Suchergebnisse

This article demonstrates a novel application of propensity score matching techniques: to estimate nonexperimental impacts on program participants within the context of an experimental research design. The author examines the relationship between program participation, defined as qualifying for an earnings supplement by working full-time, and marital union formation among low-income mothers in two Canadian provinces. The author finds that receipt of an earnings supplement substantially increased union formation in one province but not the other. A subgroup analysis based on propensities of program participation revealed that the positive effect on unions was concentrated among relatively disadvantaged participants. The techniques demonstrated in the article are broadly applicable to studies in which take-up is less than 100% among those randomly assigned to a program group.

AbstractObjectiveThis article estimates the association between maternal exposure to unpredictable work schedules in the service sector and child internalizing and externalizing behavior.BackgroundPrecarious work is widespread and characterized by low wages, few benefits, and nonstandard schedules. But working parents, especially in the service sector, contend with unpredictable work schedules as well. These schedules have negative consequences for workers, but may also perpetuate inequality across generations by negatively affecting children.MethodThis article takes advantage of novel survey data from The Shift Project, covering 2,613 mothers (surveyed 2017–2019) working in the service sector with children (mean child age of 7.5), to examine the association between maternal work schedules and child behavior as well as the mediators of this relationship.ResultsMaternal exposure to unpredictable work schedules is associated with children's externalizing and internalizing behavior. Mediation analysis shows that for parents with the most unpredictable schedules, this aspect of job quality operates on children's behavior by increasing household economic insecurity, reducing developmental parenting time, and diminishing maternal well‐being.ConclusionThese results demonstrate that work scheduling conditions may have consequences not just for workers themselves but also for their children.

AbstractAmerican policymakers have long focused on work as a key means to improve economic wellbeing. Yet, work has become increasingly precarious and polarized. This precarity is manifest in low wages but also in unstable and unpredictable work schedules that often vary significantly week to week with little advance notice. We draw on new survey data from The Shift Project on 37,263 hourly retail and food service workers in the United States. We assess the association between routine unpredictability in work schedules and household material hardship. Using both cross-sectional models and panel models, we find that workers who receive shorter advanced notice, those who work on-call, those who experience last minute shift cancellation and timing changes, and those with more volatile work hours are more likely to experience hunger, residential, medical, and utility hardships as well as more overall hardship. Just-in-time work schedules afford employers a great deal of flexibility but at a heavy cost to workers' economic security.

In this article, we explore the use of Facebook targeted advertisements for the collection of survey data. We illustrate the potential of survey sampling and recruitment on Facebook through the example of building a large employee–employer linked data set as part of The Shift Project. We describe the workflow process of targeting, creating, and purchasing survey recruitment advertisements on Facebook. We address concerns about sample selectivity and apply poststratification weighting techniques to adjust for differences between our sample and that of "gold standard" data sources. We then compare univariate and multivariate relationships in the Shift data against the Current Population Survey and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997. Finally, we provide an example of the utility of the firm-level nature of the data by showing how firm-level gender composition is related to wages. We conclude by discussing some important remaining limitations of the Facebook approach, as well as highlighting some unique strengths of the Facebook targeted advertisement approach, including the ability for rapid data collection in response to research opportunities, rich and flexible sample targeting capabilities, and low cost, and we suggest broader applications of this technique.

Research on precarious work and its consequences overwhelmingly focuses on the economic dimension of precarity, epitomized by low wages. But the rise in precarious work also involves a major shift in its temporal dimension, such that many workers now experience routine instability in their work schedules. This temporal instability represents a fundamental and under-appreciated manifestation of the risk shift from firms to workers. A lack of suitable existing data, however, has precluded investigation of how precarious scheduling practices affect workers' health and well-being. We use an innovative approach to collect survey data from a large and strategically selected segment of the U.S. workforce: hourly workers in the service sector. These data reveal that exposure to routine instability in work schedules is associated with psychological distress, poor sleep quality, and unhappiness. Low wages are also associated with these outcomes, but unstable and unpredictable schedules are much more strongly associated. Precarious schedules affect worker well-being in part through the mediating influence of household economic insecurity, yet a much larger proportion of the association is driven by work-life conflict. The temporal dimension of work is central to the experience of precarity and an important social determinant of well-being.

Using longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing survey ( N = 4,211), this study examines neighborhood disadvantage and perceptions of instrumental support among mothers with young children. The authors find that (a) living in a disadvantaged neighborhood is associated with less instrumental support, particularly financial assistance, from family and friends; (b) residential stability is associated with stronger personal safety nets irrespective of neighborhood quality; and (c) mothers who move to a more disadvantaged neighborhood experience a small but significant decline in perceived instrumental support compared with those who do not move. In interpreting these results, the authors suggest instrumental support may be either a cause or consequence of living in an advantaged neighborhood, but in either case, neighborhood and social network disadvantages go hand in hand.

This article uses qualitative and quantitative data for a recent birth cohort from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study to compare kin support patterns between African Americans and Hispanics. It focuses on financial and housing support from grandparents and other kin during the transition to parenthood. Qualitative analysis ( n = 122 parents) uncovers distinctions in the way African American and Hispanic parents discuss their family networks, with African Americans emphasizing relations with female kin and Hispanics emphasizing a more integrated system. Consistent with these findings, quantitative analysis ( n = 2,472 mothers and n = 2,639 fathers) finds that compared with Hispanic parents, African American parents are more likely to receive financial and housing support from grandmothers and less likely to receive support from both grandparents. Contrary to expectations that fathers would be the primary support recipients in Hispanic households, the authors find that mothers are the more common recipients of support among African Americans and Hispanics.

This article uses new data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study to examine the reasons why white, Mexican American, and other Hispanic parents are approximately 2.5 times more likely than African American parents to marry within the 30 months after a nonmarital birth. Combining Fragile Families microdata with 2000 U.S. Census data shows that marriage market conditions exert a large influence on marriage decisions, even among couples that already have formed a romantic relationship and had a child together. The findings also show that an undersupply of employed African American men can explain a large portion of the racial and ethnic differences in marriage after a nonmarital birth. The current findings support the theory that marriage markets are influential not only during the search for romantic partners but also in determining whether romantic relationships, once formed, will lead to marriage.

AbstractObjectiveWe assess how the distribution of parents across firms contributes to parenthood wage gaps in a low‐wage US labor market and examine the role of understudied compensating differentials relevant to precarious work.BackgroundIn the United States, parenthood drives a wedge in wages, as mothers often earn less than women without children, whereas fathers typically earn more than men without children. Firms bear influence over setting wages and sorting workers, yet firms are largely omitted from research on parental wage gaps in the United States.MethodWe draw on novel employer–employee matched data on 74,086 hourly service‐sector workers to decompose parental wage gaps into their within‐ and between‐firm components. We leverage uniquely rich data on compensating differentials to test if they sort parents across firms.ResultsWe found that mothers are overrepresented in lower‐wage firms, accounting for 68% of mothers' wage gap. In contrast, fathers' wage gap accrued within firms. We found limited evidence that compensating differentials, even schedule quality, produce parental wage gaps.ConclusionWe show for the first time that in a major US industry, mothers are segregated in low‐paying firms compared to women without children, while fathers are paid more than men without children in the same firms. Our findings largely do not tell a story of parents voluntarily choosing between wages and job quality, instead calling for more research on firm practices.

Unequal sorting of men and women into higher and lower-wage firms contributes significantly to the gender wage gap according to recent analysis of national labor markets. We confirm the importance of this between-firm gender segregation in wages and examine a second outcome of hours using unique employer–employee data from the service sector. We then examine what explains the relationship between firm gender composition and wages. In contrast to prevailing economic explanations that trace between-firm differences in wages to differences in firm surplus, we find evidence consistent with devaluation and potentially a gender-specific use of "low road" employment strategies.