Is There Less Labor Market Exclusion of People With Ill Health in “Flexicurity” Countries? Comparative Evidence From Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, and Belgium

Higher employment rates among vulnerable groups is an important policy goal; it is therefore vital to examine which social policies, or mix of policies, are best able to incorporate vulnerable groups – such as people with ill health – into the labor market. We examine whether 2 “flexicurity” countries, Denmark and the Netherlands, have less labor market exclusion among people with ill health compared to the neighboring countries of Norway and Belgium. We analyze the 2 country pairs of Denmark–Norway and the Netherlands–Belgium using OLS regressions and propensity score kernel matching of EU-SILC panel data (2010–2013). Both unemployment and disability likelihood is remarkably similar for people with ill health across the 4 countries, despite considerable social policy differences. There are 3 possible explanations for the observed cross-national similarity. First, different social policy combinations could lead toward the same employment outcomes for people with ill health. Second, most policy instruments are located on the supply side, and demand side reasons for the observed “employment penalty” (e.g., employer skepticism/discrimination) are often neglected. Third, it is too demanding to hold (full-time) employment for a sizeable proportion of those who have poor health status.

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Challenges and Risks of Individualisation in The Netherlands

Social Policy and Society ◽

10.1017/s1474746403001490 ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 3 (1) ◽

pp. 57-65 ◽

Cited By ~ 21

Author(s):

Trudie Knijn

Keyword(s):

Social Policy ◽

The Netherlands ◽

Social Security ◽

Life Course ◽

Old Age ◽

Child Support ◽

Social Assistance ◽

Life Course Perspective ◽

Full Time ◽

Economic Independence

This article evaluates recent transformations in social policy that reflect the tendency towards individualisation in The Netherlands. Such transformations have taken place in old age pensions, widows' pensions, social assistance and taxation, and in respect of child support following divorce. Interestingly most reforms have not resulted in ‘full individualisation’, but rather have taken into account the fact that people, in particular women, are not or cannot be assumed to be full-time adult workers. Such a ‘moderate individualisation’, however, is not without risks for women's economic independence, especially when the developments of the Dutch ‘life course perspective’ on social security are considered.

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The Politics of Supporting Low-Wage Workers and Families

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199838509.013.017 ◽

2014 ◽

Author(s):

Daniel P. Gitterman

Keyword(s):

Labor Market ◽

Social Policy ◽

Minimum Wage ◽

Income Tax ◽

Social Insurance ◽

Full Time ◽

Income Support ◽

Earned Income ◽

Federal Minimum Wage ◽

Hourly Basis

This chapter highlights two policies that supplement the earnings of low-wage workers: the federal minimum wage and the earned income tax credit (EITC). The need for earnings supplements arises in part from the nature of the jobs held by less-skilled, low-wage workers. Such jobs are likely to be compensated on an hourly basis, not salaried, and are less likely to be full time. A focus on the minimum wage and the EITC contributes to—and expands our understanding of—the American welfare state in two ways. First, it looks beyond social insurance and public assistance, which have been considered the main tools of social policy, to explore the importance of alternative antipoverty policies. Second, it moves beyond income support to nonworkers to focus on efforts to support individuals who areactivein the labor market.

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Disability and Labor Market Earnings

Journal of Disability Policy Studies ◽

10.1177/1044207316658752 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 27 (3) ◽

pp. 178-188 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Shandra G. Benito ◽

Thomas S. Glassman ◽

Bridget G. Hiedemann

Keyword(s):

Labor Market ◽

Hard Of Hearing ◽

Full Time ◽

Market Outcomes ◽

Hearing Disability ◽

Hearing Ability ◽

Earnings Gap ◽

Employment Rates ◽

And Gender ◽

The Relationship

Over one million Americans aged 15 years and older are deaf or hard of hearing. These individuals may face barriers to and within the labor market, leading to lower employment rates and reduced earnings compared with their counterparts without a hearing disability. Our study contributes to the sparse literature on the relationship between hearing disability and labor market outcomes by examining “hearing earnings gaps,” namely, earnings gaps between individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing and their counterparts without a hearing disability. Using a sample of 25- to 40-year-old full-time year-round workers from the 2011 American Community Survey, we estimate separate earnings equations by hearing ability and gender using generalized estimating equations. For both men and women, Blinder–Oaxaca decompositions indicate that roughly 40% of the overall hearing earnings gap is attributable to differences in educational attainment, potential experience, race/ethnicity, and marital status. The remaining 60% may reflect differences in communication skills and other unobservable characteristics, occupational segregation, labor market discrimination, and stigma.

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Hit Hard but Recover Slowly: The Asymmetric Effects of Social Distancing Policies on the US Labor Market

Frontiers of Economics in China ◽

10.54605/fec20210404 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 16 (4) ◽

pp. 666-696

Author(s):

Shujie Peng ◽

◽

Jingjing Ye ◽

Keyword(s):

Labor Market ◽

Low Income ◽

Income Group ◽

Vulnerable Groups ◽

Asymmetric Effect ◽

Social Distancing ◽

The Us ◽

State Employment ◽

Employment Rates ◽

Wage Earners

This study employs a difference-in-differences approach to examine the US labor market response to two widely used social distancing policies, stay-at-home (SAH) order and non-essential business closure, with special attention paid to the asymmetric effect of the policies’ imposition and lifting. Exploiting the variation across states and time, we find that state employment rates declined by 4.3% and 1.9% for the two policies respectively, within one month of the enaction of social distancing policies, but the recovery was slower after the policies were removed. We also highlight that the low-income group suffered the highest employment rate drop from the SAH enaction while presenting the mildest rebound. Self-employed workers were more affected by the policy impositions but recovered slightly faster than wage earners. Our results suggest persistent efforts must be made after the pandemic, especially for more vulnerable groups in the labor market.

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Unclear Signals, Uncertain Prospects: The Labor Market Consequences of Freelancing in the New Economy

Social Forces ◽

10.1093/sf/soaa043 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Quan D Mai

Keyword(s):

Labor Market ◽

Causal Effect ◽

New Economy ◽

Full Time ◽

Contingent Work ◽

Employer Perceptions ◽

History Of ◽

Market Consequences ◽

Full Time Employment ◽

Depth Interviews

Abstract The advent of various types of contingent jobs complicates selection criteria for full-time employment. While previous studies analyzed the penalties associated with other forms of contingent work, the labor market consequences of freelancing have been overlooked. I argue that freelancing works have features of both “good” and “bad” jobs, transcend the demarcation between “primary” and “secondary” sectors implied by segmentation theorists, and thus embed uncertainty around their categorization and meaning. Drawing on the “signal clarity” concept from management scholarship, I extend existing sociological works on employer perceptions of candidates by proposing a model to theorize how a history of freelancing affects workers’ prospects at the hiring stage. I present results from two interrelated studies. First, I use a field experiment that involves submitting nearly 12,000 fictitious resumes to analyze the causal effect of a freelancing work history on the likelihood of getting callbacks. The experiment reveals that freelancing decreases workers’ odds of securing full-time employment by about 30 percent. Second, I use data from 42 in-depth interviews with hiring officers to illustrate two mechanisms that could account for that observed effect. Interview data demonstrate that freelancing sends decidedly unclear competence signals: employers are hesitant to hire freelancers not because these candidates lack skills but because verifying these skills is difficult. Freelancing also sends clearer and negative commitment signals. This study sheds new lights on labor market segmentation theory and deepens our understanding of how nonstandard work operates as a vehicle for inequality in the new economy.

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Retirement decisions in a changing labor market

Journal of Pension Economics and Finance ◽

10.1017/s1474747221000056 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-4

Author(s):

Robert L. Clark ◽

Joseph P. Newhouse

Keyword(s):

Labor Market ◽

Labor Force ◽

Older Workers ◽

Pension Plans ◽

Work Life ◽

Full Time ◽

Employment Conditions ◽

Retirement Saving ◽

Retirement Decisions ◽

Full Time Employment

Abstract The papers in this volume examine a series of important questions that influence the transition from full time employment to complete retirement. Retirement is shown to be a process as individuals move from career jobs to bridge jobs to being out of the labor force. The articles examine the characteristics of bridge jobs and the employment conditions that older workers prefer. Analysis provided by the authors show the importance of saving throughout work life and how pension plans and retirement saving plans influence the timing of retirement.

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Long-term employment outcomes after epilepsy surgery in childhood

Neurology ◽

10.1212/wnl.0000000000008681 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 94 (2) ◽

pp. e205-e216 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Jesper Reinholdson ◽

Ingrid Olsson ◽

Anna Edelvik Tranberg ◽

Kristina Malmgren

Keyword(s):

General Population ◽

Educational Attainment ◽

Epilepsy Surgery ◽

Reference Data ◽

Employment Outcomes ◽

Full Time ◽

Employment Rates ◽

Full Time Employment

ObjectiveTo analyze long-term employment outcomes in a population-based cohort of adults who underwent epilepsy surgery in childhood or adolescence and to compare the results to general population reference data.MethodsProspective data on epilepsy surgery procedures performed on patients <19 years of age between 1995 and 2012 were extracted from the Swedish National Epilepsy Surgery Register. Five-, 10-, 15- and 20-year follow-up data were analyzed. Patients aged ≥19 years at follow-up were eligible for inclusion. Educational attainment and employment status were analyzed in relation to seizure outcome. Education and employment outcomes of seizure-free patients with a preoperative IQ of ≥70 were compared to general population reference data.ResultsA total of 203 patients were included. The mean age at surgery was 13.6 years and 66% had IQ ≥70. Of these, a majority had attained at least high school education 5 years after surgery. Employment rates were 44%, 69%, 71%, and 77% at the 5-, 10-, 15-, and 20-year follow-ups, respectively. Seizure-free patients were significantly more likely to work full-time. Educational attainment and rates of full-time employment of seizure-free patients were similar to the general population. A majority of patients with IQ <70 had attended special education and were reliant on social benefits.ConclusionLong-term overall employment rates were higher compared to most previous studies on surgery in adults. Seizure-free patients with a preoperative IQ ≥70 showed rates of full-time employment similar to the general population. Further research is needed to determine whether this also applies for occupational complexity and wages.

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The Transition to Parenthood in the French and German Speaking Parts of Switzerland

Social Inclusion ◽

10.17645/si.v8i4.3018 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 8 (4) ◽

pp. 35-45 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Regula Zimmermann ◽

Jean-Marie LeGoff

Keyword(s):

Labor Market ◽

Transition To Parenthood ◽

Full Time ◽

Labor Division ◽

Male Breadwinner ◽

The Family ◽

French Speaking ◽

German Speaking ◽

Full Time Employment ◽

Depth Interviews

After the first transition to parenthood, most couples adopt a gendered labor division, where mothers become main caregivers and fathers breadwinners of the family. By comparing two distinct language regions within one country, the present article explores how parents’ gendered labor division comes into existence and what role gendered culture and social policy play. The analysis draws on in-depth interviews with 23 German speaking and 73 French speaking participants from Switzerland. The results reveal that French speaking women and men presume an egalitarian labor division as parents. In German speaking regions, however, participants anticipate that mothers will become the main caregivers and fathers the breadwinners. It is shown that the labor market structure, which is in line with the male breadwinner norm, contributes to men’s full-time employment, whereas mothers’ labor market insertion is influenced by the acceptance of non-parental childcare and to a lesser extent by the offer of childcare facilities. Further, mothers experience more time conflicts than fathers, and the less mothers’ paid work is accepted, the more they suffer from feelings of guilt when being employed.

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Employment Prospects and Skill Acquisition of Apprenticeship-Trained Workers in Germany

ILR Review ◽

10.1177/001979399604900405 ◽

1996 ◽

Vol 49 (4) ◽

pp. 658-672 ◽

Cited By ~ 42

Author(s):

Rainer Winkelmann

Keyword(s):

Labor Market ◽

Secondary Schools ◽

Skill Acquisition ◽

Vocational Schools ◽

Full Time ◽

Job Stability ◽

Apprenticeship Training ◽

Using Data ◽

Unemployment Spells ◽

Full Time Employment

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel for 1984–90, the author analyzes the entrance of young individuals into the German labor market, comparing the experience of apprenticeship graduates to that of graduates from universities, full-time vocational schools, and secondary schools. Apprentices experienced fewer unemployment spells in the transition to their first full-time employment than did non-apprentices. Among apprentices, those trained in large firms had the smoothest transition to employment; once employed, however, apprentices (whether they stayed in their training firm or not) and non-apprentices had similar job stability (as measured by tenure). An estimated 70% of apprenticeship trainees left their training firm within a five-year period. These findings are consistent with the view that apprenticeship training develops general, portable skills rather than firm-specific skills.

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Agronomist vacancy in the online labor market: how employers want to see it

E3S Web of Conferences ◽

10.1051/e3sconf/202128501001 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 285 ◽

pp. 01001

Author(s):

Anna Aletdinova

Keyword(s):

Labor Market ◽

Work Experience ◽

Research Method ◽

Full Time ◽

Professional Standard ◽

Main Research ◽

Labor Exchange ◽

Online Labor ◽

Critical Competencies ◽

Full Time Employment

In the article, the author identifies the professional and critical competencies of the Russian agronomist. The purpose of the study is to analyze the requirements of employers for vacancies of agronomists. The main research method is the intellectual analysis of the data of the online labor exchange. The author emphasized that the majority of vacancies contain invitations for full-time employment of agronomists, have requirements for work experience from 1 year to 6 years, salary offers from 25,000 rubles. Employers have more diverse requirements for competencies that differ from the competencies set out in the professional standard.

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