Pay Differentials between Government and Private Sector Employees in Sweden

The human capital model predicts that in equilibrium and in the absence of discrimination units of human capital possessed by individuals are paid the same rentals. This would hold also when comparing private and government sectors. Only non-pecuniary rewards such as better job security of fringe benefits would lead to acceptance of lower money payment. In Sweden salary differentials standardized for human capital variables are found to be in favour of private sector employment. This result contrasts with recent findings for the USA where the reverse was found

Rates of Depreciation of Human Capital Due to Nonuse

How important for success on the job is uninterrupted labor force participation? Data on labor force status for a 15 year period for individual salaried employees in Swedish Industry makes possible the estimation of the effect of years of experience and years of non-experience on earnings. One result is that both women and men experience salary decreases by labor force interruptions. However, net investment during non-experience years found to be positive, women as well as men return to the labor market with a larger amount of human capital after the interruption than before the interruption

Daycare Subsidies and Labor Supply in Sweden

This paper utilizes data from a Swedish household survey for 1984 (The HUS data) in combination with data on public daycare fees and spaces per child by community. We argue that the subsidy rate and availability of spaces determined by the political leaders of the community is to a large extent exogenous to the household. The joint out-of-home childcare and labor supply decision is analyzed by logit choice models. We find that the high quality public daycare in Sweden encourages labor market activity of women with preschoolers even when spouse's income is high and that when spaces are not rationed a lower price encourages use

Teenage Motherhood and Long-run Outcomes in South Africa

Teenage motherhood is very high in South Africa. In 2001, 55 per thousand African South African women and 82 per thousand Coloured South African women were teenage mothers as compared to 8 among Indian South Africans and 3 among White South African women. In this paper we use the South African General Household Survey data of 2002 with complete retrospective fertility history to study teenage childbearing and a number of outcomes in 2002 such as completed high school and satisfaction with life. Our main findings are that teenage childbearing is negatively correlated with completing high school, but most other outcome measures do not show the negative effects from teenage motherhood as has been found in many previous US and UK studies. We estimate a bivariate probit model on the joint determination of the probability of teenage motherhood and completing high school, identifying by abortion rates and the numbers of doctors and nurses by region

Marriage Markets and Single Motherhood in South Africa

This paper studies the effects of local marriage markets on South African women’s marital decisions. The analysis is motivated by the low proportion of married among African mothers since 48% are never married. This means that the children of all these never married mothers have no access to their fathers' resources. The low sex ratio of 92 men to 100 women among Africans aged 20-40 makes us believe that shortage of marriageable men may explain marriage patterns. Economic theory predicts less attractive marital outcomes for women when the sex ratio is low. We analyze this hypothesis using the 2001 Census of South Africa. An ordered probit model is fitted with the different marital type ranked from less desirable (never married) to more attractive (married civil). The estimation results suggest that both the quantity and quality of marriageable men matter in the marital choice of women who have at least one child. Exposing African women to the White woman’s marriage market and the achievement of educational levels similar to those of Whites increase their probability of marriage by 8%, implying that only 44% of African women are expected to marry even given good marital opportunities and improved levels of education

Employment Choices and Pay Differences between Non-Standard and Standard Work in Britain, Germany, Netherlands and Sweden

This paper analyses two questions. First, how do otherwise similar people across four countries end up in fourdifferent employment states: 1) full-time with a regular contract, 2) part-time with a regular contract, 3) fixedterm contract full-time or part-time and 4) self-employed? Second, how do wages differ between otherwise similarpeople between work arrangements in each of the four countries in our analysis? We employ the 1998 wave ofhousehold panel data sets namely BHPS for Britain, GSOEP for Germany, OSA for the Netherlands and HUS for Sweden.The reason for analysing and comparing four countries is an interest in policies that may result in differentchoices for otherwise similar people.Our multinomial analyses show that the probability of working part time, both for men and women in the Netherlandsis much higher other things equal than for men and women in the other three countries. Similarly the probabilityof being self employed for men in Sweden is much higher than in the other three countries. In Germany, fixed-termworkers are conspicuously badly paid compared to fixed-term workers in the other three countries. Furthermorewe find part-time workers relatively better paid in Sweden and the Netherlands than in Britain and Germany