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Objective Improving the job satisfaction of nurses is essential to enhance their productivity and retention and to improve patient care. Our aim was to analyse trends in German nurses' job satisfaction to enhance understanding of the nursing labour market and inform future policies. Methods We used 1990–2012 German Socioeconomic Panel data for trends in nurses' job satisfaction. Comparisons were drawn with doctors, other health care workers, and employees in other sectors of employment. Analysis explored associations between job satisfaction trends and other aspects of employment, such as whether full time or part time and pay. To account for fluctuations across the period of analysis, linear trends were generated using ordinary least squares. Results Over 23 years, job satisfaction of German nurses underwent a steady and gradual decline, dropping by an average 7.5%, whereas that of doctors and other health care workers increased by 14.4% and 1%, respectively. The decline for part-time nurses (13%) was more pronounced than that for full-time nurses (3%). At the same time, nurses' pay rose by only 3.8% compared to a 23.8% increase for doctors. Conclusions The steady decline in nurses' job satisfaction over the last two decades may be attributable to the multiple reforms and associated policy changes that generally disadvantaged nurses. Contributing factors to job satisfaction decline include lower pay and the demanding and strenuous work environment. Irrespective of the reason, health services researchers, leaders, and policy makers should investigate the reasons for this decline given the forecast growth in work load and complexity of care. Supportive policies for nurses would help enhance the quality and sustainability of German health care.

Using Chinese Social Survey data for 6205 geographically distributed rural households, this paper assesses the impact of Internet usage on social fairness perceptions (SFPs) among Chinese farmers. To address the potential selection bias associated with voluntary Internet usage, the analysis employs an endogenous ordered probit model whose results suggest that, in general, Internet usage has a statistically significant and negative impact on farmer SFPs. Nonetheless, an additional disaggregated analysis reveals that this impact is heterogeneous among different age groups and geographic regions, as well as between male and female household heads.

We analyze the relation between democracy and perceived subjective well-being while controlling for other relevant determinants such as culture measured by languages. We conduct a cross-national analysis covering 28 countries using data from the 1998 International Social Survey Programme. Contrasting existing empirical evidence, we observe a significant positive relationship between democracy and happiness even when controlling for income and culture measured by language and religion. The effect of democracy on happiness is stronger in countries with an established democratic tradition.

This study uses biomarker information from the 2013 National Nutrition Survey Afghanistan and satellite precipitation driven modeling results from the Global Flood Monitoring System to analyze how floods affect the probability of anemia in Afghan women of reproductive age (15-49). In addition to establishing a causal relation between the two by exploiting the quasi-random variation of floods in different districts and periods, the analysis demonstrates that floods have a significant positive effect on the probability of anemia through two possible transmission mechanisms. The first is a significant effect on inflammation, probably related to water borne diseases carried by unsafe drinking water, and the second is a significant negative effect on retinol concentrations. Because the effect of floods on anemia remains significant even after we control for anemia's most common causes, we argue that the condition may also be affected by elevated levels of psychological stress.

Using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), this study analyzes peer effects on obesity in a sample of 3- to 18-year-old children and adolescents in China. Even after a rich set of covariates and unobserved individual heterogeneity are controlled for, it is evident that such peer effects do indeed exist. These effects are stronger in rural areas, among individuals at the upper end of the BMI distribution, and especially among females. All else being equal, female adolescents whose peers have a higher BMI are less likely to consider themselves overweight, suggesting that peer effects may be working through changed societal bodyweight norms.

Rapidly growing population and rising incomes are placing great pressures on food security in India. Rising food prices can further increase food insecurity. This paper uses National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) data on household consumption expenditure covering the years 2009–2010 in order to analyse the effects that food price rises have on calorie and protein intake in India. The differences in food prices between rural and urban areas can be attributed to the Public Distribution Service (PDS) and price spread while price differences across income groups are due to quality and provide an opportunity for value-addition as incomes are growing. The consumption of reduced calories and proteins but greater amounts of fats by the majority of the population in urban regions calls for government intervention. Protein intake is more affected by price rise than calorie intake, which indicates that there may be a quality-quantity trade-off, especially in poorer households. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) shows that the negative impact of food price rises on consumption is greater on the more affluent as they have the capacity to cut calorie intake. The highly negative effects of higher prices for milk and pulses on calorie intake emphasise the need for their stability. Quantile regressions within income groups show high negative impacts of price increases in pulses on poorer urban households, but these decrease while moving from lower to higher quantiles: this observation calls for location specific inclusion of pulses in PDS. Milk prices show more or less the same impact across the quantiles for all income groups, except the Highest Income Group (HIG – highest quartile).

This paper analyses the relation between unemployment, marriage, divorce, widowhood and subjective well-being using Russian panel data. Contrary to Clark et al. (2008) and Clark and Georgellis (2013), we find little evidence of adaptation to these life events.

Using several waves of the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), this study analyzes the effect of long work hours on health and lifestyles in a sample of 18- to 65-year-old Chinese workers. Although working long hours does significantly increase the probabilities of high blood pressure and poorer reported health, the effects are small. Also small are the negative effects of long work hours on sleep time, fat intake, and the probabilities of sports participation or watching TV. We find no positive association between work time and different measures of obesity and no evidence of any association with calorie intake, food preparation and cooking time, or the sedentary activities of reading, writing, or drawing. In general, after controlling for a rich set of covariates and unobserved individual heterogeneity, we find little evidence that long work hours affect either the health or lifestyles of Chinese workers.

This study analyzes peer effects on childhood obesity using data from the first two waves of the IDEFICS study, which applies several anthropometric and other measures of fatness to approximately 14,000 children aged two to nine participating in both waves in 16 regions of eight European countries. Peers are defined as same-sex children in the same school and age group. The results show that peer effects do exist in this European sample but that they differ among both regions and different fatness measures. Peer effects are larger in Spain, Italy, and Cyprus - the more collectivist regions in our sample - while waist circumference generally gives rise to larger peer effects than BMI. We also provide evidence that parental misperceptions of their own children's weight goes hand in hand With fatter peer groups, supporting the notion that in making such assessments, parents compare their children's weight with that of friends and schoolmates. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Literature reports a direct relation between nurses' job satisfaction and their job retention (stickiness). The proper planning and management of the nursing labor market necessitates the understanding of job satisfaction and retention trends. The objectives of the study are to identify trends in, and the interrelation between, the job satisfaction and job stickiness of German nurses in the 1990-2013 period using a flexible specification for job satisfaction that includes different time periods and to also identify the main determinants of nurse job stickiness in Germany and test whether these determinants have changed over the last two decades. Methods: The development of job stickiness in Germany is depicted by a subset of data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (1990-2013), with each survey respondent assigned a unique identifier used to calculate the year-to-year transition probability of remaining in the current position. The changing association between job satisfaction and job stickiness is measured using job satisfaction data and multivariate regressions assessing whether certain job stickiness determinants have changed over the study period. Results: Between 1990 and 2013, the job stickiness of German nurses increased from 83 to 91%, while their job satisfaction underwent a steady and gradual decline, dropping by 7.5%. We attribute this paradoxical result to the changing association between job satisfaction and job stickiness; that is, for a given level of job (dis)satisfaction, nurses show a higher stickiness rate in more recent years than in the past, which might be partially explained by the rise in part-time employment during this period. The main determinants of stickiness, whose importance has not changed in the past two decades, are wages, tenure, personal health, and household structure. Conclusions: The paradoxical relation between job satisfaction and job stickiness in the German nursing context could be explained by historical downsizing trends in hospitals, an East-West German nurse compensation gap, and an increase in the proportion of nurses employed on a part-time basis. A clearer analysis of each of these trends is thus essential for the development of evidence-based policies that enhance the job satisfaction and efficiency of the German nursing workforce., Background: Literature reports a direct relation between nurses' job satisfaction and their job retention (stickiness). The proper planning and management of the nursing labor market necessitates the understanding of job satisfaction and retention trends. The objectives of the study are to identify trends in, and the interrelation between, the job satisfaction and job stickiness of German nurses in the 1990-2013 period using a flexible specification for job satisfaction that includes different time periods and to also identify the main determinants of nurse job stickiness in Germany and test whether these determinants have changed over the last two decades. Methods: The development of job stickiness in Germany is depicted by a subset of data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (1990-2013), with each survey respondent assigned a unique identifier used to calculate the year-to-year transition probability of remaining in the current position. The changing association between job satisfaction and job stickiness is measured using job satisfaction data and multivariate regressions assessing whether certain job stickiness determinants have changed over the study period. Results: Between 1990 and 2013, the job stickiness of German nurses increased from 83 to 91%, while their job satisfaction underwent a steady and gradual decline, dropping by 7.5%. We attribute this paradoxical result to the changing association between job satisfaction and job stickiness; that is, for a given level of job (dis)satisfaction, nurses show a higher stickiness rate in more recent years than in the past, which might be partially explained by the rise in part-time employment during this period. The main determinants of stickiness, whose importance has not changed in the past two decades, are wages, tenure, personal health, and household structure. Conclusions: The paradoxical relation between job satisfaction and job stickiness in the German nursing context could be explained by historical downsizing trends in hospitals, an East-West German nurse compensation gap, and an increase in the proportion of nurses employed on a part-time basis. A clearer analysis of each of these trends is thus essential for the development of evidence-based policies that enhance the job satisfaction and efficiency of the German nursing workforce.

Using five waves from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), we investigate the association between maternal employment and obesity in children aged 3–17 in both rural and urban China. Using body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC) as measures for paediatric adiposity, we provide scant evidence for its relation to maternal employment. We also find no strong association between maternal employment and our measures for children’s diet and physical activity. Our study also suggests that grand-parenting could have beneficial effects on childhood obesity.

Using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey, this study analyses changes in bodyweight (body mass index and waist circumference) distributions between 1991 and 2011 among adults aged 20+ in China. To do so, we quantify the source and extent of temporal changes in bodyweight and then decompose the increase in obesity prevalence into two components: a rightward shift of the bodyweight distribution (mean growth) and a (re)distributional skewing. Our analysis reveals a clear rightward distributional shift combined with a leftward skewing. Although the relatively large size of this skewing in the first decade analysed reflects an increase in obesity inequality, this inequality growth subsides in the second decade. Nevertheless, over the entire 20-year period, obesity inequality increases significantly, especially among females, younger age groups, residents in rural and western provinces, and individuals with low socioeconomic status.

Ageing and Productivity: Introduction Population ageing will be the dominant feature of the world’s demographic landscape in the coming decades, raising concerns about labor productivity and about economic outcomes at both the individual, enterprise, and macro levels. The articles in this special issue of Labour Economics define and address key issues with respect to the interplay of ageing, workforce productivity, and economic performance. Taken as a whole, the articles dispel some of the concerns, sharpen our understanding of others, and highlight behavioural changes, business practice adaptations, and public policy reforms that can offset the economic effects of population ageing. JEL Classification: J11, J14, J18

This literature review provides an overview of the theoretical and empirical research in several disciplines on the relation between ageing and subjective well-being, i.e., how subjective well-being evolves across the lifespan. Because of the different methodologies, data sets and samples used, comparison among disciplines and studies is difficult. However, extant studies do show either a U-shaped, inverted U-shaped or linear relation between ageing and subjective well-being.

Background: There is evidence that household air pollution is associated with poor health in China, and that this form of air pollution may even be more of a health concern in China than the much-publicized outdoor air pollution. However, there is little empirical evidence on the relationship between household air pollution and health in China based on nationally representative and longitudinal data. This study examines the association between the type of domestic cooking fuel and the health of women aged ≥16 in rural China. Methods: Using longitudinal and biomarker data from the China Family Panel Studies (n = 12,901) and the China Health and Nutrition Survey (n = 15,539), we investigate the impact of three major domestic cooking fuels (wood/straw, coal, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG)) on health status using both cross-sectional and panel approaches. Results: Compared to women whose households cook with dirty fuels like wood/straw, women whose households cook with cleaner fuels like LPG have a significantly lower probability of chronic or acute diseases and are more likely to report better health. Cooking with domestic coal instead of wood or straw is also associated with elevated levels of having certain risks (such as systolic blood pressure) related to cardiovascular diseases. Conclusions: Our study provides evidence that using cleaner fuels like LPG is associated with better health among women in rural China, suggesting that the shift from dirty fuels to cleaner choices may be associated with improved health outcomes.

This article analyses job mismatches in Switzerland based on a subjective measure of overqualification. According to job search and job matching theories, overqualification is a transitory problem. Other theories show that overqualification can also be of a permanent nature. We test the perpetuity of overeducation using panel data from the first eight waves of the Swiss Household Panel (SHP) covering the period 1999 to 2006. Our empirical analysis reveals little evidence for lasting rigidities that would cause permanent job mismatches. Rather, spells of overqualification are relatively short: about half of all individuals who were overqualified in a given year had an adequate job match 1 year later. While a short duration of overqualification would be consistent with job search and job matching theories, our observation that the probability of a job mismatch does not significantly decrease with experience is at odds with these theories. Our article provides an alternative explanation for this phenomenon: ...

This study examines the relationship between hypertension and life satisfaction using more objective measures of hypertension from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. Our results confirm the analysis in Blanchflower and Oswald (2008): there is a significant negative correlation between high blood pressure problems and life satisfaction.

Although time may indeed be the most important of economic resources, it was not until Gary Becker's (1964) seminal paper that a serious attempt was made to develop a theoretical framework that could analyse the way in which individuals allocate their time between various activities. This is not to say that traditional economic theory totally ignored this topic; rather, time took on a very secondary role. In subsequent decades, however, economic, psychological and sociological investigators have all devoted considerable energy to developing models and collecting data on time use. Nevertheless, despite the large body of time-use literature that has evolved over the past decades, one aspect has still received relatively little attention: the effect of changes in time-use behaviour in general and increased time pressure in particular (see, e.g., Linder 1970; Roxburgh 2002) has had on consumers and how consumer policy has reacted to these developments. Individual consumption and time use can be viewed from several perspectives: as the process of using—or enjoying or even dissipating—personal goods and services; as the effort to acquire personal wealth, which usually means engaging in paid work and balancing it with the needs of (unpaid) work in the informal sector (e.g., care giving, household work); and/or as the handling, disposing, and managing of the accumulated “stuff of life.” From all perspectives, consumption is deeply embedded in the context of social “time scapes” (Adam 1998) that, by defining its hours, rhythms, and temporalities, shape and restrict consumer decisions in myriad ways. Hence, recognition of the growing J Consum Policy (2010) 33:115–118 DOI 10.1007/s10603-010-9125-6

This special issue of the European Journal of Population focuses on possible economic consequences of low fertility in Europe. This introduction reviews the history of falling fertility in Europe and the literature that explores its causes, its potential implications, and possible policy responses. It also summarizes the evolution of thinking about the relationship between population growth and economic development, with attention to recent work on the mechanisms through which fertility decline can spur economic growth if the necessary supporting conditions are met. The introduction also identifies some of the challenges of population ageing that are associated with low fertility and suggests that there may be less reason for alarm than has been suggested by some observers. The articles that appear in this special issue are also summarized.

This study evaluates couples’ time use behaviour with regard to housework in Germany with data from the 2001/2002 and 1991/1992 German Time Use Survey. Despite the fact that women reduced their hours worked within the household context over the past decades, the unequal division of housework between men and women still persists. This study aims both at analysing the determinants of the allocation of time spent on housework, as well as why gender differences in household time use behaviour still exist. With the aid of structural equation modelling, it is shown that the decrease in time spent on housework by women can largely be explained by changes in the effects that wages, household goods consumption and the aspiration for market goods consumption have on time spent on housework. Men’s time allocation behaviour has remained remarkably constant. It is also observed that women’s time allocation behaviour with regard to household work is becoming more similar to that of men.

This study compares work time data collected by the German Time Use Survey (GTUS) using the diary method with stylized work time estimates from the GTUS, the German Socio-Economic Panel, and the German Microcensus. Although on average the differences between the time-diary data and the interview data is not large, our results show that significant deviations exist between these two techniques for certain types of individuals, especially those with long working hours and flexible work schedules. We also show that stylized work time estimates have insufficient variation to reproduce a true picture of working hours.

Structural change in OECD countries, emphasizing knowledge-based sectors, has led to an increasing demand for highly skilled labour. One means of meeting this demand has been to implement a selective immigration policy. Such policies, however, have been criticized for channelling labour into low-producing sectors and occupations, hampering structural change. Proponents of such criticism point to Switzerland's former policy of channelling immigrants into so-called seasonal sectors, a practice abandoned in the early 1990s, as having contributed to Switzerland's low growth rates. To assess this, we here analyse the amended migration policy's effects on skill structure and sectoral distribution of immigration flows using data from the Swiss Census of 1990 and 2000 to determine whether the new policy has led to an immigrant inflow more adapted to the processes of structural change. We find that the share of highly skilled immigrants has increased notably under the new migration policy. Our analysis also shows an important change in the sectoral focus of the new arrival inflow. Not only have fewer immigrants been entering declining sectors, but the majority of migrants arriving under the new policy regime have been absorbed into growing and knowledge-based sectors, meaning they are employed primarily in service and knowledge-intensive sectors. Overall, the analysis provides ample evidence that the current admission policy as ositively contributed to tructural change in Switzerland.

This paper evaluates the relationship between job satisfaction and measures of health of workers over 50 using the Swiss Household Panel (SHP) and cross-sectional data from the Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Methodologically, it addresses two important design problems encountered frequently in the literature: (a) cross-sectional causality problems and (b) absence of objective measures of physical health and intellectual ability that complement self-reported measures of health status. Not only does using the SHP panel structure with job satisfaction lagged mitigate the simultaneity bias, employing the objective health measures in the SHARE dataset addresses measurement problems resulting from respondents’ affective states. For all datasets, we find a positive link between job satisfaction and self-report health measures; that is, employees with higher job satisfaction levels feel healthier, are less depressed, and report fewer impediments in their daily activities. However, once objective measures of physical health are employed, we observe no such link. Rather, the only positive relationship is for intellectual abilities. These primary findings are then tested using additional controls for working conditions, prior health state and affective mental state. The results indicate that job satisfaction partly serves as a transmission channel.

This paper analyzes the effect of job satisfaction on labor turnover by gender using data from the first two waves of the Swiss Household Panel (1999 and 2000). The results confirm that job satisfaction is a very good predictor of future quits and, more important, reveal that job satisfaction does not influence the inclination to become non-employed; that is, neither men nor women self-select out of the labor force due to dissatisfaction. This result clearly refutes the claim that the gender/job satisfaction paradox (i.e., the fact that women tend to be more satisfied at work than men) is being driven by self-selection. This paper also shows that, based on job satisfaction information and quitting behavior, there is no apparent difference in firm attachment between men and women.

We investigate the relationship between income tax rate variation and internal migration for the unique case of Switzerland, whose system of determining tax rates primarily at the community level results in enough variation to permit analysis of their influence on migration. Specifically, using Swiss census data, we analyze migratory responses to tax rate variations for various groups defined by age, education, and nationality/residence permit. The results suggest that young Swiss college graduates are most sensitive to tax rate differences, but the estimated effects are not large enough to offset the revenue-increasing effect of a rise in tax rate. The migratory responses of foreigners and other age-education groups are even smaller, and reverse causation seems negligible.

We re-evaluate the relation between cantonal direct democracy and perceived subjective well-being in Switzerland using new data from the Swiss Household Panel. In addition, this study goes beyond previous work by carefully controlling for cultural determinants of happiness such as languages and religion. We find that once language is controlled for, no robust significant relationship between the extent of direct democracy and life satisfaction can be observed. The results also show that direct democracy does not affect well-being within language groups in Switzerland.

Using data from the Integrated Values Survey (IVS), the Life in Transition Survey (LiTS), and the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS), we analyse the relation between age and subjective well-being in the World Bank’s Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region and compare it to that in Western Europe. Although our results generally confirm previous studies’ findings of a U-shaped relation between subjective well-being and age for most of the lifecycle, we also find that well-being in ECA declines again after the 70s, giving rise to an S-shape relation across the entire lifespan. When controlling for socio-demographic characteristics, this pattern generally remains robust for most of our cross-sectional and panel analyses. Hence, despite significant heterogeneity in the pattern of well-being across the lifespan within the ECA region, we do not observe high levels of cross-country or cross-cohort variation.

As the aging population increases, the demand for informal caregiving is becoming an ever more important concern for researchers and policy-makers alike. To shed light on the implications of informal caregiving, this paper reviews current research on its impact on three areas of caregivers’ lives: employment, health, and family. Because the literature is inherently interdisciplinary, the research designs, sampling procedures, and statistical methods used are heterogeneous. Nevertheless, we are still able to draw several important conclusions: first, despite the prevalence of informal caregiving and its primary association with lower levels of employment, the affected labor force is seemingly small. Second, such caregiving tends to lower the quality of the caregiver’s psychological health, which also has a negative impact on physical health outcomes. Third, the implications for family life remain under investigated. The research findings also differ strongly among subgroups, although they do suggest that female, spousal, and intense caregivers tend to be the most affected by caregiving.

Using several waves of the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), this study analyzes the effect of long work hours on health and lifestyles in a sample of 18- to 65-year-old Chinese workers. Although working long hours does significantly increase the probabilities of high blood pressure and poorer reported health, the effects are small. Also small are the negative effects of long work hours on sleep time, fat intake, and the probabilities of sports participation or watching TV. We find no positive association between work time and different measures of obesity and no evidence of any association with calorie intake, food preparation and cooking time, or the sedentary activities of reading, writing, or drawing. In general, after controlling for a rich set of covariates and unobserved individual heterogeneity, we find little evidence that long work hours affect either the health or lifestyles of Chinese workers.

Using data from the 2010 China Family Panel Studies, we analyze the association between Internet use and various measures of subjective well-being (SWB) in a sample of 16- to 60- year-old Chinese. Our analysis shows that although intensive Internet use is significantly associated with lower levels of SWB, we hardly observe any associations when the focus is on participation in specific online activities. Nevertheless, SWB depends on perceptions of Internet use; that is, the importance that different individuals ascribe to different purposes for using the Internet and how much they believe that their Internet use is displacing other activities. Our results suggest that, contrary to previous findings, differences in beneficial outcomes (the third level digital divide) do not necessarily arise from individuals' actual Internet use (the second level digital divide) but rather may result from their subjective perceptions of such usage. Our findings also point to a possible cultural factor that puts Chinese Internet users at psychological risk.

Atypical employment contracts are either considered as traps that hinder permanent employment in the primary segment of the labour market or as stepping-stones leading to stable employment. Whereas the former interpretation appears to apply to Germany, our analysis of on-call contracts in the comparatively weakly regulated Swiss labour market, dynamics are high: mobility between working on-call jobs and permanent employment contracts is sizable, and no evidence of discriminatory wage practices can be observed. Furthermore, no significant differences in job-satisfaction levels between on-call and other employees exist. Nevertheless, some persistence phenomena can be observed on the Swiss labour market as well.

Empirical studies on the impact of taxation on migration have been limited by a lack of comparable data in an international context and a lack of variation in tax burdens within countries. A notable exception to the latter is Switzerland. Prior empirical studies on tax competition in Switzerland have had to rely on aggregated data. In general, these studies have been supportive of the notion of tax competition, i.e., high earners tend to relocate to low-tax regions. The authors use an alternative panel approach based on micro-data from the first three waves of the newly established Swiss Household Panel. Despite active community tax policies aimed at attracting new residents and a significant increase in tax-burden dispersion among communities in the past decade, no tax-induced migration is observed. Migration decisions are found to be strongly influenced by accommodation-related factors that point to important housing-market effects.

In most European countries, there is some evidence that jobs became, and to an even greater extent were perceived to have become, increasingly insecure in the 1990s. In Switzerland, where unemployment has long been far lower than the European average, unemployment increased in the same period. Yet in general, job stability has remained remarkably constant in the past decade, and instability far below the European average. Only with regard to voluntary job-to-job mobility can a significant increase in the second half of the 1990s be observed; involuntary turnover has actually decreased. As Switzerland is a small, open economy with weak union power and employment protection legislation, this article casts doubts on the extent to which exposure to globalization can influence job instability. Instead, consensus- and stability-oriented industrial relations and management practices, as well as the state of the external labour market, appear to shape both job stability and security.

This study analyzed job-turnover intentions in twenty-five countries with data from the 1997 International Social Survey Program. Results show that high turnover intentions, measured as the proportion of employed individuals that report a very likely change of job in the next 12 months, can be observed in Canada, 17.0 percent, the U.S., 14.3 percent, and Great Britain, 14.3 percent. Low turnover intentions are encountered in Japan, 1.8 percent, Spain, 3.0 percent, and several Eastern European countries. The determinants of turnover intentions are, in a number of cases, the same as those observed in many studies on actual turnovers. Determinants of turnover intentions do vary substantially among countries. However, union membership, public-sector employment, job satisfaction, job security, and firm pride are significant in most countries. The high turnover intentions observed in Great Britain, France, and, to a lesser extent, Canada can be explained by the subjective measures considered in this study. Especially Great Britain and France have very low rankings of job satisfaction, job security, advancement opportunities, and firm pride. Despite having the same turnover intentions, Great Britain and the United States differ substantially with regard to the subjective determinants. Whereas the high turnover intentions in Great Britain can be explained by the relatively poor perceived job satisfaction, job security, and firm pride, high turnover intentions in the United States coexist with relatively high levels of job satisfaction, job security, advancement opportunities, firm pride, and, most notably, good perceived labor market opportunities.

In this paper, three common empirical methods encountered in the segmentation literature are used in order to establish whether or not the Swiss labor market is segmented: (i) a hierarchical cluster analysis; (ii) a switching model with unknown regime; and (iii) an analysis of low-wage mobility with a bivariate probit model with endogenous selection. According to method (i), segmentation can hardly be observed. Method (ii) shows that the Swiss labor market is dualistic in nature. Method (iii) reveals that a certain degree of persistence exists in low-wage jobs. Whether or not the Swiss labor market is segmented thus depends on the choice of method, i.e. on the definition and understanding of segments. In any case, none of the methods used in this study point to the existence of a large and well-defined secondary segment.

Summary In the context of an emerging focus on highly skilled migration throughout the OECD area, the question under which circumstances migrants can be expected to be relatively skilled is of particular importance. Borjas has analysed the relation between the income distribution and the skills of migrants. His self-selection model predicts that immigrants from countries with a higher income inequality tend to be negatively selected (i.e., less skilled than the average worker in both host and source countries). According to other models based on the human capital theory of migration, however, migrants can be expected to be relatively skilled. Empirical tests of Borjas' much-disputed negative self-selection hypothesis generally rely on immigration data, particularly to the US, and may therefore be biased due to host-country specifics such as network migration and the impact of migration policy. This paper analyses the relationship between country-specific emigration propensities and each country's score on various indices of income inequality with a rich international microdata set. The main result is that highly-skilled persons are more inclined to migrate, though a higher income inequality attenuates the positive selectivity.

Extracts of this paper were presented at the conference "Work Beyond 60: Preparing for the Demographic Shock", 6–7 March 2003 in Vienna organized by The Geneva Association, The Club of Rome, and The Risk Institute. Parts were also presented at the Bertelsmann Foundation conference "Strategien gegen den Fachkraftemangel" in Berlin, 2 July 2002 and at the Bertelsmann Foundation conference "Reformen zur Steigerung der Beschaftigungsfahigkeit alterer Arbeitskrafte" in Berlin, 26 October 2001. The authors would like to thank the participants as well as Jaap van Dam, Thomas Liebig, Fred Henneberger, and Genevieve Reday-Mulvey for their valuable comments and discussions. Alfonso Sousa-Poza would like to thank the Swiss National Science Foundation for financial assistance. The usual disclaimer applies.

The aim of this paper is to analyze working-hour constraints in an international setting. We use data from the latest Work Orientations data set of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP). The survey was conducted in 1997 and, in this paper, data for twenty-one countries are used. Our main results are: (1) In most countries the majority of workers do not face hours constraints; (2) Of the workers that are constrained, the largest portion is underemployed. Only in Denmark, Norway, and Switzerland is this not the case; (3) Workers in the five Eastern European countries considered here are among the most constrained; (4) A comparison with the 1989 ISSP data set reveals that hours constraints have increased in Israel, the United States, and West Germany and decreased in Great Britain and Norway in the 1990s; (5) GDP per capita and unemployment levels are correlated with hours constraints; (6) A multivariate analysis shows that certain socio-demographic characteristics and work conditions influence hour...

Using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), this study analyzes peer effects on obesity in a sample of 3- to 18-year-old children and adolescents in China. Even after a rich set of covariates and unobserved individual heterogeneity are controlled for, it is evident that such peer effects do indeed exist. These effects are stronger in rural areas, among individuals at the upper end of the BMI distribution, and especially among females. All else being equal, female adolescents whose peers have a higher BMI are less likely to consider themselves overweight, suggesting that peer effects may be working through changed societal bodyweight norms.

In this article, we use 12 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) to examine the relationship between job insecurity, employability and health-related well-being. Our results indicate that being unemployed has a strong negative effect on life satisfaction and health. They also, however, highlight the fact that this effect is most prominent among individuals over the age of 40. A second observation is that job insecurity is also associated with lower levels of life satisfaction and health, and this association is quite strong. This negative effect of job insecurity is, in many cases, exacerbated by poor employability.

Several definitions already exist for the “oldest old” or “fourth age,” which comprises the most elderly of the older generation. One populationbased possibility is to define the transition between the third and fourth age as the chronological age at which 50 %of the birth cohort is no longer alive, which in developed countries, takes place at around 75 years of age (Baltes & Smith, 2003). Being older than 85 years of age is also often used as a delineation.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the levels and determinants of job satisfaction in a cross-national setting. This aim is accomplished using the latest Work Orientations data set from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP). The survey was conducted in 1997 and, in this paper, data for 21 countries are used. The main results are: (i) workers in all countries are quite satisfied; this result also applies to the five Eastern European countries analyzed here. (ii) Denmark is the country with the highest job-satisfaction level. The United States is ranked seventh, Great Britain fifteenth, Japan nineteenth, and Russia twentieth. (iii) A comparison with the 1989 ISSP data set reveals that job satisfaction has declined in Germany and the United States in the 1990s. (iv) Using a bottom-up psychological model, in which we compare work-role inputs (e.g., effort) with work-role outputs (e.g., pay), we try to explain cross-national differences. Countries with high work-role outputs, in general, have a high job-satisfaction ranking, and vice versa. (v) Having an interesting job and having good relations with management are the two most important work-role outputs, and having an exhausting job is the most important work-role input. (vi) Workers in Eastern European countries tend to value high income.

Labour-market conditions are, in general, less favourable for women than for men. It is therefore paradoxical that several studies reveal that women are more satisfied at work than men. We analyse this paradox with microdata from 21 countries. It is shown that this paradox does not exist in most of the countries analysed here, and, in most cases, can be explained by the different endowments of work-role inputs (e.g., work time) and outputs (e.g., pay) between genders. In Great Britain, the United States, and Switzerland, however, this paradoxical situation remains even after controlling for differences in work-role inputs and outputs. Copyright 2000 by WWZ and Helbing & Lichtenhahn Verlag AG