Gender Earnings Gap among Urban Youth Adults in Bangladesh: A Comparative Static Analysis

Despite the importance and recognition of young women's engagement in income-generating activities for socio-economic development, the gender earnings gap still persists across countries, especially in developing countries like Bangladesh. This study presents two datasets from the most recent past to provide fresh evidence for Bangladesh’s urban labor market that has yet to be closely studied. Using individual-level data from the BBS’s (Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics) Labour Force Surveys (LFS) conducted in 2010 and 2015, we have explored the gender earnings gap among the youth (aged 18 to 35 as per Bangladesh’s National Youth Policy 2017) working and earning in the urban labor markets of Bangladesh by applying the three approaches: Mincerian regression, Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition and Quantile regression. The first approach confirms that young women earn significantly less than young men in the urban labor markets after controlling the influences of the covariates. The detailed decomposition results of the second approach indicate that gender differences in hours worked, education, firm characteristics and locations also contribute to the gender earnings gap and the market discrimination against the youth women’s earnings remain the same over the years. The third approach using the lens of distribution perspective shows that earnings gaps persist up to the 25th percentile of distribution in 2010 though it persists across the entire earnings distribution in 2015. The results suggest that engaging more women in income-generating activities, increasing the number of hours worked, improving access to higher education and creating enabling working environment for women might reduce the gender earnings gap.

Vocational training choice from a regional perspective

Motivated by discussions of skill mismatches on local German vocational educational and training (VET) markets, this paper analyses how occupational segments of VET entry of individuals with lower and intermediate secondary school degree relate to local labor market characteristics. The econometric analysis applies data from a survey conducted with 9th graders within the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). Considering opportunity structures and the local competition for training positions, we find that the match between occupations' skill demands and individuals' abilities tends to be specifically close in diverse and competitive urban labor markets. In non-competitive peripheral labor markets, in contrast, graduates with lower school certificates seem to have a higher likelihood of entering VET in segments that are specifically attractive for graduates with upper secondary school degree. The results on the allocation of abilities and the weight of preferences under different labor market conditions have different welfare implications from an individual, regional and general economic perspective.

Rural multifunctional social centers and their investment potential: from foreign experience to domestic practice

Other features of the modern Russian rural society include the weakening of the position of agriculture itself, the increasing diversity of rural employment, the formation of rural-urban labor markets, all of which are directly related to the saturation of rural areas with urban residents, which gives impetus to the use of innovative forms of investment activity in the social sphere of emerging rural agglomerations. At the same time, the tasks set in the new State Program "Integrated Development of Rural Territories" (the beginning of implementation of which falls on January 2020) are not large-scale both to the existing networks of rural social services, and to the system of rural settlement and the nature of demographic processes in rural areas of Russia. There is an institutional imbalance, in which the management of the infrastructural development of the rural sociosphere is extremely difficult, and requires the introduction of new mechanisms, including related. The purpose of the study is to summarize the domestic and foreign experience of creating multifunctional public centers in rural areas, as well as to identify the possibility of realizing their investment potential. It is shown that the functioning of multifunctional public centers is an effective method for improving the quality of life of the rural population in the socio-cultural, socioeducational, social and leisure, social and household, tourist and educational spheres. The generalization of foreign experience allows us to distinguish centers by their functions (on the basis of educational institutions, cultural institutions, leisure centers); by spatial solution (in one building or several buildings); by location in a settlement (in the center of a settlement, near a transport hub, in an inter-settlement equidistant space). The domestic experience of providing multidisciplinary services to the rural population is primarily associated with two integrated approaches, when the resource-based approach.

Capitalist agriculture and the creation of the circular migrant: Understanding COVID-19’s impact on internal migrants in India

COVID-19 has affected the internal migrants in India badly. When the government announced a lockdown with a 4-hour notice, millions of these migrants, who were a part of the vast unorganized labor force to be found in urban areas, were left stranded. In our article, we analyze the structural factors that underpin this crisis. We argue that the migrant crisis that unfolded in the urban areas has its roots in India’s embrace of globalization, the rise of capitalistic agriculture, and the increasing casualization of labor work in the urban labor markets.

Low-Skilled Immigrants and Urban Development in China: A Labor Market Perspective

This study investigates the impact of low-skilled immigrants on urban labor markets in China. Using historical migration networks as an instrumental variable to overcome endogeneity problems, we find that low-skilled immigrants significantly increase local wages. Census data reveal significant occupational segregation between low-skilled immigrants and local inhabitants. Low-skilled immigrants are found to substitute for low-skilled local inhabitants but are complementary for high-skilled local inhabitants. In addition, low-skilled immigrants boost women's labor participation and wages through consumption service markets. This study's findings reveal that discrimination against low-skilled immigrants weakens the reciprocal effects among immigrants and local inhabitants and hinders urban development.

Caste and the Indian Economy

Caste plays a role at every stage of an Indian's economic life, in school, university, the labor market, and into old age. The influence of caste extends beyond private economic activity into the public sphere, where caste politics determines access to public resources. The aggregate evidence indicates that there has been convergence in education, occupations, income, and access to public resources across caste groups in the decades after independence. Some of this convergence is likely due to affirmative action, but caste-based networks could also have played an equalizing role by exploiting the opportunities that became available in a globalizing economy. Ethnic networks were once active in many advanced economies but ceased to be salient once markets developed. With economic development, it is possible that caste networks will cease to be salient in India. The affirmative action programs may also be rolled back and (statistical) discrimination in urban labor markets may come to an end if and when there is convergence across caste groups. In the interim period, however, it is important to understand the positive and negative consequences of caste involvement across a variety of spheres in the Indian economy. (JEL G22, J15, J71, O15, O17, Z13)

Work of the Past, Work of the Future

US cities today are vastly more educated and skill-intensive than they were five decades ago. Yet, urban non-college workers perform substantially less skilled jobs than decades earlier. This deskilling reflects the joint effects of automation and, secondarily, rising international trade, which have eliminated the bulk of non-college production, administrative support, and clerical jobs, yielding a disproportionate polarization of urban labor markets. The unwinding of the urban non-college occupational skill gradient has, I argue, abetted a secular fall in real non-college wages by: (1) shunting non-college workers out of specialized middle-skill occupations into low-wage occupations that require only generic skills; (2) diminishing the set of non-college workers that hold middle-skill jobs in high-wage cities; and (3) attenuating, to a startling degree, the steep urban wage premium for non-college workers that prevailed in earlier decades. Changes in the nature of work--many of which are technological in origin--have been more disruptive and less beneficial for non-college than college workers.

Short-term Migration, Rural Public Works, and Urban Labor Markets: Evidence from India

This paper studies the effect of India's rural public works program on rural-to-urban migration and urban labor markets. We find that seasonal migration from rural districts that implemented the program decreased relative to those that were selected to, but did not implement it. We use a gravity model and find that real wages rose faster in cities with higher predicted migration from program districts. Since most seasonal migrants work outside of their district, urban wage increases were not limited to program districts, and may have attracted migrants from nonprogram districts. Difference-in-differences may hence be biased. Structural estimates indeed suggest that migration decreased by 22% in program districts, but also increased by 5% in nonprogram districts. As a result, urban wages increased by only 0.5%, against 4.1% if the program had been implemented in all selected districts.