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In this paper we make use of the panel aspects of the German GSOEP, the Swedish HUS and the British BHPS data. In these data sets we known month and year of childbirth and the month to month labor force status of the mother also before giving birth. This permits analysis of labor force transitions triggered by child births of different birth orders. From macro data Swedish women are known to have the highest labor force participation. The difference in total labor force participation of women is totally a result of fewer mothers entering the labor force and entering later in Germany and Great Britain than in Sweden. This paper shows that before birth of first child there is no such difference. We find that German and British women have even higher full-time labor force participation than Swedish women 12 months before the birth of the first child. The difference is more pronounced for second and third births than for first births. We suggest that these differences are caused by different family policy regimes where Germany can be characterized as a breadwinner regime and Sweden a regime oriented towards equal role sharing of father and mother. Our results on determinants of being in the labor force both after and before the birth of a child as well as determinants of the tempo of entering the labor force after birth shows that women's own human capital is important both in Germany and Great Britain, whereas in Sweden also less educated women have entered the labor force by the time the child is 2 years old.

The paper aims to ascertain the extent to which saving and fertility decisions are affected by the availability and attractiveness of market-based or state-provided alternatives to the family as a source of old-age support. Subordinately, the paper aims to bring evidence to bear on the assumption that fertility is endogenous and jointly determined with saving, and to test two alternative hypotheses about individual motivations. The saving and fertility implications of two alternative models of family choice — based one on the assumption of pure self-interest, the other on that of intergenerational altruism — are first derived theoretically. Saving and fertility equations are then estimated from Italian time-series data, using as explanatory variables the market rate of interest, the social security deficit, various measures of capital market accessibility and social security coverage, and a number of income and wage variables. Particularly worthy of note is the result that a fully-funded increase in social security coverage raises saving, while an increase in the social security deficit has the opposite effect. The empirical findings appear to support the assumption that fertility is endogenous and jointly determined with saving, and to favour the hypothesis that individual decisions are motivated by self-interest rather than intergenerational altruism. Some of the policy implications are briefly discussed in the concluding section.

This paper explores the responses of fertility and nuptiality to fluctuations in real wages and mortality that can be inferred from annual series of English historical data over the period 1542 to 1800. The paper begins with a review of the time series properties of the data and summarizes the long-term equilibrium relationships identified in previous work. A Vector Error Correction Mechanism (VECM) is then proposed to study the observed short-term fluctuations in a way that is compatible with long-term equilibria. Following estimation of the parameters of the VECM, an investigation is made of the impact of shocks to real wages and mortality on demographic variables as measured by generalized impulse responses and persistence profiles.

The issue addressed in this paper is whether or not the decline in immigrant labor-market quality in the U.S. observed in the late 1960’s and 1970’s continued in the 1980vs. Two other papers, Borjas (1995) and Funkhouser and Trejo (1995), have addressed the issue and have come up with contradictory results. In this paper I use a different data set, one that has advantages over the data sets used in the other studies. Given the rise in earnings inequality that has occurred in the United States over the 1980’s, the returns to immigration for the more highly skilled will have increased relative to the low skilled, ceteris paribus. For this reason, it is possible that the skill decline of immigrants may have halted in the 1980’s as immigrants of differing skill levels respond to the altered circumstances they would face in the United States. The empirical results show that the skill decline did indeed halt, a result which gives support to the Funkhouser/ Trejo result.

In a recent contribution to this Journal Anjomani and Hariri present an interesting study of United States interstate migration which explicitly incorporates so-called “flow diversion” and “flow creation” effects. Their discussion and evaluation of the model, however, are marred by several factors. This paper contrasts the roles of migrant stock and lagged migration in migration analysis and then addresses (a) the problems encountered when the “family-friends” effect is proxied with measures of lagged migrant flows, (b) the problem of using a two-period lagged value of earlier migrant flow as an explanatory variable, and (c) this paper suggests an alternative method of correcting the Anjomani-Hariri model's problems with multicollinearity.

In this paper the timing of maternity is estimated by a hazard model. The novel aspect of this paper is that it is shown that wages and total household labor income have a significant effect on the timing of maternity. Both the wage rate of the woman and the wage rate of the husband have a negative effect on the timing of maternity. Total household labor income increases the probability of having a child at an earlier age. Calculated elasticities show that the timing of maternity is relatively elastic with respect to wage rates. However, the elasticities of the decision whether or not to have children altogether are much smaller. Women working in the labor market delay the timing of maternity compared to non-participating women. Attending school has the same effect. Until the age of 28 the maternity hazard increases with age, after that it decreases.

"This paper deals with the destination decision of political migrants who, in spite of having strong cultural, ideological and religious ties to a particular potential destination, choose to emigrate elsewhere. The model presented characterizes the migrants, who have a choice of two possible destinations, by two properties, skill level and financial resources, and identifies those that move to each destination. The paper examines various immigration-encouraging policies and shows that although all of them will increase immigration, in some cases the economic quality of the new immigrants will rise and in some it will fall. This paper includes general evidence on the present immigration to Israel and some suggestions for empirical tests."

Why has European fertility fallen dramatically and why have European women taken paid employment over more years of their lives? What answers are suggested by economic models of women's labour supply and fertility? What are the implications of these models for differences in fertility and labour supply patterns between women and for econometric analysis? In this address, I review the main economic models, suggest how they answer these questions and explore what extensions to these models may be required. The review of models is limited to those which consider both fertility and employment decisions. I am indebted to two anonymous referees for their very helpful comments on an earlier draft of the paper, and to participants at the ESPE conference for their questions and discussion of the paper. I am, of course, solely responsible for the use I have made of their help.

"This paper presents a survey of recent literature on the effects of demographic variables on economic inequality. First, a number of conceptual and methodological questions are raised and discussed. They pertain to what is meant by inequality, what the range of demographic variables is, and how variable and endogenous are the demographic variables most widely used. The paper then turns to a review of empirical works on the distributive incidence of the following demographic variables: baby boomers entering the job market, aging population, variable fertility and mortality rates, internal and external migrations, divorce and widowhood, and finally donations and bequests. It appears that a lot of caution is needed when assessing the incidence of any demographic variable changing the size of the population because in this case standard inequality measures yield conflicting signals." The geographical focus is on developed countries.

"This paper uses the 1983 Census of Israel to analyze Hebrew speaking skills and the effects of Hebrew fluency on the earnings of adult male immigrants. Hebrew fluency increases with a longer duration in Israel, the presence of children in the household, marrying after immigration, living in an area in which a smaller proportion speak one's mother tongue, a younger age at migration, a higher level of schooling and varies by country of birth. Earnings increase monotonically with the use of Hebrew. Speaking English as a second language is associated with higher earnings, even when country of origin is held constant."

"Earnings differentials between married and unmarried [U.S.] men have been declining since the late 1960s. We consider two possible explanations for this decline: changes in the nature of selection into marriage; and changes in role specialization within marriage. Our analysis of changes in marriage differentials within cohorts supports only a small contribution of changes in selection. There is some evidence that differences in human-capital investment between married and unmarried men have fallen over time, but this effect has apparently been largely offset by increases in the return to that human capital." This is a revised version of a paper originally presented at the 1991 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America.

This paper presents three different poverty standards. A first approach takes the disposable income as an indicator of poverty. A second approach uses the Leyden approach. Finally an aggregate index of deprivation, based on the observation of consumption events, is constructed through a particular econometric procedure proposed by Desai and Shah (1988). These alternative measures are then compared on a sample composed of 6380 Belgian households. Such an analysis can be expected to provide some further insight into the problem of measuring poverty, which has been the subject of a recent controversial debate.

The purpose of this paper is to study the determinants of interstate migration in the United States from 1965–1970 when a new change in direction of migration has started, and to examine the flow creation or flow diversion that results from migration to some appealing regions. Several related variables have been selected and tested for gross interstate migration flows. The results show that overall both push and pull factors have not been important. People from higher income regions migrate more, and migrants tend to move to states with higher incomes and larger population. Distance was not found to act as a significant deterrence to migration, whereas population density of origin and destination was significant. Previous migration was found to have a very strong effect on migration. The results of the study also suggested that there has been a major change in the location of growth areas in the United States during 1955–1970.

"The focus of this paper is an empirical analysis of the effects of taxation on women's incentives to contribute to family income. Data on earnings and individual characteristics in 1984 for married or cohabiting Swedish couples...are used together with similar data on German couples.... The main features of the personal income taxation of the two countries have been programmed, and are used for simulating after tax incomes using both tax systems for both countries.... The difference between the Swedish and German tax systems is an important factor in explaining why Swedish women participate more than German women in the labor market, although paid parental leaves and subsidized childcare are other important explanations for the Swedish situation."

In this paper, we examine the optimal pay-as-you-go social security scheme which reallocates resources across generations in a changing environment, that is, with fluctuations in population growth rates and in productivity levels. We use an overlapping generations model along with a social welfare function consisting of the sum of generational utilities either unweighted or weighted by population size and a discount factor. We show how intergenerational resource sharing can be used to improve social welfare even though the extent of intergenerational redistribution is hampered by payroll tax deadweight losses in the spirit of the optimal taxation literature. Also it appears that resource sharing is much more restricted in a closed economy that in an open economy, which is not subject to a national resource constraint at each period of time.

"The burden of financing retirement incomes in an ageing population is predicted to rise sharply in future decades. This paper investigates the effects of reforms to the Australian tax-benefit system involving a greater reliance on proportional taxation for raising revenue and a more targeted welfare system for cutting government expenditure, in order to reduce expected budget deficits. Estimates of changes in net incomes and hours of work suggest that reforms of this kind shift the tax burden to lower and middle income households with a second earner and that they can have counter-productive labour supply effects. The study explores the impact of projected increases in female work force participation and illustrates the importance of shifts in the labour supply of married women in predicting the fiscal effects of demographic change."

"This paper analyses the effects of unemployment on the probability of marital dissolution. Based on panel data for a sample of Danish married couples, we estimate a dynamic model for the probability of marital dissolution where we take into account the possible effects of unemployment for both spouses. We also control for other factors such as education, age, presence of children, place of residence, health and economic factors. The empirical results show that unemployment seems to be an important factor behind marital instability. However, only unemployment of the husband has an effect, and this effect is immediate."

This paper develops a model of remarriage for women with particular emphasis on the role of investments in marriage-specific human capital. A distinction is made between marriage-specific skills that are transferable across marriages and those that are specific to a particular spouse. It is hypothesized that transferable marriage-specific skills constitute an asset and a major component of gains from marriage for previously married women. A high level of such skills is expected to be associated with fast remarriage. The presence of children is expected to delay remarriage, because it indicates lower levels of past and future investments that would be relevant to a new partnership. These hypotheses are examined using Cox-regression techniques with data on white and black women from the 1982 National Survey of Family Growth. The empirical results are consistent with the hypotheses. A systematic pattern of race differentials is uncovered, which can be interpreted within the context of the model.

This paper tests the assimilation hypothesis with Norwegian data. Using both cross-section and cohort analyses, the results show that the 1970–1979 immigrant cohort experienced an earnings growth of about 11% between 1980 and 1990, when their earnings profile was compared to that of natives. This is lower than the 19% assimilation rate predicted by the cross-section method. On the contrary, the results reveal a rapid earnings divergence across cohorts, and between the 1960–1969 cohort and natives. It is also shown that the „quality” of successive immigrant waves has declined over time, thus biasing the cross-section estimates of assimilation.

This paper studies the differences in earnings between Mexican legal and illegal immigrants in the United States. The analysis includes a cross-sectional examination of the wage differences between legal and undocumented workers as well as a longitudinal analysis examining the impact of legalization on the earnings of previously-undocumented workers. It is shown that the average hourly wage rate of male Mexican legal immigrants in the United States was 41.8% higher than that of undocumented workers while female legal immigrants earned 40.8% more. Though illegal immigrants have lower education and English proficiency, and a shorter period of residence in the United States, than legal immigrants, it is shown that differences in the observed characteristics of legal and illegal immigrants explain only 48% of the log-wage gap between male legal and illegal workers and 43% of the gap for women. An analysis of undocumented immigrants legalized after the 1986 U.S. immigration policy reform shows significant wage growth in the four years following legalization. These gains are due mostly to the change in legal status itself, not to changes in the characteristics of immigrants over time.

This paper examines the dynamic implications of US border control policies and internal enforcement measures for the pattern of illegal immigration and the sectoral allocation of clandestine foreign workers. Efforts to counteract illegal immigration into the US have been increasing steadily following the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. The purpose of the Act is to reduce illegal immigration with the aid of three instruments: 1) employer sanctions; 2) increased controls along the border; and 3) a legalization program designed to meet the existing demand for agricultural labor in geographic locations that are in proximity of Mexico, the principal source of clandestine foreign labor. The effect of tougher border control measures increases the cost of illegal entry, discouraging clandestine inflows. On the other hand, these measures induce migrants to increase their own anti-detection efforts, reducing the probability of detection and the deportation rate. If the latter effect should dominate, the steady-state stock of clandestine foreign labor will actually increase in response to more vigorous border control measures. Explicit consideration of the role of networks in the clandestine labor market suggests the need for a drastic policy change. This policy change should target illegal migration in areas with high concentrations of clandestine foreign workers. Complementary measures should accompany this policy change to prevent unbalanced enforcement measures.

This paper uses the data on males and females from the 1989 Legalized Population Survey (LPS), a sample of aliens granted amnesty under 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, to analyse English language proficiency and earnings. We use a model of English language proficiency that is based on economic incentives, exposure and efficiency variables that measure the costs and benefits of aquiring English language skills. Consistent with the model, in this sample of former illegal aliens, English language proficiency is greater for those with more schooling, who immigrated at a younger age, who have been in the United States longer, with a more continous stay, and who have less access to other origin language speakers where they live. Earnings are higher by about 8% for men and 17% for women who are proficient in both speaking and reading English, compared to those lacking both skills.

"This paper investigates the commonly asserted proposition that long term economic changes have put the family in a financial bind. Structural parameters of a family utility model are obtained by estimating simultaneous labor supply functions for a two-earner household. We find evidence indicating that the average 1990s two-earner family would prefer to receive the 1980s real wage package (were it available) instead of the real wage package it actually faces. The degree to which the 1990s family is worse off (in terms of the changes in the real wage package) is roughly equivalent to an hour of leisure per week." The data are from the 1993 Current Population Survey and concern the United States.

Part-time work whilst still in full-time education is common in many industrialized countries, and teenagers constitute a significant component of the work force in some sectors of the labour market. In Britain, in the early 1990`s, some 60% of 16-18 year olds still in full time education also worked part-time. Although the determinants of teenager participation in the labour market have been studied previously (both in the United States and the United Kingdom), there remain a number of neglected questions. We address some of these in this paper, basing our analysis on data taken from the UK National Child Development Study. We first examine how teenagers divide their time between working and studying. We further analyse what explains teenage wages and labour supply. We utilise a rich set of variables describing parental background, as well as parents` labour force status and draw on information on physical stature to explain variations in wages. JEL classification: I20, J20, J31

"This paper provides an empirical investigation of a theoretical model of the marriage market. In the model, women are valued more for their ability to bear children and men are valued more for the ability to make money. Men cannot reveal their labor market ability to potential spouses until they enter the labor force. At the same time, the relevant information for evaluating females as spouses is revealed at a younger age. The model predicts that the income of males will be positively associated with age-at-first-marriage. We find empirical support for the model [based on U.S. data]. However, we also find the association between male earnings and age-at-first-marriage becomes negative for those who married after age 30, which was not predicted by the model. Consistent with the model, we do not find a strong relationship between earnings and age-at-first-marriage among females."

Recent research on the linguistic adjustment of minority-language speaking immigrants in several destinations has found that acquisition of destination language skills is inhibited by living in an area where many others speak the same minority language. This paper uses a unique data set for Australia (1988) that includes a variety of ethnic network variables to analyze the role of the language concentration measure. These ethnic variables, in particular, ethnic press, relatives in Australia, and spouse’s origin language, are highly statistically significant. Their inclusion in the equation eliminates the effect of the minority-language concentration variable. The model for analyzing the determinants of English reading and English writing skills in Australia is also shown to be very similar to the model for speaking fluency, including the effect of the ethnic network variables.

"Children claim a large part of the parents' potential resources, particularly their time. Direct time costs arise through the time spent out of the labour force while the children are small, indirect costs are the result of lower investment into human capital. It is demonstrated in this paper that the average opportunity costs of children of lower educated mothers [in the Netherlands] can be higher than those of higher educated mothers."

"Ireland experienced dramatic levels of emigration in the century following the Famine of 1845-1849. The paper surveys the recent cliometric literature on post-Famine emigration and its effects on Irish living standards. The conclusions are that the Famine played a significant role in unleashing the subsequent emigration; and that emigration was crucial for the impressive increase in Irish living standards which took place during the next 100 years."

Easterlin believed that there were two features associated with the birth cycles he observed: the cycles were related to the labor market, and they might be self-generating. This paper tries to set up a model that contains both of these two features. The authors suppose that the welfare of various age-specific cohorts are determined by their respective marginal productivity, and that the underlying technology which puts together labor force of various age-specific cohorts can be characterized by a general production function. Under these weak assumptions, they show that the well-analyzed cohort and period models along the lines of Lee (1974) are restricted versions of the general setting. Given that both the cohort model and the period model were rejected by statistical tests, the authors adopt the coefficient values obtained from the estimation of the unrestricted version to perform the bifurcation analysis. They go beyond the previous study which focused upon the possible existence of limit cycles, and show that the US fertility limit cycle solution is unstable. Therefore the population trajectory will never converge to that limit cycle.

"This paper discusses the redistributive impact of the Dutch social security system on lifetime basis. Net benefits appear to be positive for the birth generations up to 1960. Social insurances show a declining net benefit, whereas for occupational pensions the reverse holds. It is generally assumed that flat-rated social security schemes are more redistributive ones than wage-related schemes. However, the Dutch social security system shows that on a lifetime basis the redistributive impact of flat-rated general insurances does not necessarily largely differ from the wage-related employee insurances. Social assistance schemes result in a very large income redistribution in view of the small amounts involved. Social insurances and social assistance schemes have an income equalizing effect. On the contrary, occupational pensions increase income inequality."

"Economic theory suggests that transnational migration results from the push-pull effect of wage differentials between host and source countries. In this paper, we argue that political instability exacerbates the migration flow, with greater instability leading to relatively larger flows. We conclude then that an optimal solution to the illegal immigration problem requires proper coordination of immigration and foreign policies by the host country. A narrow preoccupation with tougher immigration laws is wasteful and may be marginally effective." Emphasis is on the United States as a host country.

This paper examines the impact of immigrants on the income of various groups of resident workers in the United States and Europe. Our approach features the use of a production technology incorporating education, experience, and unskilled labor as inputs. This contrasts with the assumption used in earlier studies that native-born and immigrant labor are distinct inputs into production. We find that in both United States and European production, education, unskilled labor and experience are complementary inputs. Based on these results, simulations of the impact of immigration on residents are carried out. The absolute magnitude of these effects is found to be very small.

"This paper attempts to evaluate the impact of current and future immigration flows on major macroeconomic variables of the West German economy. The analysis is based on a macroeconometric disequilibrium model for the West German economy. This model is extended until 1995 and used for several simulation experiments. Special attention is given to the notion that the effects of immigration are regime-specific, i.e., they depend on the type of disequilibrium prevailing on the goods and labor market."

"During the last fifty years there have in many countries been large movements in the growth of labor productivity, real wage rates, the rate of interest, and the household savings ratio. In this paper we use an overlapping generations model to study if demographic shocks, like the baby boom, can generate the kind of movements observed. Simulations show this is indeed the case. We also study the interactions between a pay-as-you-go pension system and demographic disturbances.... We present some stylized facts of the historical development in Sweden for the rate of interest, the aggregate household saving ratio, growth of labor productivity and the birth rate."

"This paper investigates the hypothesis that ethnicity has spillover effects on the human capital accumulation process. It extends previous research by documenting the extent to which the relative importance of parental inputs and ethnic spillovers in the intergenerational transmission of skills differs both within and across immigrant and U.S.-born ethnic groups. Using data drawn from the General Social Surveys, the study documents that the second and third generations (i.e., the children and grandchildren of immigrants) experience relatively more rapid economic advancement than do other generations, and that ethnic spillovers play a stronger role in households which are at the extremes of the skill distribution."

Workers' remittances represent a sizeable component of international trade flows in goods and services. The paper tries to assess to what extent workers remittances are responsive to key macroeconomic variables. We first develop a simple model of altruistic transfers and show that the real exchange rate may play a crucial role in affecting the remittance behaviour of migrants. Econometric estimation of a remittance equation for a sample of five Mediterranean countries indicates that the real exchange rate is indeed a significant determinant of remittances. Further support in this respect comes from an analysis of remittance behaviour by foreign workers in Germany. We also find strong evidence to support the claim that remittances are altruistically motivated, as indicated by the systematically negative coefficient associated with recipients' income.