scholarly journals The 500+ Family Program and the objective of the Europe 2020 labour market area

2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (9) ◽  
pp. 71-86
Author(s):  
Barbara Kryk

There is huge controversy around the issue of the impact of the 500+ benefit program on the labour market in Poland, especially on the professional activity of women. The effects in this area are not only relevant for the country but also for the European Union as a whole, as they determine the achievement of the employment goal of the Europe 2020 strategy. It was, therefore, decided to examine this issue more closely. The main goal of the article is to investigate how the 500+ benefit affects the supply of female labour force and the achievement of the employment target of the Europe 2020 strategy. The specific objectives: (1) what were the goals of the Polish government in the area of the labour market at the beginning of the implementation of the EU strategy, and what goals are currently in the Strategy for Responsible Development (SOR)? (2) what were the dynamics of female labour supply compared to the changes in the labour market ? (3) what is the significance of the 500+ program for the trends in the labour market ? (4) what loss (if any) for the economy resulted from the reduction of women’s employment generated? The subject of the study is women’s labour supply/employment, and the subject of research is the Polish economy. To achieve the study goals, the desk research method, time series and indicator analysis, and GDP gaps were used. The research period is 2010-2019, with particular emphasis on the period after the introduction of the benefit in 2016. The research conducted shows that adverse changes in the labour force supply of women caused by the 500+ benefits, were offset by the return to the labour market of previously unemployed or inactive people. Thus, the strategic goal related to employment was achieved.

Equilibrium ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michaela Stanickova

Research background: Economic crisis hit all the European Union Member States hard, with the impact of crisis varying considerably. The low growth performance in the EU has increased concerns regarding an increasing wage dispersion, income inequality at large, and social exclusion in line with poverty. Inequality should be seen as a cornerstone of both sustainable and inclusive growth under the Europe 2020 Strategy. Social inequality in the EU is a real problem, which hampers sustainable economic growth. Purpose of the article: The purpose of this study is to introduce evaluation of social development convergence and divergence trends between the EU Member States in the context of the Europe 2020 Strategy. The study gives an outline of the issues of the labour market and income disparities and poverty. Policymakers must be clear about what social objectives they are aiming to achieve, therefore special attention is paid to headline national goals of the Europe 2020 Strategy. Methods: The main task of this study is to assess social dimension and inequalities problems in the EU27 by applying Data Envelopment Analysis method, resp. time-series dynamic efficiency analysis in the form of output-oriented Malmquist Productivity Index. This study contains changes of key social equality indicators related to the Europe 2020 Strategy and compares objectives and general outlines of period 2010-2015, as well as the impact on national economics and living conditions. Findings & value added: Results contain elements of typology premises of the EU28 and point to a large diversity in inequality patterns, as the Author observes both increases and decreases in inequality at the EU level. Recent changes in social inequality have been associated with the business cycle, particularly with the accessibility of the labour market and, of course, with income inequality. Additionally, the development challenges are discussed for improvement of the socioeconomic well-being of the EU and to avoid social disparities.


2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 24-43
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Bartosik ◽  

The paper investigates the effect of child cash benefit “Family 500+” on the female labour supply in Poland, taking into account demographic and cyclical determinants. The study is based on the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and Polish Central Statistical Office quarterly data. The analyses cover the period of 2016–2018. The Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR) is the measure of labour supply. The analysis uses a counterfactual method to determine the impact of demographic and behavioural changes on female labour supply. To identify the causes of the economic inactivity of women (adopted by LFS), decomposition of the growth rate of economically inactive women is applied. The effect of the business cycle on female labour supply is analysed using OLS recursive regression. The study found that the LFPR of women aged 25–44 decreased after 2015. This was related to the cash transfers under the “Family 500+” programme and the increasing number of economically inactive women by reason of “family and household responsibilities”. At the same time, changes in the demographic structure contributed positively to the LFPR of women aged 25–44, while the business cycle did not have a significant impact on it. OLS recursive regression showed that in the 25–44 age group, the introduction of “Family 500+” coincided with changes in the relationships between the LFPR, the percentage of the “discouraged”, economically inactive women by reason of “family responsibilities” and the unemployment rate.


2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-19
Author(s):  
Gindra Kasnauskienė ◽  
Tomas Šiaudvytis

Migration flows have increased since the EU enlargement in 2004. In many European countries, they are sufficiently large to have significant economic effects. These effects are among the most popular topics in public debate. In this paper, the authors attempt to quantify the effects of emigration on wages, welfare and in­come redistribution in the selected new EU member states. Emigration reduces labour supply and in­creases national wage generating income redistribu­tion from the owners of capital to the labour force. Emigration also results in welfare loss as emigrants no longer produce output in their home country. The au­thors of the article adopt a simple theoretical model of the labour market which allows quantifying these effects through the use of basic economic and demo­graphic statistics. The research on the effects of emigration on wages uses a simple supply and demand framework, where labour demand is derived from a marginal pro­ductivity condition using the Cobb–Douglas produc­tion function. The authors also assume perfectly ine­lastic labour supply, in case of which the effect of emigration on wages is entirely determined by labour demand. Wage elasticity estimation uses the fact that the capital share parameter in the Cobb–Douglas function also measures labour demand elasticity. This property of the production function allows the au­thors to estimate the elasticity using national ac­counts data. The estimates of labour demand (wage) elas­ticity for Lithuania range from 0.44 to 0.55, implying that due to emigration wages might have increased from 0.75 to 0.94 per cent a year, on average. In the period of 2001–2008, emigration might have resulted in a wage increase of 5.9 to 7.3 per cent. However, these estimates require caution as the beginning of the period was characterised by high unemployment. Emigration loss amounts to 0.4 per cent of GDP, and 2.8 per cent of GDP is redistributed to labour every year. Due to the poor quality of migration data, the impact of emigration on wages, welfare and income redistribution in other countries is most likely signifi­cantly underestimated. The assumption that the share of declared emigration is similar across countries would imply that those affected by emigration the most are Slovenia, Czech Republic and Estonia.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
marco marucci ◽  
Massimo De Minicis

Since the establishment of a European strategy to create more and better jobs at the end of ’90s Member States faced many efforts pursuing the target of high percentage of employed persons, target renewed with Europe 2020 strategy. In the same years many citizenship rights, universally recognized, started to be conditioned to the employment status: the “welfarism” was rapidly substituted with “workfare”, with the twin aims of encouraging activation of labour force and - less claimed – of cutting public expenses, especially in social services. In this paper we analyse trends and relations of certain dimension of employment to better understand the sustainability of this approach. The “new” employment is more and more characterized by undermining factors: insecurity, precariousness, poverty. States pursuing active labour market policies, under a Flexicurity approach, besides a good labour market performance, are still facing with poverty and job insecurity of many workers. This is accompanied by growth of household indebtedness, the other dangerous drawback of welfare “commodification” processes. Beyond enforce Employment Protection Legislations, Basic income or Minimum wages, we should change the targets of European strategy with more social or qualitative components (e.g. quality of employment) and get over the Flexicurity approach


2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Namrata Singha Roy ◽  
Ishita Mukhopadhyay

This article has examined the labour market behaviour of rural India, with the objective to assess the changes taking place in the structure of the workforce and attempts to identify the factors affecting the changes in rural labour supply. In particular, this article tries to address the inconsistency between absolute declines in labour force, particularly rural females at national level, with the micro-level evidences of feminisation in farm work through the estimation of labour supply function. Empirical findings indicate an increasing trend in female participation, particularly aged in rural India. The significant positive association of occupation dummy with male labour supply and negative association with female labour supply, in one way, explains the greater participation of male workers in non-farm work and higher concentration of females in farm activities. Therefore, attention needs to be paid to promote initiatives such as youth entrepreneurship in agriculture to retain youth in farming, encourage innovations in designing appropriate location-specific machineries and tools which are female-friendly, and also organise capacity-building programmes for skill augmentation focusing rural female workers. JEL: J21, J43, J42, J16


Urbanisation ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. S40-S57
Author(s):  
Deepaboli Chatterjee ◽  
Neelanjan Sircar

In this article, we analyse the reasons for low female labour force participation (FLFP) across approximately 14,000 households in the Indian urban clusters of Dhanbad, Indore, Patna and Varanasi. We argue that expectations placed upon women to carry out household duties generate incentives for them to largely seek part-time work near their homes, due to what we term as flexibility and proximity of work. While this characterises most agricultural employment, this is not true of urban employment. Using this framework, we argue that requirements to travel large distances for most jobs put prohibitive costs on women entering the labour market. To empirically test our claims, we conduct a survey experiment on the female respondents who are currently unemployed in our sample to elicit labour market preferences. Our results are striking—women are 12 to 23 percentage points less likely to express a preference for a suitable job if they have to travel one hour to work. The magnitude of these effects is far greater than the impact of the primary wage earner of the household losing their job or other family members assisting the woman in household duties. We conclude the article by discussing the implications for policy.


2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 244-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maryam Dilmaghani ◽  
Jason Dean

Purpose – The relationship between religiosity and female labour market attainment has been widely investigated for the USA; however, no comparable study has been undertaken for the Canadian context. The purpose of this paper is to redress this critical oversight of the literature by examining the impact of religiosity on Canadian female labour supply, both at extensive and intensive margins. Design/methodology/approach – Using data from the Canadian Ethnic Diversity Survey, the authors consider all the measurable dimensions of religiosity, for the pooled sample, as well as by religious group. A wide array of control variables is included in the regressions to insure the reliability of the estimates. Findings – The authors find that overall religiosity inversely relates to female labour supply in Canada. When the impact of religiosity is assessed on a by religion basis, it is revealed that Protestant females are penalized, by far the most. Practical implications – The result is comparable with the pattern uncovered in the USA for Conservative Protestant females. Unlike what can be expected, no statistically significant difference is detected between religious-nones and Catholics, suggesting a convergence of gender ideologies. Originality/value – The investigation reveals interesting patterns that not only contribute to the current state of literature, but also motivate future research. Fairlie and Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition techniques are also used to further explore attainment gaps among the religious groups.


2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 662-673
Author(s):  
Vladimir Gonda

In the current conditions of globalization, the importance of innovation is growing. Innovation is a key to sustainable growth, a tool to increase the competitiveness of companies, regions, states and integration groups, a means to address societal challenges. The European Union pays great attention to innovation efforts - f.e. through the group-wide strategies of competitiveness such as the Lisbon strategy and the Europe 2020 strategy. The aim of the paper is to evaluate the fulfillment of the Europe 2020 national goals for Slovakia in the field of smart growth, to analyze selected issues of innovative development in Slovakia and to propose possible measures for its improvement. As the subject matter is extremely complex and multitangular, the paper discusses only selected issues and questions.


2019 ◽  
pp. 199-212
Author(s):  
Paul Bivand

The chapter begins by identifying the theoretical roots of labour market concepts, notably the Phillips Curve relating unemployment and inflation. It then presents the definitions of “employment” and “unemployment” developed by the International Labour Organisation. These are measured by the quarterly Labour Force Survey, which provides not just simple counts but also flows between these categories, here presented graphically. One problem is that localised unemployment data use different definitions from the national headline rate, but a larger problem is that in all measures individuals must be counted as either employed or unemployed, when increasing numbers of workers work fewer or more hours than they wish, sometimes on variable hours contracts or as insecure sub-contractors in the “gig economy”. These new forms of work, generally disadvantaged, make gathering reliable data harder, and the chapter ends by discussing earnings data, and measuring the impact of minimum wage legislation.


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