The Tasks Ahead

2020 ◽  
pp. 161-186
Author(s):  
Bill Emmott
Keyword(s):  
Job Insecurity ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Low Fertility ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
University Admissions ◽  
Social Trends ◽  
Marriage Rates ◽  
Good Shape ◽  
Marriage Tax ◽  
Low Wages

Superficially Japan looks in good shape, but underneath it has important vulnerabilities. These have entered a gently but remorselessly vicious cycle: while the ageing and shrinking of its population is becoming more entrenched thanks to low marriage and fertility rates, the country’s use of its basic resource, the human capital embodied by a well-educated population, looks stuck in a trap of surprisingly low wages, insecure work and low productivity, which in turn depresses domestic spending and tax revenues while also suppressing marriage and fertility. Gender inequality lies at the heart of all these economic and social trends. The trumpeted reforms of ‘Abenomics’, implemented since Abe Shinzo’s return to the prime ministership in December 2012, have provided monetary and fiscal fuel so as to keep the economic engines running but have so far failed to find transformative solutions for low wages, job insecurity, and low productivity, or for declining marriage rates and low fertility. Solutions are available, if governments and corporations alike can show stronger will and an unambiguous commitment. A twelve-point agenda is proposed, including public policy reforms for the national minimum wage, marriage tax, immigration rules for domestic staff, labour contract law, quotas for political representatives, childcare spending, and university admissions tests; and private actions, for companies and other organizations in the way they manage human-resources policies, paternity leave, early-career experience for female staff, and the future of women-only universities.

Articulations of workplace precarity: Challenging the politics of segmentation in warehouse logistics

2021 ◽  
pp. 003802612110599
Author(s):  
Tom Barnes ◽  
Jasmine Ali
Keyword(s):  
Job Insecurity ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Commodity Flows ◽  
Common Cause ◽  
Labour Relations ◽  
Critical Nodes ◽  
Theoretical Status ◽  
Collective Resistance ◽  
Labour Turnover ◽  
Low Wages

As critical nodes for global commodity flows, warehouses are an important example of segmented labour regimes which partition workers into groups with different conditions of security or its opposite, precarity. An emerging literature on warehouse work has tended to place segmentation in the context of managerial despotism based upon low wages, high labour turnover and job insecurity. However, the literature has, thus far, tended to pay comparatively less attention to workers’ collective resistance and its relationship to intra-labour divisions reproduced through segmentation. In refocusing attention to this problem, this article addresses the theoretical status of intra-labour groups, the nature of horizontal worker-to-worker relations, and their interaction with workers’ social identities and vertical capital–labour relations. It argues that the Gramscian concept of articulation provides the most promising frame for understanding these networked relations and for addressing how the politics of segmentation can be challenged by building common cause among divided workers.

scholarly journals Young Men’s Employment and Their Marriage: A Comparison among Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the UK, France, and Sweden

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 204-228
Author(s):  
Shigeki Matsuda
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Low Fertility ◽  
Fertility Rates ◽  
Asian Countries ◽  
Marriage Rates ◽  
Low Incomes ◽  
Regular Employment ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Old Men ◽  
Married Male

Abstract In Europe, falling fertility rates are regarded as part of a second demographic transition precipitated by changing values. Low fertility rates in developed Asian countries, however, are thought to be due to decreasing marriage rates, as a result of worsening young men’s employment. This study proposes the hypothesis that men in non-regular employment – those with low incomes and those who are unemployed – have lower probabilities of getting married. Male employment was analyzed using a logistic regression of micro data for 20- to 49-year-old men in Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the UK, France, and Sweden. The study’s findings generally supported the hypothesis and clearly confirmed that there is a relationship between employment and marriage in Asian countries, and especially in Japan.

scholarly journals Late, But Not Too Late? Postponement of First Birth Among Highly Educated US Women

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Nitsche ◽  
Hannah Brückner
Keyword(s):  
Family Formation ◽  
Tertiary Education ◽  
College Education ◽  
Postgraduate Education ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Low Fertility ◽  
First Birth ◽  
Highly Educated ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Postponement

AbstractWe examine the link between the postponement of parenthood and fertility outcomes among highly educated women in the USA born in 1920–1986, using data from the CPS June Supplement 1979–2016. We argue that the postponement–low fertility nexus noted in demographic and biomedical research is especially relevant for women who pursue postgraduate education because of the potential overlap of education completion, early career stages, and family formation. The results show that women with postgraduate education differ from women with college education in terms of the timing of the first birth, childlessness, and completed fertility. While the postponement trend, which began with the cohorts born in the 1940s, has continued among highly educated women in the USA, its associations with childlessness and completed parity have changed considerably over subsequent cohorts. We delineate five distinct postponement phases over the 80-year observation window, consistent with variation over time in the prevalence of strategies for combining tertiary education and employment with family formation.

scholarly journals Early Career Researchers’ Experiences of Post-Maternity and Parental Leave Provision in UK Politics and International Studies Departments: A Heads of Department and Early Career Researcher Survey

2020 ◽  
pp. 147892992091036
Author(s):  
Sadiya Akram ◽  
Zoe Pflaeger Young
Keyword(s):  
Parental Leave ◽  
Job Insecurity ◽  
Early Career ◽  
International Studies ◽  
Career Trajectory ◽  
Early Career Researchers ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Early Career Researcher ◽  
The University ◽  
The Impact

Supporting increasing equality and diversity in the recruitment and retention of Early Career Researchers from the widest pool of talent available is high on the agenda of universities and policy makers. Notwithstanding this, the demanding nature of academic careers has a disproportionate effect on Early Career Researchers, who may face indirect obstacles in their career development particularly following a period of maternity or parental leave. Our research seeks to expose the nexus of challenges, from job insecurity to the pressures of raising new families that Early Career Researchers face during this critical juncture in their career trajectory. Focusing on Politics and International Studies Departments in the United Kingdom, we document the institutional mechanisms that exist to support Early Career Researchers returning from maternity and parental leave through a Heads of Department and an Early Career Researcher survey to gain an understanding of needs and the impact of institutional measures. Adopting a feminist institutionalist analysis, we map gendered outcomes in the university, through formal and informal rules, which mitigate against those Early Career Researchers taking maternity and parental leave. We end by identifying specific measures which would help to ensure that the university is more supportive of Early Career Researchers taking maternity and parental leave.

Imperatives of Social Policy in Times of Crisis

2016 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 98-112
Author(s):  
E. Sadovaya ◽  
I. Tsapenko
Keyword(s):  
Human Development ◽  
Economic Activity ◽  
Low Fertility ◽  
High Tech ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Demographic Development ◽  
Social Trends ◽  
Structural Problems ◽  
Labor Resources ◽  
Working Poverty

The crisis affecting Russia provokes risks of rising unemployment, reducing real incomes, growing poverty, worsening demographic situation and other negative social trends. It accentuates acute structural problems challenging future human development, threatening with social and economic degradation of Russia. Workforce employment structure by economic activity and occupation lacks economic efficiency and social reasonability. Poor state of labor protection results in high incidence of work accidents. Obsolete labor regulations prevent the employment adjustment to reindustrialization shocks. Huge and unfair gaps in workers remuneration by economic activity, region and occupation cause high income inequality. Low level of remuneration in many economic activities, including those contributing to modernization of economy, leads to high working poverty and low attractiveness of innovative sectors to workers. Persistent low fertility, high mortality and low life-spam engender unsupportable demographic development and risks of restarting depopulation. Uncontrolled immigration of unqualified workforce from developing Asian countries is a source of growing social, ethno-cultural and political tensions. There are risks of growing emigration and turning flows of adaptive migrants away from Russia to EU. Structural and institutional reforms are to be realized to counteract these problems and risks and overcome crisis. Such measures are to get over the unjustified unbalances in employment and remuneration distribution, to form new competences and professional attitudes and raise stability of demographic development, supply of labor resources and boost their productivity. These changes may create social premises for transition to economic growth of new quality based on frontier technologies, wide innovations and high human development. At the same time high-tech economy development poses challenges of high unemployment, and labor market policies are to maintain balance between the needs of conserving stable employment and realizing economic transformations. Solution of many acute national problems should be based of complex approach, supposing package type of measures and simultaneity of social and economic reforms.

scholarly journals Kinlessness at Death: Examining End-of-Life Outcomes With Danish Registry Data

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 603-604
Author(s):  
Christine Mair ◽  
Katherine Ornstein ◽  
Melissa Aldridge ◽  
Lau Thygesen
Keyword(s):  
End Of Life ◽  
Healthcare System ◽  
Healthcare Reform ◽  
Registry Data ◽  
Low Fertility ◽  
Life Outcomes ◽  
Family Structures ◽  
Medical Treatments ◽  
Marriage Rates

Abstract Demographic changes that lead to “kinlessness” such as low fertility and low marriage rates are not a recent phenomenon for the countries of Northern Europe, such as Denmark. Characterized by small family sizes, high individualism, and a highly formalized healthcare system that is less dependent on family caregivers, Denmark presents a useful case study for the analysis of end-of-life outcomes among the “kinless.” We analyze the population of decedents aged 50 and older (N=175,755) using Danish civil registry data. Approximately 15% of those who died in Denmark had no living partner and no living child. Danish decedents’ family structures are associated with multiple end-of-life outcomes, including number of hospitalizations, ICU visits, and use of specific medical treatments—but not always in the direction hypothesized. Denmark’s highly formalized and individualized healthcare system may offer insight regarding healthcare reform in countries that have yet to complete the second demographic transition.

scholarly journals Temporary Employment and Family Formation: An Income or Insecurity Effect?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniël C van Wijk ◽  
Helga A G de Valk ◽  
Aart C Liefbroer
Keyword(s):  
Low Income ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Family Formation ◽  
Job Insecurity ◽  
Temporary Employment ◽  
Temporary Workers ◽  
First Birth ◽  
Logistic Regression Models ◽  
Mediation Analyses ◽  
Marriage Rates

Abstract Recent studies show that temporary workers postpone family formation transitions, but it remains unclear whether this effect is due to the lower income or the stronger perceptions of job insecurity that go with a temporary contract. To address this question, we link data from a large-scale survey among Dutch employees to longitudinal population register data on marriage and first births. Logistic regression models estimate the effects of temporary employment on marriage and first birth, and mediation analyses assess to what extent these effects are explained by income and perceptions of job insecurity. Results show that temporarily employed women delay first birth. There is also some evidence that temporarily employed men postpone marriage and first birth. These effects are partly explained by income, which increases marriage and first birth rates among men and women alike. Perceptions of job insecurity generally had little effect on family formation, although higher marriage rates were found among women who experienced affective job insecurity. Overall, this shows that it is their low income rather than their feelings of insecurity about future employment that explains why temporary employees postpone family formation.

scholarly journals Los jóvenes “Ni-Ni”: Un estigma que invisibiliza los problemas sociales de la juventud

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan García-Fuentes ◽  
José Saturnino Martínez García
Keyword(s):  
Work Experience ◽  
Population Survey ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
Job Insecurity ◽  
Working Population ◽  
Job Market ◽  
Youth Population ◽  
Socioeconomic Crisis ◽  
Selection Of ◽  
Low Wages

This article is aimed at thinking about NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training) youth and at proving experientially that the NEET concept is a way to hide social problems impacting youth because it does not take into account the structural restrictions that lead to this situation. This situation has become a pattern of social imbalance, where the lack of work experience promotes a vulnerable situation for those who just start to enter the labour world, which may leave “scars” in their lives. We present an analysis on youth transitions, where not every youth achieves to get out of job insecurity as an adult. An uncertain market of low wages is unsafe and flexible, and does not address the necessities of youth, who are paralysed in a socioeconomic crisis with few opportunities. This article approaches a selection of bibliographical sources and describes the information collected by the Working Population Survey (WPS) about the evolution of NEET, its relation with the job market, and the reasons why these youth do not look for employment. We conclude by arguing that weak work prospects end up deteriorating the citizen rights of the youth population.

Making social scientists, or not? Glimpses of the unmentionable in doctoral education

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 73-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Mills ◽  
Julia Paulson
Keyword(s):  
Doctoral Students ◽  
Higher Education Policy ◽  
Doctoral Education ◽  
Skills Training ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face ◽  
Research Students

Recent research on doctoral education in the U.K. has revealed the increasing number and diversity of academic relationships that shape the lives of research students, and students' own role in activating, mobilising and maintaining these relationships. Higher education policy reforms promoting doctoral 'skills training', interdisciplinary communities, thematic centres and supervisory teams, all create new networks for students to negotiate. Often beneficial and supportive, this article explores the 'unmentionable' consequences of relationships that gradually go awry.This study began as a project exploring the everyday experiences of doctoral students and early career researchers in the Social Sciences within the U.K. As the research unfolded, we began to encounter accounts of neglect, exploitation and denigration. While such stories have long been part of postgraduate life, their seeming persistence in the face of robust quality assurance and supervisory codes needs further exploration. We offer three portraits of difficult doctoral journeys to explore these 'unmentionable' experiences and explore whether they are linked to growing institutional and career pressures on academics to prioritise research 'productivity'.

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