Testing for occupational barriers in agriculture

This paper addresses labor market policies and institutions relevant principally to the seasonal, unskilled, hired agricultural work force including but not limited to migrant agricultural workers. The seasonal agricultural labor market and labor market institutions serving it have been subject to remarkably little systematic study by agricultural economists.' Thus, much of the following represents a structure imposed on the observables for the purpose of this exposition. Likewise, the discussion of farm labor policy is an attempt to describe explicitly what has, for the most part, been implicit policy. I begin by tracing the broad parameters of structural change in agricultural employment and the agricultural labor market during the industrialization of U.S. agriculture since World War II. I argue that implicit agricultural labor market policy has been largely oriented toward two goals: (a) transferring of unemployed and underemployed agricultural workers to other occupations in order to provide them with income and employment, while simultaneously improving the bargaining power of the remaining agricultural workers by reducing the wage-depressing effects of surplus labor; and (b) regulating employers and labor market intermediaries in order to protect agricultural workers from abuse and improve their welfare. Each of these efforts has had limited success, and for largely the same reasons. An enormous in-flow of new labor force entrants has frustrated attempts to eliminate the agricultural labor surplus. This nearly unlimited supply of workers has also introduced incentives for both employers and workers to bypass the labor market intermediaries through which agricultural labor policy has attempted to regulate agricultural labor markets, most notably the U.S. Employment Service, traditional farm labor contractors, and employer associations. It is argued that the conditions leading to the current situation are not likely to continue, and that without serious and timely efforts to reorient agricultural labor policy and to rebuild or create new labor market institutions, producers of seasonally labor-intensive commodities may face serious difficulties in adjusting to changes in labor availability and cost in the years ahead.

This paper aims at analyzing the existence of wage differentials by genders in the agricultural labor market in the Brazilian rural area, with the purpose of verifying if the differentials are due to differences in explained characteristics or discriminatory. Equations were estimated and the wage differential detailed decomposition with microdata from the PNAD 2015 with the Heckman's correction. The method used was the decomposition of Oaxaca-Blinder. The main results show that the wage/hour of men is 157.62% higher than that of women, and the effect of discrimination is 108.38% this gap. The main conclusion indicates that the gender wage differential decreases with the formality of work and with the increase of hours worked by women. It is worth nothing that the results provide the visualization of gender discrimination in the rural labor market, adding contributions to the empirical studies on wage differentials.

This study of the changing nature of farmwork for farmers' wives focuses on two central questions. The first concerns the effects on the wife's labour of scale- enlargement and specialization. Both of these processes can be considered as the accumulation of technological, economic and political changes in the agricultural sector over the last decades. The second concerns the degree and manner in which gender and gender relations play a role in decision making over the introduction and implementation of these processes at farm level. In other words, what role does gender play in decisions on the degree and tempo with which scale enlargement and specialization are carried through at farm level and over the concomitant reorganization of labour on the farm. Gender refers here to the socially constructed differences between men and women. Gender relations are (at least they have been until now) dominant relations. Gender includes the division of labour between the sexes, gender symbols, gender ideology and gender specific identities. Gender is at work at all levels, at the personal and institutional level, at the psychological and behavioural level, at the economic, social, cultural and political level.As a consequence of opportunities for producers to interpret these external developments in their own way, considerable differences in Dutch agriculture can still be seen, making it possible, to a degree, through cross-sectional analysis, to study their effects. In this way the farm labour of the wife is compared with varying degrees of scale enlargement and specialization of the farm, giving us thereby certain insights into recent historical changes in their labour. The comparison between large-scale specialized, and small-scale mixed dairy farms (i.e. that also make their own cheese), is particularly important here because both types of farm form, as it were, opposite poles of an agricultural modernization process in progress since the fifties.To investigate the influence of gender, a comparison was made between labour organization on farms with partners of the same and of different gender. At the same time gender on the family farm itself was also examined.The research, which is confined to dairy farming in the central part of the Netherlands, looks at different aspects of female farm labour, defined as all those activities that women engage in that underpin the farming household and ensure the family farm's continued existence and progress. To determine which activities are, and which are not included as work or labour, account was taken of the ideas of the group of researched farm women themselves. Although their descriptions and criteria were quite diverse, some appeared to have more general validity than others. These were descriptions about work associated with activities that could not be left undone and were thus deemed to be 'necessary', or which were considered 'obligatory', or 'brought in money' or 'bounded by time'. Usually a combination of criteria were used. Women's labour involved different sorts of work which could be carried out on the farm as well as off it. This was stated by the women themselves. In broad terms the following kinds of labour can be delimited: household labour, bringing up children, farming activities, non- agricultural income-generating activities on the farm, paid or income-generating activities off the farm and voluntary work that is seen as socially relevant for the farming household. For the farmers' wives in the study, the emphasis lay on the first three kinds of labour.Besides labour time, and the division of time given to different sorts of work and the women's judgement about this, the study particularly looked at aspects of the quality of women's labour. The stress here is on the labour content of the work done by women on farm related tasks. In addition to collecting data on what their task packet or allotment was, the study also examined the degree of task control that women had and the degree to which they worked together with their husbands. Task control refers to the extent to which one can decide on the issue, implementation, checking, evaluation and apposition of the task or task packet. The higher the degree of control, the higher the demand is for expertise and the greater the opportunity to gain new knowledge and experience. That also goes for the damage risk - the consequences of making a big mistake - and for insights into and overviews of the production process. The degree of task control is closely associated with the organization of production (i.e. the degree to which scale enlargement and specialization are carried through) and the way in which labour is organized internally. This means that task control cannot be studied in isolation from the division of labour and the nature of cooperation with the others involved. On a family farm this will be mostly the husband. That means that the degree of control exercised by women has to be seen in relation to that of their husbands and that the relation between the sexes plays an important role in the degree of control that women acquire or are allowed. This also holds for the relative share of both in decision making over the farm set-up and development. The research examines how the different areas of farm decision making are divided between farmers and their wives, and whether a relation exists between the labour content of wives' tasks and their influence on decisions over the inset and use of production factors, the farm labour process and the sharing and spending of income. Labour content is also examined in relation to the work experience of farmers' wives.The research on the mechanisms which gender differences create, sustain and transform in the area of labour, touches upon all farm tasks. That is to say that existing practices, explanations and legitimateness of the division of labour in the household as well as on the farm were researched. Within that framework, questions were asked concerning the views of the women on their most important roles - farmer's wife, mother, housewife. These views were compared with those of the farmers on their own corresponding roles.In summary, the empirical research led to the following findings:1 Almost all the wives involved in the research had been, since childhood, conversant with working on a farm, with a specific division of labour according to sex, with specific ideas of what is women's and what man's work, and of what it is to be a farmer or farmer's wife. On the farms where they grew up the division between men and women' tasks was in part parallel to the division between enterprise and family, since work within the family was exclusively women's work and tasks on the farm were primarily those of men. Although no men were kept busy in the house, wives did work on the farm, though men made a distinction between what was men's and what was women's work and only a few tasks were carried out by both sexes. Clear gender differences also existed regarding future perspectives. Over succession to the farm only sons were mentioned, daughters were excluded from this. They could marry a farmer and thus become a farmers wife or marry outside agriculture. It goes without saying that the separation in tasks and perspectives goes hand in hand with the difference in upbringing and training enjoyed by farmers' sons and daughters. Farmers' daughters, in contrast to their brothers follow no agricultural education. For many of them, both young and old, the emphasis is on household education. For the older generation of women it was taken for granted that after school they would work on the parental farm if it was necessary. For the younger generation that was less so and it was also less necessary. But that they would stay close by was taken for granted. Younger women far more often than their older colleagues followed a training that had nothing to do with agriculture. However, since they were also confronted outside of agriculture with a division of labour on the grounds of gender, such a training was typically for women's occupations such as nursing, family care, dressmaking or cutting, secretarial work, selling and so forth. Often, solely with a view to marrying a farmer, many followed agriculturally based courses, mostly connected with typical women's work on the farm, such as cheese-making and bookkeeping.2 Differences in scale enlargement and specialization appear to have little influence on the total amount of labour time. Farmer's wives all have a work week of a good seventy hours (from 71.5-72.5 hours). Scale enlargement therefore does not lead to a decrease in total work time for women, though differences do seem to occur in how the available time is divided between the various kinds of work she does. The time that is spent on farm work is diminishing. Taken on average, wives of specialized dairy farmers are occupied about ten hours less on farm work than those that make cheese. in contrast, with an increase in scale and specialization more time is spent on activities within the family field. Relatively speaking, there appears to be more time spent on the children and productive household work, such as in the kitchen garden and in processing products, on keeping house, and on making children's clothes etc. The experience of women on dairy farms in terms of time spent appears to coincide with the way in which time is spent in practice. In the ideal situation as they see it, they would rather spend less time on household chores and relatively more time on activities outside the farm and/or though to a lesser degree, on farm activities. Routine household work such as dusting, polishing and tidying are mentioned as the first to be shed, and are activities that the majority of farmers' wives considered the 'least rewarding'. Small-scale cheese makers, in the ideal situation - at least as concerns the cheese season - would like to put less time into farm work and more into outside activities. Also for large- scale cheese makers, the time ideally spent in the cheese season contains less farm work and time to give more attention to their children. One might thus conclude that the average farm wife of the specialized dairy farmer - hence of the large-scale type - sees herself as too much a housewife. The average cheese-maker - particularly on the large scale enterprise - sees herself, at least in the cheese period, relatively as too much farmer's wife and too little as mother.3 The quality of farm labour - measured in terms of labour content - appears to decrease as scale and specialization rises. In essence, with specialization, the average wife loses her own labour domain on the farm. Instead she works together in the labour domain of her husband. The actual consequences of this appear to be that her own fixed farm tasks are converted into helping out labour. Instead of a task which she can largely control herself, which requires specific skills and which involves high damage risk, she gets work to do that is dominated by tasks done at the request of and on the instructions of someone else. Such work consists of a number of unrelated tasks that could be done by anyone and where mistakes have little damage risk for the farm. In short, with scale enlargement and specialization the average farmer's wife goes from a farming task load needing a relatively high qualification level to one with more restricted task control and needing far fewer qualifications. For good task performance, availability, precision and neatness are deemed to be the most important. The difficulty lies in being able to combine an these tasks with her other kinds of work, placing high demands on her organizing skills. At the same time it appears that with raising the degree of scale and specialization, the help which the farmer's wife receives in the family field diminishes, which means that work in this sphere also includes more tasks of a routine nature - routine household work.Helping out, and fixed tasks with a low degree of control appear to give less satisfaction. While cheese-makers get satisfaction from the labour process itself (having their own domain, from their skills and responsibility for a good quality product) and from the results (a fine product, income, a good name), wives who just help out, seek this, as it were, in the more general notions of being involved in the farm, being a farmer's wife or co-entrepreneur or being active with and in nature. Scale enlargement and specialization thus lead not only to loss of task control and specific professional skills but also to a reduced chance of finding personal satisfaction in farm work and deriving a feeling of self worth from it. But the enjoyment cheese makers derive from their work can also decline, which is the case if the total work load is too high. This happens to cheese makers on large-scale farms. The daily pressure of work can become so great (financial pressures to keep on making cheese, less flexibility in the work scheme and/or through having to combine different sorts of work), that the wish to cut back on their own production work creeps in.Scale enlargement and specialization of course do not always lead to a packet of farm tasks that are predominantly of a helping out kind. It seems possible for women to again create their own labour domain on the specialized farm. Specific qualifications appear to be one of the basic conditions for this.4 A farmer's wife is not only involved in the implementation, control, opposition to and/or design of specific farm tasks or packets, but also in the design of the production process as a whole. It is actually on the family farm that the direct producers, among them the farmer's wife, largely decide which techniques and how they will be used, on the organization of labour, and on how the income obtained will be divided and spent. But although the wife undoubtedly has an influence on the design of the production process and on changes in it, her influence appears selective and narrower than that of her husband. The various areas of decision making appear to be shared between farmer and wife in a specific way, with decisions over the organization of production and farm practice considered to be the husband's field. The average wife gets involved in such decisions only when the demands of farm and family threaten to come into conflict with each other, particularly on decisions that involve great financial returns or risk. Whenever women get involved with decisions in this area, without there being any question of conflicting interests, then it always seems to involve farm tasks, or to be more precise, farm tasks that involve a high degree of task control. These appear to lead to greater influence on decisions over the associated labour process, farm practice and set up. The processes of scale enlargement and specialization thus entail a reduction in the involvement of the farmer's wife in a number of decision over the direct production process and its organization. That, however, does not hold for all such decisions. Those involving heavy financial risk are generally speaking, with increased scale and specialization, more often areas for joint decision making. At the same time there seems to be a contrary tendency: on some of these large scale specialized farms there is an increasing separation of decision making ares between the sexes, where wives retreat as it were into the family domain, while their husbands control the farming domain.5 On all family farms there is a clear division of labour according to gender, in which inequality forms the basic pattern. Although such inequality is sharpened by scale enlargement and specialization, its roots are not there, but in gender. This becomes clear from a comparison of the labour organization and decision making on the kind of farms managed by male partners. Here one finds no talk of structural patterns of unequal labour relations.The research shows that existing (skewed) labour divisions on gender and gender stereotyping ideas (of men and women of themselves, and their own and each others work) are the essential mechanisms in which inequality and domination are rooted. In decisions over the division and re-division of tasks between the farmer and his wife, as well as in decisions over farm practice and development, the ideas of those involved play a crucial role; ideas about women's and mens' work, about fulfilling gender specific labour roles (farmer's wife/farmer, mother/father), about masculinity and femininity and the relation between women and men, farmers and farmers' wives. Gender specific identities strengthen the exchange of ideas and behaviour of men and women. In the world outside the farm gender differences are again also to be found. A division of labour according to gender and living stereotypes of farmers, farmers' wives, their activities and the relations between them, likewise exists in all sorts of institutes closely linked to the farm and farming household, Men try, through all kinds of strategies, to maintain the status quo. They present obstructions if women want to expand their room to manoeuvre, use discriminatory behaviour against women (by stigmatizing, or by systematically rejecting or criticizing their behaviour or ideas); they introduce techniques that are tailored to the size of men; they make women's work invisible; they are selective in the composition of membership or administration of organizations, study clubs, commissions; they set demands and qualifications on task content that are not easily achieved by women (such as for example man/woman social contracts). In their turn women also appear to use strategies to exclude men from their domain (such as the family domain) or place themselves outside the man's domain. This behaviour is also based on and stems from existing labour divisions, gender stereotyping of work, ideas about men and women, farmers' wives and farmers and the relations between them.The above summarized findings in my opinion demonstrate that:A) the processes of scale enlargement and specialization entail for farmers' wives a loss of control over their own labour, and the labour process as a whole. On farm work tasks are to a greater degree than before controlled by the farmer, and those tasks that the wife performs demand fewer professional skills and involve less damage risk. This has consequences for the satisfaction derived from work, to wit, it diminish . That means that the quality of her labour declines as scale enlargement and specialization increase.B) These particular consequences of scale enlargement and specialization processes for women's labour are brought about through the mediation of the category gender. Gender is part of all social relations and in this way is an existing part of the economic, technological and political processes that have led to scale enlargement and specialization and of the farm as labour organization, as it is also a part of the economic, social, cultural and political environment in which the family farm is embedded.

This article assesses whether self-employment can help immigrants overcome some of the ongoing challenges they face in highly segmented labor markets, by investigating the reasons behind native-immigrant differences in exit from self-employment. While a considerable literature examines the factors influencing immigrants’ decision to become self-employed, surprisingly few studies address the factors that shape exit from self-employment. This article studies native-immigrant differences in self-employment exit, drawing on longitudinal data (2008–2017) for Belgium, and adds to previous research on immigrant self-employment by considering second-generation and female immigrant business owners. Results show that immigrants were much more likely than natives to become unemployed or leave the labor force after a period in self-employment, supporting the idea that immigrants are pushed out of self-employment. Second-generation immigrants generally had better self-employment outcomes than first-generation immigrants, whereas female immigrants sometimes experienced a “double disadvantage.” Weaker attachment to the labor market preceding self-employment entry helps explain why immigrants had worse self-employment outcomes than natives in Belgium. Hence, self-employment may not provide an independent path to economic integration that allows immigrants to overcome the hurdles they face in the labor market. Instead, how people fared in the labor market before becoming self-employed strongly influenced their success as self-employed workers. This article highlights the policy complexity of immigrants’ labor market integration in Western European labor markets. As it shows, it is not enough to promote self-employment as an easy way out of immigrants’ labor market exclusion. Instead, more is needed to counteract immigrants’ problematic labor market outcomes.

Research on wage differentials for men and women and for labor market sectors has relied largely on cross-sectional analysis. Using data on three cohorts of West German men and women, we bring a dynamic perspective to these issues by analyzing wage changes for three aspects of work histories: (1) wage rate at time offirst entry into the labor market, (2) wage changes when workers change jobs, and (3) wage growth within jobs. Education affects first wages for men and women, but the effect weakens sharply over time. Education also has a significant positive impact on wage growth within jobs over the entire period for men and a positive, but not significant, effect for women. Highly educated women do less well than other women when changing jobs, consistent with the view that advancement for such women is impeded by a glass ceiling. Labor market segment affects initial wages and wage gains due to a job change. However, movement into internal labor markets (skilled jobs in large firms) does not confer an initial payoff in wages. Workers in sectors characterized by internal labor markets do not experience higher than average wage growth within jobs, a result that runs counter to theories of segmented labor markets. Finally, wages grow at a decreasing rate with duration of job for both men and women. However, wage growth is initially more rapid for women but also declines more sharply over time.

Although abundant evidence documents pay penalties for female-dominated jobs, there is also substantial variation in gender inequality across U.S. metropolitan areas. These lines of research are united by exploring whether occupational gender segregation at the labor market level exacerbates the wage penalty associated with female-dominated jobs, and investigating the association between gender composition and the size of within-job gender gaps. Results show that the penalty accruing to female-dominated jobs is weaker in more integrated labor markets, but only among men, and that labor market integration does not significantly influence the association between the gender composition of jobs and within-job inequality. Further, even women in completely segregated jobs benefit from a context of occupational integration. It is concluded that, although gender devaluation is widespread and systematic, variation in gender composition effects across local contexts is an important dimension of gender inequality.

Introduction

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to contribute to the discourse on labour market discrimination by introducing an analytical process model that offers a template for the systematic analysis of discrimination within the process of labour market integration. Its usage and contribution to the field is exemplified by applying the proposed model to the case of ageism in labour market integration.Design/methodology/approachFive phases and four actors are distinguished that, added together, compose the proposed analytical process model. In the following, the model is used as an analytical framework for a mapping review, aimed at identifying and critically evaluating the vast and extensive literature on ageism in the process of labour market integration.FindingsThe paper concludes that ageism occurs in all five phases of the integration process, pinpointing potential areas for policy interventions. Furthermore, the authors conclude that the existing literature on ageism in labour market integration is fragmented, with some elements and/or actors within the process so far having received little attention.Originality/valueThe analytical process model developed in this paper provides the scientific community with a tool to systematise the literature, detect underlying mechanisms and uncover existing research gaps, not only for the case of ageism presented here, but for a vast variety of other –isms. In addition, policy makers, trade unions and employers can use the model to better target and tailor anti-discrimination measures in labour market integration.

This article examines the link between immigrants’ social capital and their labour market access (employment) and success (occupational status) in Germany and contributes to previous research in two ways. Firstly, based on insights from theories of social capital and immigrant integration, we overcome the mere distinction between inter- and intra-ethnic ties. Instead, we approximate resources immigrants can access and mobilize by considering both the ethnic and socioeconomic compositions of their networks. Secondly, by using autoregressive cross-lagged panel models, we properly deal with the methodological challenge of endogeneity inherent to studies concerned with the relationship between social capital and labour market outcomes. Based on longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel the empirical findings indicate the necessity of considering both the ethnic and socioeconomic compositions of immigrants’ networks—as both have independent effects on immigrants’ labour market integration. We conclude that future research on the relationship between immigrants’ social capital and their economic integration may benefit from approximating resources available through social contacts by considering not only the ethnic dimension but also the socioeconomic dimension of contacts.

In spite of Brazil's rapid pace of economic integration in recent decades, there remains substantial evidence of regional differences in wages. Numerous studies have also cited the impact of the country's form of economic development on various skill and occupational categories. On the other hand, macroeconomic models generally simplify labor market processes by assuming a single homogeneous national labor market. Arc wages in Brazil, then, determined by isolated regional, occupational, or nationwide factors? This study develops an econometric model for decomposing annual wage changes into national, occupational, and regional effects and applies it to data on male employees in Brazil's major urban areas to test whether the annual wage changes are more similar among occupational or local categories. It shows that wages are affected both by local conditions and national occupational trends, and furthermore that the underlying patterns of regional and occupational wage differentials are quite stable.

I examine the impact of language skills on immigrants’ labor market performance by applying a new approach, which allows to estimate wage benefits attributed to initial language skills at arrival. By exploiting unique data, I isolate the endogenous part of current German skills and instrument current command by German proficiency measured retrospectively at the point in time of migration. This approach tackles the problem that labor market effects from current language skills are at risk to reflect merely the sum of a successful residence in Germany and only display growth effects. I find that a good command of German increases labor market income by 47.0% for males, while no significant language effects are detected for females. Further analyses illustrate that differences in language effects by gender can be attributed to selection into different occupations and part-time employments and that language operates complementary and enables cross-border transferability of human capital.

Abstract: Previous studies come to contradictory conclusions regarding the relationship between immigrants’ social contacts and their labor market integration. This paper tackles this impasse by exploring the short and long-term effects of social contacts on immigrant labor market outcomes using data collected in the Swedish Level-of-Living survey in 2010. Results from Cox and OLS regressions show that social contacts provide meaningful resources in the initial transition period, but loose importance over time in the host country. The findings moreover reveal substantial heterogeneity by reason for migration. Social contacts provide family related migrants and labor migrants with significant resources in their job search, while social contacts are not able to facilitate labor market entry among refugees. Regarding longer-term integration, earnings differences by social contacts are small. However, compared to other migrants, labor migrants continue to experience an advantage in the labor market. The implications of these findings are that distinguishing between short and long-term integration contributes to our understanding of the association between immigrants’ social contacts and their labor market integration. Moreover, information provided by social contacts assists family related migrants and labor migrants in their job search.

Introduction. In modern conditions, the economic development of Ukraine is connected with many factors, first of all, with the functioning of the labor market. It is characterized as a complex socio-economic phenomenon of society. Therefore, the study of the conceptual provisions of the paradigm of formation and regulation of the labor market is relevant and timely, given that their results will significantly affect the reproduction and development of labor resources of both enterprises, regions, and the state in general. The purpose of the article is a thorough analysis and systematization of scientific approaches to the creation of a modern paradigm of formation and regulation of the labor market. Research methods. During the writing of the scientific article, the historical method, methods of logical generalization, theoretical analysis and synthesis were applied. The results. Attention is focused on definitions of the concept of "labor market", taking into account that in modern economic literature there is no single interpretation of this concept, sometimes it is defined as "labor market". Different views of the authors on these concepts are due to the purpose of researching specific aspects of labor activity. The analysis of literary sources makes it possible to assert that for the first time the definition of the essence of the labor market was developed in the works of modern researchers who used the scientific results of A. Smith, D. Ricardo, D. S. Mill, K. Marx, A. Marshall, A. Pigou, L. Walrasom, V. Pareto, J. Keynes, P. Samuelson and others.The analysis of the evolution of scientific views on the essence of the concept of "labor market" makes it possible to determine the main stages of its formation and regulation in the context of ensuring the effectiveness and efficiency of labor activity in modern conditions. Conclusions. As a result of the generalization of scientific sources, domestic and foreign studies regarding the essence of the "labor market", it was established that there is no unified opinion regarding the definition of the meaning of this concept. This is explained by the complexity and multifaceted nature of the concept, which is in a state of transformation, associated with rapid changes. Defining the conceptual provisions of the paradigm of formation and regulation of the labor market will contribute to the development of economic theory and provide the essence of its conceptual apparatus. Key words: labor market, division of labor, labor price, labor cost, supply and demand, wages.

A Quantitative Theory of the Gender Gap in Wages

We use data from an agricultural labour market in which workers receive both time- and piece-rate wages and shift frequently among employers and tasks, to assess the roles of comparative advantage, information problems and preferences in determining the allocation of workers. The estimates which impose minimal structure not implied by economic theory are consistent with a one-factor productivity model, and indicate that information asymmetries are present but workers are sorted according to comparative advantage. In particular, the disproportionate presence of female workers in weeding activities is due not to worker or employer preferences but to comparative advantage and statistical discrimination.