Female labor force participation in France: a cohort analysis

In France the female labor force participation has doubled over the last thirty years. But at the same time part-time work and unemployment developed considerably. So it is not sure that the female labor force participation measured by the number of hours worked still increases. Subsequently the difference between men and women may not be reducing any more. The aim of this paper is to answer some of these questions. To do this we carry out a cohort analysis. The data are the enquêtes Emploi 1982-2002. For each cohort of women (born in a given year) we estimate an "average participation rate between 25 and 59 years old. We propose several definitions of participation according to whether it includes or not unemployment and part-time. We then compare the rates of the different cohorts and measure thus the growth of the female participation over time. The main results are as follows. The participation of the women (in employment or unemployment) does continue to grow. As a consequence the gap between men and women continues to reduce. But if unemployment and partial time are taken into account the participation no more increases: other things being equal the generation 1965-1970 will have the same participation rate (in full-time equivalent) as the generation 1955-1960. Moreover, the participation stopped to increase earlier for unqualified women than for qualified women. Nevertheless the difference between men and women continues to reduce because the male participation tends to decrease.Female participation, labor market, cohort analysis

Pension disparities between men and women: which evolutions?

Mens and womens pensions and retirement ages remain very different, even if this gap has been closing (slowly) for the most recent generations. This work analyses possible developments till 2040. We first study the impact on future pension entitlements and on disparities between genders of the rise in womens participation in the labour market since the early 70s. Simulations carried out with the Destinie microsimulation model conclude that the gender gap keeps closing by the year 2040, essentially because of the rise in womens years of contribution. In a second part, we study the gender impact of pension reforms since the 90s. Although these reforms do not differentiate explicitly between genders, they can have diverging impacts for men and women due to interactions between the new rules and career profiles. Simulations show that this is actually the case. Without reforms, the ratio between pensions for men and women in the private sector would have fallen from 1,99 for cohorts 1940-44 to 1,47 for cohorts 1965-74. After reforms, the new ratio is expected to be 1,59. But the underlying mechanisms are very different from one reform to the next. The 1993 reform has the largest impact: computing the reference wage on the 25 rather than the 10 best years of ones career is more penalizing for women. The impact of the 2003 reform rather results from the fact that women make a larger use of new possibilities to retire before reaching the full rate. The relative reduction of their pension level is therefore the counterpart of an earlier age at benefit claiming. In the public sector, the same 2003 reform is a little more penalizing for men.Pension system, microsimulation, Destinie, pension reform, gender

The new Destinie 2 microsimulation model: main characteristics and illustrative results

The Destinie model is a dynamic microsimulation model that has been developed and used at the French national statistical institute (INSEE) since the mid-1990s and whose main application is the analysis of pension policies. The paper presents the new version of the model that is progressively becoming operational. The main goals of this new version have been to improve the robustness and the flexibility of the instrument. This new model has two separate components: (a) a generator of demographic and employment biographies, whose results are stored in intermediate output files and (b) a library of subroutines allowing an easy programming of ad hoc pension projections based on data from these intermediary files. We explain the advantages of this new structure and we provide some preliminary results showing the impacts of the 1993 and 2003 reforms, or of the long-term impact, on pensions, of various post-crisis growth scenarios.Pensions, microsimulation, retirement behavior

Photoinduced 3D orientational order in side chain liquid crystalline azopolymers

We apply experimental technique based on the combination of methods dealing with principal refractive indices and absorption coefficients to study the photoinduced 3D orientational order in the films of liquid crystalline (LC) azopolymers. The technique is used to identify 3D orientational configurations of trans azobenzene chromophores and to characterize the degree of ordering in terms of order parameters. We study two types of LC azopolymers which form structures with preferred in-plane and out-of-plane alignment of azochromophores, correspondingly. Using irradiation with the polarized light of two different wavelengths we find that the kinetics of photoinduced anisotropy can be dominated by either photo-reorientation or photoselection mechanisms depending on the wavelength. We formulate the phenomenological model describing the kinetics of photoinduced anisotropy in terms of the isomer concentrations and the order parameter tensor. We present the numerical results for absorption coefficients that are found to be in good agreement with the experimental data. The model is also used to interpret the effect of changing the mechanism with the wavelength of the pumping light.Comment: uses revtex4 28 pages, 10 figure

STUDY OF BOUNDARY FILM FORMATION WITH OVERBASED CALCIUM SULFONATE BY PM-IRRAS SPECTROSCOPY

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STUDY OF BOUNDARY FILM FORMATION WITH OVERBASED CALCIUM SULFONATE BY PM-IRRAS SPECTROSCOPY

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IR anisotropic optical constants of the alpha-helix and antiparallel beta-sheet: Consequence on the ATR-IR spectra

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IR anisotropic optical constants of the alpha-helix and antiparallel beta-sheet: Consequence on the ATR-IR spectra

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