The Management of Retirement Savings Among Financially Heterogamous Couples

Retirement scholars (and policy makers) have traditionally assumed spouses share their retirement savings, even when they are financially heterogamous and their individual saving capacities diverge. Recent research, however, has challenged this assumption, emphasising that wealth is unequally distributed within couples. In this study, we contribute to this debate by exploring how often financially heterogamous spouses describe their management of retirement savings as joint and redistributive. Data collected in Québec (Canada) in 2015 show that 28 per cent of couples with an income differential report to balance retirement savings across partners. Building on exchange and institutional theories of conjugal behaviour, we also stress that the prevalence of this practice varies with several factors, including union duration and matrimonial status. These findings suggest policy makers underestimate the size of the population at risk of old age financial vulnerability when assuming lower-income individuals are well prepared for retirement if partnered with a better-off spouse who saves.

Ghanaian cocoa prices point to LID implementation

Significance The price bump comes amid a push by Ghana and Ivory Coast, the world's two largest producers, for cocoa buyers to pay a Living Income Differential (LID) of USD400 per metric tonne. Impacts Despite paying the LID, buyers may not be able to downsize their sustainability programmes given productivity and ethical sourcing demands. Cameroon and Nigeria may wish to join an expanded agreement, which would cover nearly 75% of global supplies. The increased attention on the Ghanaian government’s cocoa-related demands may see greater domestic scrutiny over its sectoral management.

The Brazilian agribusiness labor market: measurement, characterization and analysis of income differentials

Although the Brazilian agribusiness sector’s relevance to the country has been widely recognized nowadays, to date, no study has been developed to evaluate the level of employment in this sector as a whole for Brazil. Therefore, the first objective of this study is to access the Brazilian agribusiness labor market, and to measure it, analyze its structure and characterize its workers. Agribusiness worker income differentials were also contrasted with income differentials in the aggregated non-agribusiness labor force. The main results from the study are as follows: a) in 2017, 18.2 million individuals, 20.1% of the country’s labor force, worked in the Brazilian agribusiness sector; b) agribusiness workers were predominately unskilled or semi-skilled with a low level of schooling; c) a large proportion of the sector’s labor force were not formally employed; and d) the average income of agribusiness employees was lower than that of individuals in other economic sectors. There is also extreme labor market heterogeneity among agribusiness sector segments – with the primary segment presenting a noticeably dissimilar profile – and a significant income differential associated with different labor market statuses, economic sub-sectors and locations, and with individual characteristics such as level of schooling, skin tone and gender.

West African cocoa commitments face major tests

Subject West African Cocoa. Significance Having amended a June proposal for a cocoa price floor of 2,600 dollars per metric tonne (mt), Ivory Coast and Ghana are seeking to enforce compliance with a revised plan that instead includes a 400-dollar-per-mt Living Income Differential (LID) to improve cocoa farmers' livelihoods. The LID applies to purchases starting in the 2020/21 season; compared to 2019/20 forward sales at this time last year, current sales for 2020/21 are down by two-thirds. To ensure LID compliance, the two cocoa regulators -- the Ivorian Coffee and Cocoa Board (CCC) and Ghana Cocoa Board (Cocobod) -- have vowed to monitor whether chocolate companies and processors' sustainability programmes can co-exist to mutual benefit. Impacts Both governments will maintain pressure for LID compliance, as they seek to demonstrate efficacy in improving rural livelihoods. The future LID price incentive to farmers may come into conflict with Ivory Coast’s stated goal to limit cocoa production from next year. Third-party certification schemes and in-house sustainability programmes will face pressure to demonstrate equivalent impact to the LID.

Cornwall, Kent and London

Emigration from Cornwall outstripped all other counties in England and Wales in the late nineteenth century: it was at the top of the league table of per capita emigration. The international adjustment by the Cornish migrants was framed by the income differential which had decisively widened under the impact of the much more successful copper mining operations overseas. Cornish emigration showed that the effects of mining decline were written on top of the conventional processes of rural decline as the industrial economy of Britain expanded, sucking away much of the demographic revolution. Cornwall and Kent were two variants of the general responsiveness of rural England to the opportunities of emigration and the imperatives of population shifts. Kent was a more purely rural county, with little mining activity, but adjacent to London.

Endogamy and income in native couples: the case of Finland

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study two native and equal population groups, Finnish speakers and Swedish speakers in Finland, to examine whether there is income variation across couples that differ on ethno-linguistic composition, and if such variation can be attributed to differences in education, educational homogamy and other observable characteristics. Design/methodology/approach Using detailed register-based household data, the authors estimate OLS models to compare endogamous and exogamous couples with respect to income of the man, the woman, and both partners, respectively. Findings Endogamous Swedish-speaking couples are found to have on average 25 per cent higher income than other couples. The advantage is not related to differences in educational homogamy, but primarily to man’s income, and roughly half of the income difference is explained by the higher educational level of Swedish-speaking men in endogamous couples. Although women in endogamous Swedish-speaking couples are higher educated than other women, and there is a higher degree of educational homogamy in these couples, their education has only a modest bearing on the income differential. Originality/value In the case of Finland, educational homogamy does not affect income variation across native couples that differ on ethno-linguistic composition. Endogamous mate selection seems to increase economic inequality, uphold gender inequality, and help the native minority group in sustaining its own community.