, we do not really know the proportion of couples in Norway in which the partners divide employment as well as family work approximately equally between them. With its active policies for promoting mothers' labor market participation and fathers' involvement at home, its good child-care arrangements, its great demand for female labor, and its relatively short standard working hours in full-time jobs, we believe that the conditions for realizing a symmetrical family model may be particularly good in Norway.In this quantitative study, we developed a typology of work-family arrangements among Norwegian couples with children, utilizing representative survey data. We identified various types of couples based on the way the partners allocate both market work and domestic work between them. The analyses are based on data from the Norwegian Generations and Gender survey (GGS), which provides a great deal of information on peoples' life courses and daily life activities. We restricted our study to married and cohabiting parents with young children. We used a multinomial latent class model to create a typology of various patterns of sharing paid work and domestic chores and investigated the characteristics of the various couple types.The strategies used by dual-earner couples in combining work and family have been widely studied by researchers (e.g., Barnett & Rivers, 1996; P. E. Becker & Moen, 1999; Cha, 2010; Haas, 2005; Hill, Martinson, Ferris, & Baker, 2004; Hochschild, 1997; Moen & Yu, 2000), but it is pretty rare that the division of paid and unpaid work is examined in concert based on nationally representative survey data. Our article was particularly inspired by Hall and MacDermid (2009), who presented a typology dual-earner couples in the United States, drawing on a nationally representative sample and utilizing information on the partners' division of both paid and unpaid labor. Running cluster analysis and deriving from both partners1 time spent on employment, housework, and child care, they singled out four distinct couple types, which they labeled the counter-balanced type, the parallel type, the second-shift-career type, and the second-shift-nurture type. …

In France, a significant number of General Practitioners (GPs) earn less than 1.5 times the French minimum salary. Using a representative panel of self-employed GPs over the years 1993–2004, this paper tests whether these low-income GPs choose to work less than all other GPs or whether they are constrained to do so. The test is based on measuring reactions to positive and negative demand shocks. As low-income GPs do not increase activity in response to a positive demand shock but decrease activity in response to a negative demand shock, it appears that their low-income status is attributable to a strong preference for leisure. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In this paper, we investigate female part-time employment in South Africa. Using household survey data for South Africa from 1995 to 2004, we show that women are over-represented in part-time employment, and that the growth in part-time work has been an important feature of the feminisation of the labour force. In contrast to many studies of part-time work in other countries, however, we find evidence of a significant wage premium to female part-time employment. The premium is robust also to fixed effects estimations using Labour Force Survey panel data from 2001 to 2004, where controlling for unobservable differences increases its size. The premium persists with different hourly thresholds defining part-time employment and when we account for possible reporting errors in hours worked.

Recent literature has shown consistent evidence of a positive relationship between maternal employment and children’s excess body weight. These studies have largely focused on the effect of average weekly work hours over the child’s life on its overweight status. The aim of this paper is to explore the importance of the timing of employment. Timing of maternal absences has been shown to matter for child cognitive and behavioral outcomes. This paper explores whether this timing effect als o exists with respect to children’s excess body weigh t. Data on a nationally representative British birt h cohort are used to examine this, permitting a detai led exploration of the potential endogeneity of mother’s employment. The results show a significant positive correlation between full-time maternal employment during midchildhood and the probability of being overweight a t age 16. There is no evidence that part-time or fu lltime employment at earlier or later ages leads to a higher probability of being overweight at age 16. Subgroup analysis suggests this effect is driven by lower socio-economic groups. Various econometric techniques are used to explore whether employed mothers are systematically different from nonemployed mothers, but there is no evidence that thi s unobserved heterogeneity biases the estimates.

The aims of this study were to analyse (1) whether informal care, provided by children or grandchildren to their elderly parents, and formal care are substitutes or complements, and (2) whether this relationship differs across Europe. The analyses were based on cross-sectional data from the newly developed SHARE (Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe) database. We found (1) that informal and formal home care are substitutes, while informal care is a complement to doctor and hospital visits, and (2) that these relationships in some cases differ according to a European north-south gradient. Instrumental variable methods were used and the results highlight the importance of accounting for the endogeneity of informal care.

This paper develops a theoretical model of optimal schooling levels where ability and family background are the central explanatory variables. We derive schooling demand and supply functions based on individual wealth maximization. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 data, we stratify our sample into 1-yr full-time equivalent (FTE) work experience cohorts for 1985–1989. The estimated Mincerian ‘‘overtaking’’ cohort (the years of work experience at which individuals’ observed earnings approximately equal what they would have been based on schooling and ability alone) corresponds to 13 FTE years of experience, yielding on average a rate of return of 10.3% and an average (optimal) 11.4 yr of schooling.

The effects of technological change on wage inequality are usually studied under the assumption of exogenous supplies of skilled and unskilled workers. Moreover, in these studies there is no distinction between the stock (number of workers) and the flow (hours of work) dimension of labour services. In the present paper we construct a model in which hours of work and technological change affect both the (relative) demand and supply of unskilled workers. The labour supply of unskilled workers (numbers of persons) is derived from a model of household labour supply in which households differ regarding the disutility suffered when both household members work. Combining together the (relative) supply and demand parts of the model we are able to study the effects of technological change on wage and income inequality and to provide an explanation of recent trends more consistent with the stylized facts.

This article studies the relationship between the off-farm participation behavior of farm operators and their spouses and the demographic composition of the household. We focus on farm families without parents, siblings or partners, and examine the effects of the existence of elderly children of the farm couple. We find that both the father and the mother tend to reduce their participation in off-farm work as the number of elderly children rises. This result holds even after controlling for observed characteristics. We also find that the effect of elderly children stems from considerations related to both farm production and household production. Copyright 2004, Oxford University Press.

Improving the distributional impact of transfers may be costly if it reduces labour supply. In this paper we show how effects of changes in the design of the child benefit programme can be examined by deriving information from behavioural and non-behavioural simulations on micro data. The direct distributional effects are assessed by tax-benefit model calculations. Female labour supply responses to alternative child benefit schemes are simulated under the assumption that choices are discrete. The discrete choice model is justified with reference to the complicated process of finding a new job, and the existence of peaks in the empirical distribution of hours is interpreted as variation in number of jobs across states. The distribution of income after labour supply responses is also shown. The analysis confirms that enhanced distributional impact is traded against reductions in labour supply.

The longitudinal, 1988–89 LMAS makes it possible to study the interaction between social assistance and labour supply while allowing for substantial time dependence. Tobit equations for hours worked on and off social assistance, which allow for endogenous selection of social assistance status, are estimated by using FIML. Small, but statistically significant, effects for a social assistance benefit variable are obtained, particularly for females. A claw-back variable is not consistently useful. The wage rate has a consistently negative coefficient in the selection equations and is important in the Tobit equations. In this paper an attempt is made to reconcile results found in earlier literature. JEL Classification: I38, J22 Aide sociale et offre de travail. L'etude longitudinale de l'Enquete de 1988-89 sur la population active rend possible l'etude de l'interaction entre l'aide sociale et l'offre de travail tout en permettant la prise en compte de l'effet d'inertie herite du passe. On calibre des equations Tobit pour les heures travaillees separement pour les personnes qui recoivent et ne recoivent pas d'aide sociale et une equation probit qui permet une selection endogene du statut d'assiste social en utilisant la methode du maximum de vraisemblance avec pleine information. On obtient des impacts faibles mais statistiquement significatifs des prestations d'aide sociale sur l'offre de travail pour les femmes. Une variable qui tente de capturer les effets de recouvrement fiscal des prestations n'est pas uniformement utile comme source d'explication. Le taux de salaire a un coefficient negatif de maniere generale dans les equations de selection et est important dans les equations Tobit. Le memoire tente de reconcilier ces resultats avec ceux que contiennent les etudes anterieures.

Aggregate evidence has revealed a significant increase in women’s labour market participation (especially among married women) and a decline in male participation, both in Italy and in all the other OECD countries. In this paper, we empirically test the relationship between the education and employment status of husbands and wives using the Bank of Italy Survey (1995). The results of our analysis show that employed women are likely to be married to employed men with a higher level of education and higher income. The estimates of the labour supply decisions of wives show that the effect of the unemployment status of husbands is mediated by other factors associated with the family’s view of women working outside home. The response to a husband’s unemployment depends significantly on the employment decisions of parents (mothers and mothers-in-law), a proxy for the couple’s attitude towards women’s work.

This paper examines labour supply adjustment – both hours worked and participation decisions. The analysis focuses on the response of each to financial shocks, employing data from the British Household Panel Survey. Results suggest that employees whose financial situation deteriorates relative to what they expected, increase their labour supply in response. That response is consistent with models of self-insurance that incorporate labour supply flexibility. The shock reflects several factors including financial wealth and a partner’s employment situation. The response is significantly larger for those who change job, consistent with the importance of hours constraints within jobs. The propensity to participate in the labour market also appears to respond to the financial shock but that is somewhat less robust than the hours response.