diff --git a/scoping_review.qmd b/scoping_review.qmd index dac83e3..137942f 100644 --- a/scoping_review.qmd +++ b/scoping_review.qmd @@ -613,24 +613,62 @@ which are then distinguished between for their primary outcome inequalities. ## Institutional - -@Whitworth2021 analyse the spatial consequences of a UK work programme on spatial factors of job deprivation or opportunity increases. -The programme follows a quasi-marketized approach of rewarding employment-favourable results of transitions into employment and further sustained months in employment. -The author argues, however, that the non-spatial implementation of the policy leads to spatial outcomes. -Founded on the approach of social 'creaming' and 'parking' and applied to the spatial dimension, -the study shows that already job-deprived areas indeed experience further deprivations under the programme, -while non-deprived areas are correlated with positive impacts, thereby further deteriorating spatial inequality outcomes. -This occurs because of providers in the programme de-prioritizing the already deprived areas ('parking') in favour prioritizing wealthier areas for improved within-programme results. +### Labour laws and regulatory systems - -@Carstens2018 conduct an analysis of the potential factors influencing mentally ill individuals in the United States to participate in the labour force, using correlation between different programmes of Medicaid and labour force status. -In trying to find labour force participation predictors it finds employment motivating factors in reduced depression and anxiety, increased responsibility and problem-solving and stress management being positive predictors. -In turn barriers of increased stress, discrimination based on their mental, loss of free time, loss of government benefits and tests for illegal drugs were listed as barriers negatively associated with labour force participation. -For the government benefits, it finds significant variations for the different varieties of Medicaid programmes, with the strongest negative labour force participation correlated to Medicaid ABD, a programme for which it has to be demonstrated that an individual cannot work due to their disability. -The authors suggest this shows the primary channel of the programme becoming a benefit trap, with disability being determined by not working and benefits disappearing when participants enter the labour force, creating dependency to the programme as a primary barrier. -Two limitations of the study are its small sample size due to a low response rate, and an over-representation of racial minorities, women and older persons in the sample mentioned as introducing possible downward bias for measured labour force participation rates. + +@Broadway2020 study the introduction of universal paid maternal leave in Australia, looking at its impacts on mothers returning to work and the conditions they return under. +It finds that, while there is a short-term decrease of mothers returning to work since they make use of the introduced leave period, over the long-term (after six to nine months) there is a significant positive impact on return to work. +Furthermore, there is a positive impact on returning to work in the same job and under the same conditions, +the effects of which are stronger for more disadvantaged mothers (measured through income, education and access to employer-funded leave). +This suggests that the intervention reduced the opportunity costs for delaying the return to work, and especially for those women that did not have employer-funded leave options, directly benefiting more disadvantaged mothers. +Some potential biases of the study are its inability to account for child-care costs, as well as not being able to fully exclude selection bias into motherhood. +There also remains the potential of results being biased through pre-birth labour supply effects or the results of the financial crisis, which may create a down-ward bias for either the short- or long-term effects. -### Minimum wage +@Dustmann2012 analyse the long-run effects on children's outcomes of increasing the period of paid leave for mothers in Germany. +While the study focuses on the children's outcomes, it also analyses the effects on the return to work rates and cumulative incomes of the policies within the first 40 months after childbirth. +It finds that, while short-term increases of paid leave periods (up to 6 months) significantly increased incomes, over longer periods (10-36 months) the cumulative incomes in fact decreased significantly, +marginally for low-wage mothers for 10 month periods, and across all wage segments for 36 month periods. +For the share of mothers returning to work, it finds that there is a significant increase in the months away from work among all wage segments for all paid leave period increases, positively correlated with their length. +Still similar numbers of mothers return once the leave period ends, though with significant decreases for leave periods from 18 to 36 months. +For its analysis of long-term educational outcomes on children, however, it does not find any evidence for the expansions improving children's outcomes, even suggesting a possible decrease of educational attainment for the paid leave extension to 36 months.[^dustmann-childoutcomes] +Some limitations of the study include its sample being restricted to mothers who go on maternity leave and some control group identification restrictions possibly introducing some sampling bias. + +[^dustmann-childoutcomes]: The authors suggest that the negative effect for children under the long-term paid leave program of 36 months may stem from the fact that children require more external stimuli (aside from the mother) before this period ends, as well as the negative long-term effects of the mother's significantly reduced income for the long-term leave periods. + +In a study on the effects of introductions of a variety of maternity leave laws in Japan, @Mun2018 look at the effects on employment numbers and job quality in managerial positions of women. +Contrary to notions of demand-side mechanisms of the welfare state paradox, with women being less represented in high-authority employment positions due to hiring or workplace discrimination against them with increased maternity benefits, +it finds that this is not the case for the Japanese labour market between 1992 and 2009. +There were no increases in hiring discrimination against women, and either no significant change in promotions for firms not providing paid leave before the laws or instead a positive impact on promotions for firms that already provided paid leave. +The authors suggest the additional promotions were primarily based on voluntary compliance of firms in order to maintain positive reputations, +signalled through a larger positive response to incentive-based laws than for mandate-based ones. +Additionally, the authors suggest that the welfare paradox may rather be due to supply-side mechanisms, based on individual career planning, as well as reinforced along existing gender divisions of household labour which may increase alongside the laws. +Limitations of the study include foremost its limited generalizability due to the unique Japanese institutional labour market structure (with many employments, for example, being within a single firm until retirement), as well as no ability yet to measure the true causes and effects of adhering to the voluntary incentive-based labour policies, with lasting effects or done as symbolic compliance efforts and mere impression management. + +@Davies2022 conduct a study on the return to work ratios for high-skill women workers in public academic universities in the United Kingdom, comparing the results for those in fixed-term contract work versus those in open-ended contracts. +It finds that there is a significantly decreased return to work probability for those working under fixed-term contracts, and most universities providing policies with more limited access to maternity payment for fixed-contract staff. +This is possibly due to provisions in the policies implicitly working against utilization under fixed-terms: +there are strict policies on payments if a contract ends before the maternity leave period is over, and obligations on repayments if not staying in the position long enough after rtw. +Additionally, most policies require long-term continuous service before qualifying for enhanced payments in the maternity policies. +There is high internal heterogeneity between the universities, primarily due to the diverging maternity policy documents, only a small number of the overall dataset providing favourable conditions for fixed-term work within. + +### Protective environmental policies + +@Kuriyama2021 look at the effects of Japan's move to decarbonise its energy sector on employment, especially rural employment. +It finds that, while employment in general is positively affected, especially rural sectors benefit from additional employment probability. +This is due to the renewable energy sector, while able to utilise urban areas for smaller scale power generation, being largely attached to rural areas for larger scale projects such as geothermal, wind power or large-scale solar generation. +The study also suggests some possible inequality being created in between the different regions of Japan due to the Hokkaido region having limited transmission line capacity and locational imbalance between demand and potential supplies. +Limitations include its design as a projection model with multiple having to make strong assumptions about initial employment numbers and their extrapolation into the future, +as well as having to assume the amount of generated power to increase as a stable square function. + +In an observational study looking at the inclusive or exclusionary effects of infrastructure development, @Stock2021 analyses the 'gender inclusive' development of a solar park in India which specifically aims to work towards micro-scale equality through regional uplifting. +The project included a training and temporary employment to local unskilled/semi-skilled labour. +It finds that the development instead impacted equality negatively, creating socio-economic exclusion and disproportionately negatively affected women of lower castes. +While acquiring basic additional skills, none of the women participating in training remained connected to the operators of the solar park and none were hired. +An insignificant amount of women from local villages were working at the solar park, of which most belonged to the dominant caste, and the redistributive potential was stymied through capture by village female elites. +The author suggests this is an example of institutional design neglecting individual agency and structural power relations, especially intersectional inequalities between gender and caste. +The study is limited in explanatory power through its observational design, not being able to make causal inferences. + +### Minimum wage laws @Chao2022, in a study looking at the effects of minimum wage increases on a country's income inequality, analyse the impacts in a sample of 43 countries, both LMIC and HIC. Using a general-equilibrium model, it finds that there are differences between the short-term and long-term effects of the increase: @@ -678,73 +716,18 @@ The channels for the policies effects are two-fold in that there is an inequalit as well as the concentration of workers at the minimum level mattering --- the probable channel for a larger impact on women since they make up larger parts of low-income and minimum wage households in Romania. Limitations to the study are some remaining unobservables for the final inequality outcomes (such as other wages or incomes), the sample over-representing employees and not being able to account for any tax evasion or behavioural changes in the model. -### Paid leave & child care +@Sotomayor2021 conducts a study on the impact of subsequent minimum wage floor introductions on poverty and income inequality in Brazil. +He finds that in the short-term (3 months) wage floor increases reduced poverty by 2.8% and reduced income inequality by 2.4%. +Over the longer-term these impacts decrease, and the minimum wage increases only show diminishing returns when the legal minimum is already high in relation to median earnings. +It suggests that additional unemployment costs, created through new job losses through the introduction, are offset by the increased benefits --- the higher wages for workers. +The authors also suggest an inelastic relationship between increases and poverty incidence. +One limitation of the study is the limit of tracking individuals in the underlying data which can not account for people moving household to new locations. +The data can only track individual dwellings --- instead of the households and inhabitants within --- and thus resembles repeated cross-sectional data more than actual panel data. - -@Broadway2020 study the introduction of universal paid maternal leave in Australia, looking at its impacts on mothers returning to work and the conditions they return under. -It finds that, while there is a short-term decrease of mothers returning to work since they make use of the introduced leave period, over the long-term (after six to nine months) there is a significant positive impact on return to work. -Furthermore, there is a positive impact on returning to work in the same job and under the same conditions, -the effects of which are stronger for more disadvantaged mothers (measured through income, education and access to employer-funded leave). -This suggests that the intervention reduced the opportunity costs for delaying the return to work, and especially for those women that did not have employer-funded leave options, directly benefiting more disadvantaged mothers. -Some potential biases of the study are its inability to account for child-care costs, as well as not being able to fully exclude selection bias into motherhood. -There also remains the potential of results being biased through pre-birth labour supply effects or the results of the financial crisis, which may create a down-ward bias for either the short- or long-term effects. +### Collective bargaining -In a study on the labour force impacts for women @Hardoy2015 look at the effects of reducing child care costs in Norway. -It finds that overall the reductions in child care cost increased the female labour supply in the country (by about 5 per cent), -while there were no significant impacts on mothers which already participated in the labour market. -It also finds some internal heterogeneity, with the impact being strongest for low-education mothers and low-income households, -a finding the authors expected due to day care expenditure representing a larger part of those households' budgets thus creating a larger impact. -Though it may alternatively also be generated by the lower average pre-intervention employment rate for those households. -Interestingly when disaggregating by native and immigrant mothers there is only a significant impact on native mothers, -though the authors do not form an inference on why this difference would be. -A limitation of the study is that there was a simultaneous child care capacity increase in the country, -which may bias the labour market results due to being affected by both the cost reduction and the capacity increase. - -@Dustmann2012 analyse the long-run effects on children's outcomes of increasing the period of paid leave for mothers in Germany. -While the study focuses on the children's outcomes, it also analyses the effects on the return to work rates and cumulative incomes of the policies within the first 40 months after childbirth. -It finds that, while short-term increases of paid leave periods (up to 6 months) significantly increased incomes, over longer periods (10-36 months) the cumulative incomes in fact decreased significantly, -marginally for low-wage mothers for 10 month periods, and across all wage segments for 36 month periods. -For the share of mothers returning to work, it finds that there is a significant increase in the months away from work among all wage segments for all paid leave period increases, positively correlated with their length. -Still similar numbers of mothers return once the leave period ends, though with significant decreases for leave periods from 18 to 36 months. -For its analysis of long-term educational outcomes on children, however, it does not find any evidence for the expansions improving children's outcomes, even suggesting a possible decrease of educational attainment for the paid leave extension to 36 months.[^dustmann-childoutcomes] -Some limitations of the study include its sample being restricted to mothers who go on maternity leave and some control group identification restrictions possibly introducing some sampling bias. - -[^dustmann-childoutcomes]: The authors suggest that the negative effect for children under the long-term paid leave program of 36 months may stem from the fact that children require more external stimuli (aside from the mother) before this period ends, as well as the negative long-term effects of the mother's significantly reduced income for the long-term leave periods. - -@Davies2022 conduct a study on the return to work ratios for high-skill women workers in public academic universities in the United Kingdom, comparing the results for those in fixed-term contract work versus those in open-ended contracts. -It finds that there is a significantly decreased return to work probability for those working under fixed-term contracts, and most universities providing policies with more limited access to maternity payment for fixed-contract staff. -This is possibly due to provisions in the policies implicitly working against utilization under fixed-terms: -there are strict policies on payments if a contract ends before the maternity leave period is over, and obligations on repayments if not staying in the position long enough after rtw. -Additionally, most policies require long-term continuous service before qualifying for enhanced payments in the maternity policies. -There is high internal heterogeneity between the universities, primarily due to the diverging maternity policy documents, only a small number of the overall dataset providing favourable conditions for fixed-term work within. - -In a study on the effects of introductions of a variety of maternity leave laws in Japan, @Mun2018 look at the effects on employment numbers and job quality in managerial positions of women. -Contrary to notions of demand-side mechanisms of the welfare state paradox, with women being less represented in high-authority employment positions due to hiring or workplace discrimination against them with increased maternity benefits, -it finds that this is not the case for the Japanese labour market between 1992 and 2009. -There were no increases in hiring discrimination against women, and either no significant change in promotions for firms not providing paid leave before the laws or instead a positive impact on promotions for firms that already provided paid leave. -The authors suggest the additional promotions were primarily based on voluntary compliance of firms in order to maintain positive reputations, -signalled through a larger positive response to incentive-based laws than for mandate-based ones. -Additionally, the authors suggest that the welfare paradox may rather be due to supply-side mechanisms, based on individual career planning, as well as reinforced along existing gender divisions of household labour which may increase alongside the laws. -Limitations of the study include foremost its limited generalizability due to the unique Japanese institutional labour market structure (with many employments, for example, being within a single firm until retirement), as well as no ability yet to measure the true causes and effects of adhering to the voluntary incentive-based labour policies, with lasting effects or done as symbolic compliance efforts and mere impression management. - - -@Clark2019 undertake an experimental study on the impacts of providing childcare vouchers to poor women in urban Kenya, estimating the impacts on their economic empowerment. -The empowerment is measured through disaggregated analyses of maternal income, employment probability and hours worked. -It finds that, for married mothers there was a significantly positive effect on employment probability and hours worked, suggesting their increased ability to work through lower childcare costs increasing personal agency. -For single mothers, it finds a negative effect on hours worked, though with a stable income. -The authors suggest this is due to single Kenyan mothers already working increased hours compared to married mothers, though the effect shows the ability of single mothers to shift to jobs with more regular hours, even if they are not compatible with childcare. -Minor limitations of the study are its restriction to effects within a period of 1 year, and a somewhat significant attrition rate to the endline survey. - -@Hojman2019, in an experimental study looking at the effects of providing free childcare for poor urban mothers in Nicaragua under the 'Programo Urbano', examine the effects on inequality for mothers and children. -It finds that providing free childcare for young children of poor mothers significantly increases the employment probability of the mothers (14ppts) independently of the childcare quality. -It also finds significantly positive impacts on the human capital of the children, though dependent on the quality of childcare facilities. -This suggests childcare costs being removed through a quasi-subsidy reducing the required childcare time burden on mothers, increasing parental agency and employment choices. -Some limitations to the study include a relatively small overall sample size, as well as employment effects becoming insignificant when the effect is measured on randomization alone (without an additional instrumental variable). - -### Unionisation & collective bargaining - -@Alexiou2023 study on the effects of both political orientation of governments' parties and a country's trade unionization on its income inequality. -It finds that, generally, strong unionization is strongly related to decreasing income inequality, most likely through a redistribution of political power through collective mobilization in national contexts of stronger unions. +@Alexiou2023 study the effects of both political orientation of governments' parties and a country's trade unionization on its income inequality. +They find that, generally, strong unionization is strongly related to decreasing income inequality, most likely through a redistribution of political power through collective mobilization in national contexts of stronger unions. It also suggests that in contexts of weaker unionization, post-redistribution income inequality is higher, thus also fostering unequal redistributive policies. Lastly, it finds positive relations between right-wing orientation of a country's government and its income inequality, with more mixed results for centrist governments pointing to potential fragmentations in their redistributive policy approaches. The study is mostly limited in not being able to account for individual drivers (or barriers) and can thus not disaggregate for the effects for example arbitration or collective bargaining. @@ -775,17 +758,73 @@ It suggests that, aside from a less entrenched trade unionisation in the country Employers were restricted in their ability to effectively conduct lobbying, and made more vulnerable to what the authors suggest are 'divide-and-conquer' strategies by government with a strongly entrenched trade unionisation, due to being more separate and uncoordinated. A limit is the strong institutional context of the two countries which makes generalizable application of its underlying channels more difficult to the overarching quantitative analysis of inequality outcomes. +### Active labour market policies + +@Whitworth2021 analyse the spatial consequences of a UK work programme on spatial factors of job deprivation or opportunity increases. +The programme follows a quasi-marketized approach of rewarding employment-favourable results of transitions into employment and further sustained months in employment. +The author argues, however, that the non-spatial implementation of the policy leads to spatial outcomes. +Founded on the approach of social 'creaming' and 'parking' and applied to the spatial dimension, +the study shows that already job-deprived areas indeed experience further deprivations under the programme, +while non-deprived areas are correlated with positive impacts, thereby further deteriorating spatial inequality outcomes. +This occurs because of providers in the programme de-prioritizing the already deprived areas ('parking') in favour prioritizing wealthier areas for improved within-programme results. + +### Social protection + + + + +@Wang2016 undertake an observational study on the levels of social assistance benefits and wages in a national comparative study within 26 developed countries. +It finds that real minimum income benefit levels generally increased in most countries from 1990 to 2009, with only a few countries, mostly in Eastern European welfare states, showing decreases during the time frame. +The majority of changes in real benefit levels are from deliberate policy changes and the study calculates them by a comparison of the changes in benefit levels to the changes in consumer prices. +Secondly, it finds that changes for income replacement rates are more mixed, with rates decreasing even in some countries which have increasing real benefits levels. +The study suggests this is because benefit levels are in most cases not linked to wages and policy changes also do not take changes in wages into account resulting in diverging benefit levels and wages, which may lead to exacerbating inequality gaps between income groups. + + +A study looking at the impact of the cash transfer programme Oportunidades in Mexico, conditioned on a household's children school attendance, on income inequality among others. +It finds that a combination of effects raises the average income of the poorest households by 23 percent. +The authors argue in the short run this benefits households through the direct cash influx itself, as well as generating a positive wage effect benefitting those who keep their children at work. +For the estimation of income inequality it uses the Gini coefficient. +Additionally, over the long-term for the children in the model there is a direct benefit for those whose human capital is increased due to the programme, but also an indirect benefit for those who did not increase their human capital, because of the increased scarcity of unskilled labor as a secondary effect. +Due to the relatively low cost of the programme if correctly targeted, it seems to have a significantly positive effect on the Mexican economy and its income equality. + +In a study on the labour force impacts for women @Hardoy2015 look at the effects of reducing overall child care costs in Norway through subsidies. +It finds that overall the reductions in child care cost increased the female labour supply in the country (by about 5 per cent), +while there were no significant impacts on mothers which already participated in the labour market. +It also finds some internal heterogeneity, with the impact being strongest for low-education mothers and low-income households, +a finding the authors expected due to day care expenditure representing a larger part of those households' budgets thus creating a larger impact. +Though it may alternatively also be generated by the lower average pre-intervention employment rate for those households. +Interestingly when disaggregating by native and immigrant mothers there is only a significant impact on native mothers, +though the authors do not form an inference on why this difference would be. +A limitation of the study is that there was a simultaneous child care capacity increase in the country, +which may bias the labour market results due to being affected by both the cost reduction and the capacity increase. + + +@Clark2019 undertake an experimental study on the impacts of providing childcare vouchers to poor women in urban Kenya, estimating the impacts on their economic empowerment. +The empowerment is measured through disaggregated analyses of maternal income, employment probability and hours worked. +It finds that, for married mothers there was a significantly positive effect on employment probability and hours worked, suggesting their increased ability to work through lower childcare costs increasing personal agency. +For single mothers, it finds a negative effect on hours worked, though with a stable income. +The authors suggest this is due to single Kenyan mothers already working increased hours compared to married mothers, though the effect shows the ability of single mothers to shift to jobs with more regular hours, even if they are not compatible with childcare. +Minor limitations of the study are its restriction to effects within a period of 1 year, and a somewhat significant attrition rate to the endline survey. + +@Hojman2019, in an experimental study looking at the effects of providing free childcare for poor urban mothers in Nicaragua under the 'Programo Urbano', examine the effects on inequality for mothers and children. +It finds that providing free childcare for young children of poor mothers significantly increases the employment probability of the mothers (14ppts) independently of the childcare quality. +It also finds significantly positive impacts on the human capital of the children, though dependent on the quality of childcare facilities. +This suggests childcare costs being removed through a quasi-subsidy reducing the required childcare time burden on mothers, increasing parental agency and employment choices. +Some limitations to the study include a relatively small overall sample size, as well as employment effects becoming insignificant when the effect is measured on randomization alone (without an additional instrumental variable). + + +@Carstens2018 conduct an analysis of the potential factors influencing mentally ill individuals in the United States to participate in the labour force, using correlation between different programmes of Medicaid and labour force status. +In trying to find labour force participation predictors it finds employment motivating factors in reduced depression and anxiety, increased responsibility and problem-solving and stress management being positive predictors. +In turn barriers of increased stress, discrimination based on their mental, loss of free time, loss of government benefits and tests for illegal drugs were listed as barriers negatively associated with labour force participation. +For the government benefits, it finds significant variations for the different varieties of Medicaid programmes, with the strongest negative labour force participation correlated to Medicaid ABD, a programme for which it has to be demonstrated that an individual cannot work due to their disability. +The authors suggest this shows the primary channel of the programme becoming a benefit trap, with disability being determined by not working and benefits disappearing when participants enter the labour force, creating dependency to the programme as a primary barrier. +Two limitations of the study are its small sample size due to a low response rate, and an over-representation of racial minorities, women and older persons in the sample mentioned as introducing possible downward bias for measured labour force participation rates. + ## Structural -@Shin2006 look at the effects of providing relatively higher wages for teachers, as well as fertility differences, on labour market participation of young female teachers. -They find that providing relatively higher wages for teaching professions as compared to non-teaching professions significantly increases female labour force participation for teachers, though the strongest determinant for it is possessing a college major in education, with overall education level being another determinant. -The study also looks at the effects of the presence of a new-born baby and finds that it significantly decreases female labour force participation and is almost twice as large for women in the teaching profession as compared to non-teaching jobs, though it does not have an effect on the choice of job between teaching or non-teaching. -The authors suggest this relatively higher exit from the labour market for women with new-born babies in teaching professions may once again be due to low wages: teachers leaving the labour market experience relatively lower temporary wage losses than in other professions, decreasing the exit-cost. -A limitation of the study is its restricted focus on strictly female underlying panel data which does not allow for comparisons between genders within or across professions. +### Economic growth and fiscal policies -### Trade liberalization - -@Adams2015 study the effects of labour, business and credit regulations, FDI and school enrolment looks at their long-term correlations to income inequality in developing countries from 1970 to 2012. +@Adams2015 study the effects of labour, business and credit regulations, FDI and school enrolment and looks at their long-term correlations to income inequality in developing countries from 1970 to 2012. They find that in MENA, SSA, LAC and to some extend AP increased labour and business regulations are actually negatively related to equitable income distribution, with market regulation not having significant effects. Similarly, FDI is negatively related and the authors suggest it is unlikely to generate general welfare effects in developing countries as it often has the wrong targeting incentive structure and can only generate more equity when correctly targeting connections from the local to surrounding economies. The authors identify developing countries lacking in institutional capability to accomplish regulatory policies optimized for benefits and see the need for policies requiring more specific targeting of inequality reduction as their agenda. @@ -838,64 +877,26 @@ Additionally, the low income and price elasticity of agricultural products contr Consequently, the authors identify a trade-off between long-term national economic output, adversely affected by the removal of subsidies, and the reduction in rural-urban income ratios facilitated by the subsidies, albeit with diminishing contributions over time. Limitations of the study include the need to assume static national employment and, notably, limited generalizability due to the simulation of specific Chinese structural economic characteristics in the model. -### Education +@Cieplinski2021 undertake a simulation study on the income inequality effects of both a policy targeting a reduction in working time and the introduction of a UBI in Italy. +It finds that while both decrease overall income inequality, measured through Gini coefficient, they do so through different channels. +While provision of a UBI sustains aggregate demand, thereby spreading income in a more equitable manner, +working time reductions significantly decrease aggregate demand through lower individual income but significantly increases labour force participation and thus employment. +It also finds that through these channels of changing aggregate demand, the environmental outcomes are oppositional, with work time reduction decreasing and UBI increasing the overall ecological footprint. +One limitation of the study is the modeling assumption that workers will have to accept both lower income and lower consumption levels under a policy of work time reduction through stable labour market entry for the results to hold. - -Looking at the returns of the Tanzanian 'Universal Primary Education' programme on consumption and on rural labour market outcomes, @Delesalle2021, finds outcomes that additionally differ along spatial and gender lines. -The programme both attempted to increase access to schools but also changed curricula to contain more technical classes, judged relevant to increase equity in rural areas. -Even though the programme aims to increase universal equality of access to education, the study finds that gender, geographical and income inequalities persist throughout, with individuals that complete primary education more likely to be male urban wage workers. -The study measures returns purely on consumption of households to show the estimated effect on their productivity --- -here, it finds generally positive returns but greatest for non-agricultural work, self-employed or as wage work. -Importantly, the introduction of more technical classes also changes employment sector choices, with men working less in agricultural work and more in non-farm wage sectors and an increased probability for rural women to both work in agriculture and to work formally. -Limitations of the study include the inability to directly identify intervention compliers and having to construct returns for each household head only and a possibly unobserved 'villagization' effect by bringing people together in community villages for their education leading to other unobserved variable impacting the returns. +### Automation and technological change -@Pi2016 conduct a study on the impacts of allowing increased access to social welfare provisions and education to urban migrants in China, looking at the effects on wage inequality between skilled and unskilled sectors and workers. -It uses skilled-unskilled inequality instead of rural-urban inequalities since the real wages of the rural sector are already much lower in China, making comparisons along the 90th to 10th decile ratios more difficult. -The study finds that reforms to increase access to social security and education for urban migrants decreases wage inequality between the sectors if the skilled sector is more capital intensive than the unskilled sector, though it makes no specific identification of individual channels. -There are several limitations to the study such as no disaggregation between the private and the (very important for the Chinese economy) public sector, job searching not being part of the model, and, most importantly, a severely restricted generalizability due to the reform characteristics being strongly bound to the institutional contexts of Chinese *hukou*[^hukou] systems. +@Bailey2012 undertake a study on the effects of the introduction of legal access to contraceptive measures for women in the United States, measuring the impacts on closing the gender gap through the gendered hourly working wage distribution. +The study finds that of the closing gender pay gap from 1980 to 2000, legal access to 'the pill' as contraceptive from an early age contributed by nearly percent in the 1980s and over 30 percent in the 1990s. +Thus, overall the authors estimate that nearly one third of total female wage gains during this time were attributable to legal access to contraception. +The primary channels identified are greater educational attainment, occupational upgrading, and increased labour market experience made possible due to no early exit. +The authors also argue that the pill spurred individual agency to invest in personal human capital and career. +However, there are some limitations to the findings: The dataset cannot capture specific access to contraception beyond age 20, which makes the window of analysis more restricted and especially focused on the segment of women under 21. +Additionally, the study can not control for social multiplier effects such as employers reacting with changed hiring or promotion patterns or expectations about marriage and childbearing, as well as the overall coinciding paradigmatic change in norms and ideas about women's work and end of the national baby boom. -[^hukou]: The hukou system generally denotes a permission towards either rural land-ownership and agricultural subsidies for the rural hukou or social welfare benefits and employment possibilities for the urban hukou, and children of migrants often have to go back to their place of registered residence for their college entrance examination. This study looks at reforms undoing some of the restrictions under the sytem. + -@Suh2017 studies the effects of structural changes on married women's employment in South Korea, looking specifically at the impact of education and family structure. -The study finds that educational interventions significantly increase the employment probability of married women, and it finds overall female labour force participation showing a negative correlation with income inequality. -However, education alone is only a necessary not a sufficient condition for increased employment, with a married woman's family size and family structure having an impact as well. -Finally, education also has an intergenerational impact, with the female education also positively relating to daughters' education levels. - -@Coutinho2006 study the impacts of special education between young men and women on their relative employment probabilities and incomes. -It finds that, overall, young women with disabilities were significantly less likely to be employed, earned less than males with disabilities, had lower likelihood of obtaining a high school diploma and were more likely to be a biological parent. -For the employment outcomes, the primary channels identified were men with disabilities being in employment both more months in the preceding period and more hours per week on average than women with disabilities. -Overall, more women were employed in clerical positions and substantially more men employed in technical or skilled positions for both special education and the control samples. -Similarly, for income there was a gender-based difference for the whole sample, though with substantial internal heterogeneity showing only marginal differences between men and women in the high-achieving subsample and the largest differences in the low-achieving and special needs subsample. -The suggestions include a strengthening of personal agency to remain in education longer and delay having children through self-advocacy and -determination transition services for young women to supplement structural education efforts. -Some limitations include initial subsample selection based on parent-reporting possibly introducing selection bias and the special education sample not including students with more severe impairments due to the requirement of self-reporting. - -@Mukhopadhaya2003 looks at the income inequality in Singapore and how national education policies impact this inequality, focusing especially on the 'Yearly Awards' scheme and the 'Edusave Entrance Scholarship for Independent Schools'. -It finds that, generally, income inequality for migrants in Singapore is relatively high, primarily due to generated between-occupational income inequalities and migration policies which further stimulate occupational segregation. -Then, for the higher-education interventions, it identifies issues which may exacerbate the existing inequalities along these lines: -Already-advantaged (high-income) households generally stem from non-migration households and are also reflected in higher representation of high-achievement education brackets. -The education policies thus may exacerbate income inequality through their bad targeting when considering inter-generational academic achievements with high-education households remaining the primary beneficiaries of the policies, a finding which is more significant for the 'Edusave Entrance Scholarship for Independent Schools' than the 'Yearly Awards' scheme which has fewer benefit accruals to wealthier households. -More generally, the study suggests that the system of financing for higher education in Singapore aiming for providing equal education opportunity for all, may in fact further disadvantage poorer, low-income households that have a low-education parental background. - -### Infrastructural change - - - -@Kuriyama2021 look at the effects of Japan's move to decarbonise its energy sector on employment, especially rural employment. -It finds that, while employment in general is positively affected, especially rural sectors benefit from additional employment probability. -This is due to the renewable energy sector, while able to utilise urban areas for smaller scale power generation, being largely attached to rural areas for larger scale projects such as geothermal, wind power or large-scale solar generation. -The study also suggests some possible inequality being created in between the different regions of Japan due to the Hokkaido region having limited transmission line capacity and locational imbalance between demand and potential supplies. -Limitations include its design as a projection model with multiple having to make strong assumptions about initial employment numbers and their extrapolation into the future, -as well as having to assume the amount of generated power to increase as a stable square function. - -In an observational study looking at the inclusive or exclusionary effects of infrastructure development, @Stock2021 analyses the 'gender inclusive' development of a solar park in India which specifically aims to work towards micro-scale equality through regional uplifting. -The project included a training and temporary employment to local unskilled/semi-skilled labour. -It finds that the development instead impacted equality negatively, creating socio-economic exclusion and disproportionately negatively affected women of lower castes. -While acquiring basic additional skills, none of the women participating in training remained connected to the operators of the solar park and none were hired. -An insignificant amount of women from local villages were working at the solar park, of which most belonged to the dominant caste, and the redistributive potential was stymied through capture by village female elites. -The author suggests this is an example of institutional design neglecting individual agency and structural power relations, especially intersectional inequalities between gender and caste. -The study is limited in explanatory power through its observational design, not being able to make causal inferences. - - +### Transport infrastructure @Blumenberg2014 look at the effects of a housing mobility intervention in the United States on employment for disadvantaged households, @@ -923,17 +924,46 @@ and that much of the increases in welfare are based on movement of rural workers The study creates causal inferences but is limited in its modelling approach representing a limited subset of empirical possibility spaces, as well as having to make the assumption of no population growth for measures to hold. -## Agency-oriented +### Education access -@Bailey2012 undertake a study on the effects of the introduction of legal access to contraceptive measures for women in the United States, measuring the impacts on closing the gender gap through the gendered hourly working wage distribution. -The study finds that of the closing gender pay gap from 1980 to 2000, legal access to 'the pill' as contraceptive from an early age contributed by nearly percent in the 1980s and over 30 percent in the 1990s. -Thus, overall the authors estimate that nearly one third of total female wage gains during this time were attributable to legal access to contraception. -The primary channels identified are greater educational attainment, occupational upgrading, and increased labour market experience made possible due to no early exit. -The authors also argue that the pill spurred individual agency to invest in personal human capital and career. -However, there are some limitations to the findings: The dataset cannot capture specific access to contraception beyond age 20, which makes the window of analysis more restricted and especially focused on the segment of women under 21. -Additionally, the study can not control for social multiplier effects such as employers reacting with changed hiring or promotion patterns or expectations about marriage and childbearing, as well as the overall coinciding paradigmatic change in norms and ideas about women's work and end of the national baby boom. + -### Training & accommodation +@Mukhopadhaya2003 looks at the income inequality in Singapore and how national education policies impact this inequality, focusing especially on the 'Yearly Awards' scheme and the 'Edusave Entrance Scholarship for Independent Schools'. +It finds that, generally, income inequality for migrants in Singapore is relatively high, primarily due to generated between-occupational income inequalities and migration policies which further stimulate occupational segregation. +Then, for the higher-education interventions, it identifies issues which may exacerbate the existing inequalities along these lines: +Already-advantaged (high-income) households generally stem from non-migration households and are also reflected in higher representation of high-achievement education brackets. +The education policies thus may exacerbate income inequality through their bad targeting when considering inter-generational academic achievements with high-education households remaining the primary beneficiaries of the policies, a finding which is more significant for the 'Edusave Entrance Scholarship for Independent Schools' than the 'Yearly Awards' scheme which has fewer benefit accruals to wealthier households. +More generally, the study suggests that the system of financing for higher education in Singapore aiming for providing equal education opportunity for all, may in fact further disadvantage poorer, low-income households that have a low-education parental background. + + +Looking at the returns of the Tanzanian 'Universal Primary Education' programme on consumption and on rural labour market outcomes, @Delesalle2021, finds outcomes that additionally differ along spatial and gender lines. +The programme both attempted to increase access to schools but also changed curricula to contain more technical classes, judged relevant to increase equity in rural areas. +Even though the programme aims to increase universal equality of access to education, the study finds that gender, geographical and income inequalities persist throughout, with individuals that complete primary education more likely to be male urban wage workers. +The study measures returns purely on consumption of households to show the estimated effect on their productivity --- +here, it finds generally positive returns but greatest for non-agricultural work, self-employed or as wage work. +Importantly, the introduction of more technical classes also changes employment sector choices, with men working less in agricultural work and more in non-farm wage sectors and an increased probability for rural women to both work in agriculture and to work formally. +Limitations of the study include the inability to directly identify intervention compliers and having to construct returns for each household head only and a possibly unobserved 'villagization' effect by bringing people together in community villages for their education leading to other unobserved variable impacting the returns. + + +@Pi2016 conduct a study on the impacts of allowing increased access to social welfare provisions and education to urban migrants in China, looking at the effects on wage inequality between skilled and unskilled sectors and workers. +It uses skilled-unskilled inequality instead of rural-urban inequalities since the real wages of the rural sector are already much lower in China, making comparisons along the 90th to 10th decile ratios more difficult. +The study finds that reforms to increase access to social security and education for urban migrants decreases wage inequality between the sectors if the skilled sector is more capital intensive than the unskilled sector, though it makes no specific identification of individual channels. +There are several limitations to the study such as no disaggregation between the private and the (very important for the Chinese economy) public sector, job searching not being part of the model, and, most importantly, a severely restricted generalizability due to the reform characteristics being strongly bound to the institutional contexts of Chinese *hukou*[^hukou] systems. + +[^hukou]: The hukou system generally denotes a permission towards either rural land-ownership and agricultural subsidies for the rural hukou or social welfare benefits and employment possibilities for the urban hukou, and children of migrants often have to go back to their place of registered residence for their college entrance examination. This study looks at reforms undoing some of the restrictions under the sytem. + +@Suh2017 studies the effects of structural changes on married women's employment in South Korea, looking specifically at the impact of education and family structure. +The study finds that educational interventions significantly increase the employment probability of married women, and it finds overall female labour force participation showing a negative correlation with income inequality. +However, education alone is only a necessary not a sufficient condition for increased employment, with a married woman's family size and family structure having an impact as well. +Finally, education also has an intergenerational impact, with the female education also positively relating to daughters' education levels. + +@Coutinho2006 study the impacts of special education between young men and women on their relative employment probabilities and incomes. +It finds that, overall, young women with disabilities were significantly less likely to be employed, earned less than males with disabilities, had lower likelihood of obtaining a high school diploma and were more likely to be a biological parent. +For the employment outcomes, the primary channels identified were men with disabilities being in employment both more months in the preceding period and more hours per week on average than women with disabilities. +Overall, more women were employed in clerical positions and substantially more men employed in technical or skilled positions for both special education and the control samples. +Similarly, for income there was a gender-based difference for the whole sample, though with substantial internal heterogeneity showing only marginal differences between men and women in the high-achieving subsample and the largest differences in the low-achieving and special needs subsample. +The suggestions include a strengthening of personal agency to remain in education longer and delay having children through self-advocacy and -determination transition services for young women to supplement structural education efforts. +Some limitations include initial subsample selection based on parent-reporting possibly introducing selection bias and the special education sample not including students with more severe impairments due to the requirement of self-reporting. @Shepherd-Banigan2021 undertake a qualitative study on the significance of vocational and educational training provided for disabled veterans in the United States. It finds that both the vocational and educational services help strengthen individual agency, autonomy and motivation but impacts can be dampened if the potential for disability payment loss due to the potential for job acquisition impedes skill development efforts. @@ -941,12 +971,6 @@ The primary barriers of return to work efforts identified are an individual's he while the primary Facilitators identified are financial assistance provided for education as well as strengthened individual agency through motivation. Some limitations include a possible bias of accommodations required through the sample being restricted to veterans with a caregiver, which often signals more substantial impairments than for a larger training-participatory sample, as well as the data not being able to identify the impact of supported employment. -An experimental study on the impacts of benefits and vocational training counselling for disabled veterans in the United States by @Rosen2014 measures the effects on return to work through average hours worked. -It identifies time worked through a timeline follow-back calendar, measuring the change in days worked in the 28 days preceding the final study measurement. -Here, it finds the sessions having a significant increase on more waged days worked, with an additional three days for the 28 preceding days on average. -One limitation is the inability of the study to locate an active ingredient: -Though the intervention clearly aims at strengthening some aspect of individual agency, the exact mediators are not clear, with neither beliefs about work, beliefs about benefits, nor provided service use for mental health or substance abuse impacted significantly. - The studies thus not only reinforce recommendations for strength-based approaches, emphasising the benefits of work, but also highlight the targeting importance of subsidy programmes in general on the one hand, in the worst case reducing equity through bad targeting mechanisms, and their negative reinforcement effects widening existing inequalities of gender, age and racial discrimination through such targeting on the other. @@ -977,21 +1001,29 @@ as well as only having access to a small control sample size. Thus, findings should be understood as guiding policy directions, while generalisations should be done with care as some of the larger changes may be due to those limitations, such as the increased survey response of those with positive wage outcomes. -### Direct transfers +An experimental study on the impacts of benefits and vocational training counselling for disabled veterans in the United States by @Rosen2014 measures the effects on return to work through average hours worked. +It identifies time worked through a timeline follow-back calendar, measuring the change in days worked in the 28 days preceding the final study measurement. +Here, it finds the sessions having a significant increase on more waged days worked, with an additional three days for the 28 preceding days on average. +One limitation is the inability of the study to locate an active ingredient: +Though the intervention clearly aims at strengthening some aspect of individual agency, the exact mediators are not clear, with neither beliefs about work, beliefs about benefits, nor provided service use for mental health or substance abuse impacted significantly. + +## Agency + +### Occupational segregation and social exclusion @Emigh2018 study the effects of direct state transfers to people in poverty in the post-socialist market transition countries of Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. -It first looks at the correlations of socio-demographic characteristics with poverty to find that in each country there was an increased probability for poverty of low-education, larger and predominantly Roma households. +To do so, the study first looks at the correlations of socio-demographic characteristics with poverty to find that in each country there was an increased probability for poverty of low-education, larger and predominantly Roma households. It also found that poverty itself was most feminized Hungary, the country with the most advanced market transition in the study period, and least feminized in Bulgaria, the country with the least advanced market transition, and suggests that poverty may have feminized as the market transitions progressed. For the state transfers it found that while the level of payments may have been too small to eliminate longer-term adverse effects of the market transitions, in each country's case the transfers to individuals reduced their poverty and were beneficial at least in the short term. The authors thus suggest that their findings may be compatible both with an institutionalist perspective seeing poverty-eliminating benefits in the short term and with an underclass perspective which contends that nonetheless the transfers do not eliminate the deprivations members of disadvantaged groups face, while providing little evidence for generating welfare dependency proposed in a more neoclassical perspective. However, due to no long-term panel data available to fully analyse the underclass and neoclassical arguments, these findings should not be understood too generalizable. -@Wang2016 undertake an observational study on the levels of social assistance benefits and wages in a national comparative study within 26 developed countries. -It finds that real minimum income benefit levels generally increased in most countries from 1990 to 2009, with only a few countries, mostly in Eastern European welfare states, showing decreases during the time frame. -The majority of changes in real benefit levels are from deliberate policy changes and the study calculates them by a comparison of the changes in benefit levels to the changes in consumer prices. -Secondly, it finds that changes for income replacement rates are more mixed, with rates decreasing even in some countries which have increasing real benefits levels. -The study suggests this is because benefit levels are in most cases not linked to wages and policy changes also do not take changes in wages into account resulting in diverging benefit levels and wages, which may lead to exacerbating inequality gaps between income groups. +@Shin2006 look at the effects of providing relatively higher wages for teachers, as well as fertility differences, on labour market participation of young female teachers. +They find that providing relatively higher wages for teaching professions as compared to non-teaching professions significantly increases female labour force participation for teachers, though the strongest determinant for it is possessing a college major in education, with overall education level being another determinant. +The study also looks at the effects of the presence of a new-born baby and finds that it significantly decreases female labour force participation and is almost twice as large for women in the teaching profession as compared to non-teaching jobs, though it does not have an effect on the choice of job between teaching or non-teaching. +The authors suggest this relatively higher exit from the labour market for women with new-born babies in teaching professions may once again be due to low wages: teachers leaving the labour market experience relatively lower temporary wage losses than in other professions, decreasing the exit-cost. +A limitation of the study is its restricted focus on strictly female underlying panel data which does not allow for comparisons between genders within or across professions. An experimental study of providing UBI for villages in India by @Standing2015 looks at the effects on absolute low-income household debts, utilizing a combination of qualitative and quantitative experimental research. It finds that the provision of UBI significantly reduced household debts, finding generally agreeing with assumptions in the literature, but goes beyond this by investigating the qualitative causes going beyond purely monetary value into what the authors call 'emancipatory value'. @@ -1000,14 +1032,9 @@ The last channel especially is a point of interest of the study: the interventio The intervention also significantly increased possibility of saving in treatment households, allowing for an increased economic security and empowerment, which was also influenced by houshold head education, landholding, the household's caste and size. The main channel this is accomplished through is a shift to institutionalized saving, with provides increased resilience against shock events. -@Cieplinski2021 undertake a simulation study on the income inequality effects of both a policy targeting a reduction in working time and the introduction of a UBI in Italy. -It finds that while both decrease overall income inequality, measured through Gini coefficient, they do so through different channels. -While provision of a UBI sustains aggregate demand, thereby spreading income in a more equitable manner, -working time reductions significantly decrease aggregate demand through lower individual income but significantly increases labour force participation and thus employment. -It also finds that through these channels of changing aggregate demand, the environmental outcomes are oppositional, with work time reduction decreasing and UBI increasing the overall ecological footprint. -One limitation of the study is the modeling assumption that workers will have to accept both lower income and lower consumption levels under a policy of work time reduction through stable labour market entry for the results to hold. +### Unconscious bias and discriminatory norms -### Strengthening social inclusion and norms + @Al-Mamun2014 conduct a study on the impacts of an urban micro-finance programme in Malaysia on the economic empowerment of women. The programme introduced the ability for low-income urban individuals to receive collateral-free credit. @@ -1381,7 +1408,7 @@ These discussions reinforce the necessity of correct targeting, as @Poppen2017 a The case seems not one of benefits on their own diminishing the readiness for work activation, but the monetary assistance often being provided instead of effective methods of activation, environmental support and agency-driven motivating factors to their respective recipients. There is a clear bias in studies on disability interventions towards studies undertaken in developed countries and, more specifically, -based on the Veteran Disability system in the United States which has been the object of analysis for a variety of studies, +based on the Veteran Disability system in the United States which has been the object of analysis for a variety of studies, but simultaneously highlights gaps in research on the topic in other contexts and other regions. A recurring focus in all these discussions is their insistence on the intersectional nature of the issue, with gender, ethnicity, location, type and level of disability among others often creating more adverse conditions for disabled individuals. This constitutes a second gap which should provide stronger focus in empirical works, in attempts to disaggregate analyses beyond disability and control group to further understand factors of inequality at work.