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

The Gender Gap in Pensions: Differences Between Generations

Over successive generations, womens participation in the labour market has risen and their career breaks have become less frequent. The gender wage gap has narrowed. The time spent in education has increased. These socio-economic factors largely explain the reduction for future generations of the current gender differentials in pension levels and retirement ages. Nonetheless, the gender pension gap should remain significant. Men of the 1965-1974 generations retiring from the private sector should receive a pension that is more than 50% higher than womens. Although women are expected to participate more in the labour market, they often work part time and the gender wage gap is expected to remain significant. Changes in retirement system rules will influence future trends in pension levels. The gap between womens and mens pensions would have narrowed much more in future if the 1993 and 2003 reforms had not been implemented.Pensions, Gender Pension Gap, Microsimulation, Pension Reforms

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

Fiscalité et mariage

Cet article utilise la réforme du quotient familial de 1995 pour analyser l’impact de la taxation des revenus sur le mariage. Une caractéristique importante de cette réforme est l’annulation des allègements fiscaux en direction des couples de concubins avec enfants. Avant 1995, le système de quotient familial attribuait une demi-part supplémentaire à chaque parent célibataire avec enfants. La réforme de 1995 supprime cet avantage fiscal en introduisant la notion de parent isolé avec enfants. Ainsi, cette mesure compense les pénalités au mariage pour les couples avec enfants sans rien changer pour ceux sans enfant. Afin d’étudier les effets de cette réforme, nous mettons en oeuvre l’estimateur en double différence à partir des enquêtes Emploi (1990-2000) de l’INSEE. Nous observons ainsi que la probabilité de mariage des couples stables s’est accrue d’environ 4 points du fait de la réforme. Nos résultats ne permettent cependant pas de conclure à une moindre participation des femmes au marché du travail induite par une modification des taux marginaux d’imposition.This paper uses the French family quotient reform of 1995 to analyse the impact of the individual income tax on marriage behavior. An important feature of this reform was the cancellation of fiscal subsidies aimed at cohabitant couples with children. Before 1995, the system of the family quotient granted one extra half unit to each single parent with children as defined for tax purposes. The 1995 family quotient reform cancels the benefit for cohabitants with children by introducing the notion of isolated parents with children in the tax declaration. This measure thus compensates the marriage penalty for couples with children but does not change anything for couples without children. To assess the impact of the reform, we use the difference-indifference estimation approach. Using the panel structure of the French employment survey (1990-2000) we find that the probability of marriage has increased for stable couples by about 4 points because of the reform. Nevertheless, our results are inconclusive as to female participation to labor market response

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

A confidence level algorithm for the determination of absolute configuration using vibrational circular dichroism or raman optical activity

Spectral comparison is an important part of the assignment of the absolute configuration (AC) by vibrational circular dichroism (VCD), or equally by Raman optical activity (ROA). In order to avoid bias caused by personal interpretation, numerical methods have been developed to compare measured and calculated spectra. Using a neighbourhood similarity measure, the agreement between a computed and measured VCD or ROA spectrum is expressed numerically to introduce a novel confidence level measure. This allows users of vibrational optical activity (VOA) techniques (VCD and ROA) to assess the reliability of their assignment of the AC of a compound. To that end, a database of successful AC determinations is compiled along with neighbourhood similarity values between the experimental spectrum and computed spectra for both enantiomers. For any new AC determination, the neighbourhood similarities between the experimental spectrum and the computed spectra for both enantiomers are projected on the database allowing an interpretation of the reliability of their assignment

Huge Electro-/photo-/acidoinduced Second-order Nonlinear Contrasts from Multiaddressable Indolinooxazolodine

In this work, linear and nonlinear optical properties of electro-/acido-/photoswitchable indolino[2,1-b]oxazolidine derivatives were investigated. The linear optical properties of the closed and open forms have been characterized by UV–visible and IR spectroscopies associated with DFT calculations. Nonlinear optical properties of the compounds have been obtained by ex situ and in situ hyper-Rayleigh experiments in solution. We show that protonated, oxidized, and irradiated open forms exhibit the same visible absorption and NLO features. In particular, the closed and open forms exhibit a huge contrast of the first hyperpolarizability with an enhancement factor of 40–45. Additionally, we have designed an original electrochemical cell that allows to monitor in situ the hyper-Rayleigh response upon electrical stimulus. We report notably a partial but good and reversible NLO contrast in situ during oxidation/reduction cycles. Thereby, indolinooxazolidine moieties are versatile trimodal switchable units which are very promising for applications in devices

Enantiomeric resolution of helicochiral paddlewheel complexes and their infrared, Raman, UV-vis and X-ray optical activity

International audienceLinear polynuclear paddlewheel complexes-"extended metal atom chains" or "metal strings"-have provided attractive models for the study of metal-metal bonding, magnetism and conductivity since their discovery in the 1990s [1]. Their helicoidal chirality, arising from mutual steric hindrance of the 3-pyridyl protons, resulting in the twisting of the equatorial ligand around the metal axis (see figure), has been less studied. Nonetheless, in one of the few examples of chiral resolution, the obtained enantiomers of a trinickel complex showed a remarkably high specific rotation of 5000 deg•mL•g −1 •dm −1 [2], motivating us to seek a general technique for the chiral resolution of such racemates. We have developed a procedure based on anion exchange for the chiral resolution of [M3(dpa)4] 2+ salts (M = Co(II) or Ni(II), Hdpa = 2,2'-dipyridylamine). Homochiral arsenyl tartrate (AsT) salts promoted the selective crystallization of [-M3(dpa)4(MeCN)2](NBu4)2[-AsT]2, or [-M3(dpa)4(MeCN)2](NBu4)2[-AsT]2 in the P4212 space group. The enantiopure compounds demonstrated surprisingly large optical activities using UV-vis, Raman and infrared spectroscopy in solution and, for the cobalt derivatives, in the X-ray range at the Co K-edge in single crystals. An intense X-ray linear dichroism was observed in the orthoaxial crystal orientation, whereas it vanished in the axial confirmation, while the angular dependence of the circular dichroism spectra followed the expected (3cos 2 − 1) function, thus spectroscopically confirming the D4 crystal symmetry. X-ray magnetic circular dichroism and X-ray magnetochiral dichroism signals at the Co K-edge were not detected, likely due to a strongly delocalized spin density on the metal-metal bonded tricobalt core. Nevertheless, these results establish that chiral polynuclear paddlewheel complexes can be cleanly resolved using selective crystallization and demonstrate considerable optical activity in the infrared, UV-vis and X-ray energy ranges, thus potentially offering future perspectives in non-linear optics and asymmetric synthesis [3]

Exploiting Anisotropy of Plasmonic Nanostructures with Polarization-Modulation Infrared Linear Dichroism Microscopy (μPM-IRLD).

Metallic nanostructures that exhibit plasmon resonances in the mid-infrared range are of particular interest for a variety of optical processes where the infrared excitation and/or emission could be enhanced. This plasmon-mediated enhancement can potentially be used towards highly sensitive detection of an analyte(s) by techniques such as surface-enhanced infrared absorption (SEIRA). To maximize the SEIRA enhancement, it is necessary to prepare highly tuned plasmonic resonances over a defined spectral range that can span over several microns. Noteworthy, nanostructures with anisotropic shapes exhibit multiple resonances that can be exploited by controlling the polarization of the input light. This study demonstrates the role of polarization-modulation infrared linear dichroism coupled to microscopy measurements (μPM-IRLD) as a powerful means to explore the optical properties of anisotropic nanostructures. Quantitative μPM-IRLD measurements were conducted on a 2 series of dendritic fractals as model structures to explore the role of structural anisotropy on the resulting surface-enhanced infrared absorption and sensing application. Once functionalized with an analyte, the μPM-IRLD SEIRA results highlight that it is possible to selectively enhance further vibrational modes of analytes making use of the structural anisotropy of the metallic nanostructure

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