Wage Workers (wage + worker)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


The Effectiveness of Jobs Reservation: Caste, Religion and Economic Status in India

DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 3 2007
Vani K. Borooah
ABSTRACT This article investigates the effect of jobs reservation on improving the economic opportunities of persons belonging to India's Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST). Using employment data from the 55th NSS round, the authors estimate the probabilities of different social groups in India being in one of three categories of economic status: own account workers; regular salaried or wage workers; casual wage labourers. These probabilities are then used to decompose the difference between a group X and forward caste Hindus in the proportions of their members in regular salaried or wage employment. This decomposition allows us to distinguish between two forms of difference between group X and forward caste Hindus: ,attribute' differences and ,coefficient' differences. The authors measure the effects of positive discrimination in raising the proportions of ST/SC persons in regular salaried employment, and the discriminatory bias against Muslims who do not benefit from such policies. They conclude that the boost provided by jobs reservation policies was around 5 percentage points. They also conclude that an alternative and more effective way of raising the proportion of men from the SC/ST groups in regular salaried or wage employment would be to improve their employment-related attributes. [source]


Best Practices to Reduce Migration Pressures

INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, Issue 3 2002
Philip Martin
Are there best practices to foster economic development, reduce population growth, and protect the environment in source countries of unauthorized migration, in a manner that reduces emigration pressures and redirects migration towards legal channels? This paper outlines cooperative actions that can be undertaken by both source and receiving countries to better manage the movements of people over national borders. There are two broad approaches to foster wanted migration and to reduce unwanted migration. First, maximize migration's payoffs by ensuring that the 3 Rs of recruitment, remittances, and returns foster economic and job growth in emigration areas. Second, make emigration unnecessary by adapting trade, investment and aid policies, and programmes that accelerate economic development and thus make it unnecessary for people to emigrate for jobs and wages. Most of the changes needed for stay,at,home development must occur in emigration areas, but immigration areas can cooperate in the management of immigration, guest workers, and students, as well as in promoting freer trade and investment, and in targeting aid funds. In a globalizing world, selective immigration policies may have important development impacts, as with immigration country policies toward students, and workers in particular occupations, such as nurses and computer programmers, as well as with mutual recognition of occupational licenses and professional credentials. Trade policies affecting migration are also important, such as trade in services and laws regulating contracts between firms in different countries that allow the entry of lower wage workers as part of the contract. opening channels for legal migration can deter irregular migration. [source]


Continuity and Change: Some Observations on the Landscape of Agricultural Labourers in North Bihar, India

JOURNAL OF AGRARIAN CHANGE, Issue 4 2004
PRAVEEN JHA
This paper is an attempt to catalogue and analyse the changes over two decades in the world of agricultural labourers in a backward region in India. It is primarily based on a series of field visits to two villages in Purnia district, located in the north-eastern part of Bihar. Changes in the living conditions of labourers are obviously connected to developments in the rural economy of the region and there are important linkages with developments elsewhere, including changes in the overall macro-economic policy regime. An attempt is made to trace these. Agricultural wage workers in the surveyed region are extremely poor by any reckoning, although a few of them have made some progress through state-sponsored programmes and migration. These developments have also contributed significantly to altering the relations of dominance and subordination, thus creating greater elbow-room for labourers. However, it is important not to overstate these small gains and there are serious doubts as to whether they can be sustained. It appears that some of the material correlates of labourers' well-being in the surveyed region are being affected adversely by the currently ascendant neoliberal policy regime. There are no signs of the emergence of mechanisms that might imply sustained significant improvements in the very fragile life and work conditions of these labourers. [source]


Chile's Neoliberal Agrarian Transformation and the Peasantry

JOURNAL OF AGRARIAN CHANGE, Issue 4 2002
Cristóbal Kay
In the mid,1970s, following the early shift to neoliberalism, the Chilean rural sector was restructured dramatically, becoming one of the most successful cases of non,traditional agricultural export (NTAE) growth. However, many analysts fail to discuss the problematic nature of Chile's integration into the global market. Underpinning this rapid growth of NTAEs is the exploitation of cheap peasant labour, especially seasonal female wage workers. This article examines the elements of continuity and change in agrarian policy since the transition to democracy in 1990. In particular, it presents the policy debate on the future of the peasantry: capitalization or proletarianization? The dilemma that policy makers face over maintaining high rates of NTAE growth while at the same time attempting to reduce poverty and income inequalities are also highlighted. The Chilean case can be considered as paradigmatic insofar as it exhibits key characteristics of the classical capitalist transformation of agriculture: the emergence of a new class of dynamic agricultural entrepreneurs, renewed proletarianization and land concentration, and intensification of social differentiation. [source]


Progressive Taxes and the Labour Market: Is the Trade,off Between Equality and Efficiency Inevitable?

JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC SURVEYS, Issue 1 2002
Knut Rĝed
Does an income tax harm economic efficiency more the more progressive it is? Public economics provides a strong case for a definite ,yes'. But at least three forces may pull in the other direction. First, low,wage workers may on average have more elastic labour supply schedules than high,wage workers, in which case progressive taxes contribute to a more efficient allocation of the total tax burden. Second, in non,competitive labour markets, progressive taxes may encourage wage moderation, and hence reduce the equilibrium level of unemployment. And third, if wage setters have egalitarian objectives, progressive taxes may reduce the need for redistribution in pre,tax wages, and hence increase the demand for low,skilled workers. This paper surveys the theoretical, as well as the empirical literature about labour supply, taxes and wage setting. We conclude that in a second best world, the trade,off between equality and efficiency is not always inevitable. [source]


Maternal Work and Child Care in China: A Multi-Method Analysis

POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 1 2002
Susan E. Short
The majority of women in China, including mothers of young children, are in the labor force. This article investigates the relationship between mothers' work and child care and explores how type of work affects level of involvement in children's care. Substantive understandings of the relationship between mothers' work and child care may well depend on the way work is conceptualized and measured, especially nonwage work. Nearly two-thirds of women in China live in rural areas, where nonwage work predominates. Analysis of data from eight provinces indicates that wage workers spend less time in child care, but so do women with heavy nonwage demands. Women's involvement in multiple economic activities has consequences for both work-child care compatibility and work intensity, and may be especially important in efforts to categorize women's work in industrializing economies. Because the majority of the world's women do not work in the wage sector, the implications of these findings extend beyond China. [source]