From aabfd94373987d163f576fc987263bc650c73246 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Marty Oehme Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2024 12:53:52 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 1/6] feat(data): Add Dustmann2012 study --- 02-data/processed/relevant/Dustmann2012.yml | 72 +++++++++++++++++++++ scoping_review.qmd | 11 ++++ 2 files changed, 83 insertions(+) create mode 100644 02-data/processed/relevant/Dustmann2012.yml diff --git a/02-data/processed/relevant/Dustmann2012.yml b/02-data/processed/relevant/Dustmann2012.yml new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f61d510 --- /dev/null +++ b/02-data/processed/relevant/Dustmann2012.yml @@ -0,0 +1,72 @@ +author: Dustmann, C., & Schönberg, U. +year: 2012 +title: Expansions in Maternity Leave Coverage and Children’s Long-Term Outcomes +publisher: "Economic journal: applied economics" +uri: https://doi.org/10.1257/app.4.3.190 +pubtype: article +discipline: economics + +country: Germany +period: 1979-1992 +maxlength: 40 +targeting: explicit +group: working mothers +data: national administrative Social Security Records (1975-2008) + +design: quasi-experimental +method: difference-in-difference analysis +sample: 13000 +unit: individual +representativeness: national +causal: 0 # 0 correlation / 1 causal + +theory: +limitations: sample restricted to mothers who go on maternity leave; restricted control group identification +observation: + - intervention: paid leave (6 months childcare) + institutional: 1 + structural: 1 + agency: 0 + inequality: gender + type: 1 # 0 vertical / 1 horizontal + indicator: 0 # 0 absolute / 1 relative + measures: income + findings: sign. positive effects among all wage segments for mothers cumulative income 40 months after childbirth + channels: provision of job protection and short-term monetary benefits + direction: 1 # -1 neg / 0 none / 1 pos + significance: 2 # 0 nsg / 1 msg / 2 sg + - intervention: paid leave (36 months childcare) + institutional: 1 + structural: 1 + agency: 0 + inequality: gender + type: 1 # 0 vertical / 1 horizontal + indicator: 0 # 0 absolute / 1 relative + measures: income + findings: marginally sign. negative effect for low-wage mothers after 10month paid leave; significant negative effects among for all mothers cumulative income for 36 month paid leave + channels: long-term extension is unpaid leave, only providing job protection + direction: -1 # -1 neg / 0 none / 1 pos + significance: 2 # 0 nsg / 1 msg / 2 sg + - intervention: paid leave (childcare) + institutional: 1 + structural: 1 + agency: 0 + inequality: gender + type: 1 # 0 vertical / 1 horizontal + indicator: 1 # 0 absolute / 1 relative + measures: employment (rtw share) + findings: sign. increase in months away from work among all wage segments, positively correlated with length of paid leave; majority rtw after leave end, with slight decrease for 18-36month leave period + channels: + direction: -1 # -1 neg / 0 none / 1 pos + significance: 2 # 0 nsg / 1 msg / 2 sg + +notes: no sign. impact on child outcomes; possible negative effect for long-term leave due to child requiring external stimuli and lowered mother's income +annotation: | + A study interested in 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. + 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. diff --git a/scoping_review.qmd b/scoping_review.qmd index 912dd78..921e44f 100644 --- a/scoping_review.qmd +++ b/scoping_review.qmd @@ -700,6 +700,17 @@ 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: From 9176c7a443c92a63575ffe29d67e2beff7a03031 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Marty Oehme Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2024 12:57:06 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 2/6] fix(data): Change paid leave program to institutional --- 02-data/processed/relevant/Davies2022.yml | 4 ++-- 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/02-data/processed/relevant/Davies2022.yml b/02-data/processed/relevant/Davies2022.yml index 9aa5c7f..cfc5e86 100644 --- a/02-data/processed/relevant/Davies2022.yml +++ b/02-data/processed/relevant/Davies2022.yml @@ -24,9 +24,9 @@ theory: scarce high-level academic female representation through 'leaky pipeline limitations: fragmented data restricting observable variables; doest not account for atypical/short-term contracts observation: - intervention: paid leave (childcare) - institutional: 0 + institutional: 1 structural: 1 - agency: 1 + agency: 0 inequality: gender type: 1 # 0 vertical / 1 horizontal indicator: 1 # 0 absolute / 1 relative From 7e233d88860ac13c7e258bd1e10cb51b3566e8fc Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Marty Oehme Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2024 12:57:37 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 3/6] fix(script): Fix spelling mistakes --- scoping_review.qmd | 11 ++++++----- 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-) diff --git a/scoping_review.qmd b/scoping_review.qmd index 921e44f..b110fc4 100644 --- a/scoping_review.qmd +++ b/scoping_review.qmd @@ -716,14 +716,15 @@ It finds that there is a significantly decreased return to work probability for 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 univserities, primarily due to the diverging maternity policy documents, only a small number of the overall dataset providing favorable conditions for fixed-term work within. +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, signaled through a larger positive response to incentive-based laws than for mandate-based ones. -Additionally, the authors make the conjecture 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. +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. @@ -740,7 +741,7 @@ It also finds significantly positive impacts on the human capital of the childre 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). -### Unionization & collective action +### Unionisation & collective action @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. @@ -847,7 +848,7 @@ There are several limitations to the study such as no disaggregation between the [^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. -It 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. +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. From e43a3ad675602803ee54c5e42d867d2eb085605b Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Marty Oehme Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2024 12:58:00 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 4/6] feat(script): Extend gender, migration discussions --- scoping_review.qmd | 55 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++------ 1 file changed, 48 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-) diff --git a/scoping_review.qmd b/scoping_review.qmd index b110fc4..cd0a699 100644 --- a/scoping_review.qmd +++ b/scoping_review.qmd @@ -1145,6 +1145,15 @@ as well as providing a comparative view of the respective intersection with inco ## Gender inequalities + + Due to its persistent characteristics, gender inequality is an often analysed horizontal dimension of workplace inequality in the study sample, with a variety of studies looking at it predominantly through the lens of female economic empowerment or through gender pay gaps. @fig-gender-regions shows that there is a somewhat higher output of research into this inequality in both East Asia & the Pacific and Europe & Central Asian regions just ahead of North America, @@ -1191,7 +1200,6 @@ with subsidies often seeking to nourish this approach, and training, and interve Approaches of paid leave, child care and education agree with the findings of Zeinali et al. [-@Zeinali2021] on the main barriers at the intersection of gender and social identity: The main barriers limiting women's access to career development resources can be reduced access to mentorship and sponsorship opportunities, as well as a reduced recognition, respect, and impression of value at work for women in leadership positions, with inequalities entrenching these barriers being an increased likelihood for women to take on the 'dual burdens' of professional work and childcare or domestic work, as well as biased views of the effectiveness of men's over women's leadership styles. - ```{python} #| label: tbl-gender-crosstab #| tbl-cap: Interventions targeting gender inequalities @@ -1204,17 +1212,45 @@ with more studies targeting gender along income dimensions and the income dimens studies of agency-based interventions approach gender inequalities less through this dimension. Instead, they tend to rely on employment numbers or representation in absolute terms or as shares for their analyses. - -A variety of studies also look at female economic empowerment outcomes through a more generational lens, -focusing on the effects of interventions aimed at maternity support for the mother and/or children --- -childcare programmes, paid leave and maternity benefits. - As @Grotti2016 demonstrate, an increased gender equality does not engender an increase in overall economic inequality. Using the Theil index, they decompose a method to account for the different mediating effects of employment similarity and earnings similarity between the genders and find that neither correlated with an increased income inequality. In fact the opposite seems the case, at least in their analysis of developed nations, with increased female employment reducing the economic inequality, which they see rather generated by a polarisation between high-income and low-income households. + +A variety of studies also look at female economic empowerment outcomes through a more generational lens, +focusing on the effects of interventions aimed at maternity support for the mother and/or children --- +childcare programmes, paid leave and maternity benefits. +A reoccurring question is that of the reasons for inequality in female leadership positions, between institutional discrimination, self selection and family life trajectories. +Like @Mun2018 identified for Japan, while a complex interplay of a variety of factors, +the primary channel seems to lie in a combination of the self-selection of women into different individual career plans, +and reproductions of the existing gender divisions when confronted with the household responsibility for care labour. +While focused more on the effects of education itself, @Suh2017 also agreed with this and sees family structure, +alongside education, having a direct impact on labour market participation [see also @Ochsenfeld2012]. + +These findings of supply-side channels does not imply non-applicability of policy interventions, +but points to a necessity to focus on supporting those causes directly, +through parental leave policies, childcare subsidies and strengthening their return to work effect. +Generally, a reduced cost of child care or expansion of the costs on both parents has been identified to increase mothers' potential to participate in the labour force and pursue further career choices. +On the other hand, currently the presence alone of a new-born child in a household has been identified to strongly negatively correlate with labour force participation, +which can simultaneously foreclose further career choices or advancements. + + +At the same time, within organisations in the new economy's logic of not being bound to a single employer, +different focal points gain importance: team structures, career maps and networking receive more emphasis, +and often reflect gendered organisational logics. +In a quantitative study, @Williams2012 identify the necessity of maintaining large networks, engage in self-promotion, and supervisory discretion as potentially prominent intra-organisational barriers to workplace gender equality, +suggesting suitable policy efforts to focus on an increased managerial accountability, +inclusive efforts regarding corporate-sponsored events as well as counter-acting more informally driven male-only events, +and the general publication of co-workers salaries and individualised career development plans. + +Finally, it is important to reiterate the cross-dimensional nature of such inequalities. +While the changing face of the economy directly affects organisational processes and structural discrimination, +it also has an impact on the work-family relations and thus, ultimately, +the gender inequalities affected on the supply side [@Edgell2012]. +These inequalities surface particularly across the intersection of structural disadvantages and should thus provide the foundation for a holistic picture on inequality instead of one closed off between structural economic concerns and family and maternal decision-making. + ## Spatial inequalities Spatial inequalities are less focused within European, Central Asian and North American regions, @@ -1271,6 +1307,8 @@ They find, similarly to the rural-urban divide, that employment plays a signific They also agree with the potential policy interventions identified to counteract these inequalities: credit programs, institutional support for childcare, guaranteed minimum income/universal basic income or the provision of living wages, commuting subsidies, and housing mobility programs, which largely map onto structural or institutional efforts identified by the studies. +On the other hand, @Hunt2004 show that individual measures on their own such as commuting subsidies in this case, while having positive results, +may not provide significantly lasting impact over the long term and thus may need to be undertaken in a more holistic approach, combining multiple policy packages. Like the study pool shows, many of the highlighted barriers can be mapped onto channels of inequality: gender inequality's impact, through traditional gender roles and lack of empowerment, a lack of childcare possibilities, or unequal proportions of domestic work; @@ -1350,9 +1388,12 @@ crosstab_inequality(df_inequality, "ethnicity").sort_values("ethnicity", ascendi There is a mixed approach to using income-based indicators of inequality or other markers such as employment. At the same time, there is a somewhat stronger focus on absolute measures of inequality, such poverty, debt or savings, or hours worked in absolute terms. Relative indicators have a wider spread with the Gini coefficient, the Theil index, decile ratios or employment rates for sub-samples used. - From an organisational perspective, the focus on structural effects is in agreement with perspectives which highlight the conceptualisation of workplace ethnicity as separate from the majority in many places as a structural power structure [@Samaluk2014]. + At the same time in a broader context, job insecurities, both produced by the dis-embeddedness of migrants and the broader contemporary institutional work organisational context speak to the same institutional-structural focus required as is already pursued in the literature [@Landsbergis2014]. +With a focus on remittances of temporary migratory work, +@Rosewarne2012 similarly argues for the necessity to allow for greater continuity of employment to counteract while cementing the workers' bounds to their respective home countries, +through circular labour migration being supported by formal embedding in employment contract through contract succession negotiations and shifting the focus to labour rights specifically for the temporary nature of such work. While some frameworks do put agency-driven necessities to the foreground [see @Siebers2015], the consensus seems a requirement for structural approaches enabling this agency and their institutional embedding before more agency-driven interventions alone increase their effectiveness [see for structural necessities @Do2020; @Goodburn2020; for institutional contexts see @Clibborn2022]. From d2e461b7b573d766192e137d0fe852dd7a04e83f Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Marty Oehme Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2024 16:52:17 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 5/6] feat(data): Add Bailey2012 study --- 02-data/processed/relevant/Bailey2012.yml | 47 +++++++++++++++++++++++ scoping_review.qmd | 8 ++++ 2 files changed, 55 insertions(+) create mode 100644 02-data/processed/relevant/Bailey2012.yml diff --git a/02-data/processed/relevant/Bailey2012.yml b/02-data/processed/relevant/Bailey2012.yml new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b5ba900 --- /dev/null +++ b/02-data/processed/relevant/Bailey2012.yml @@ -0,0 +1,47 @@ +author: Bailey, M. J., Hershbein, B., & Miller, A. R. +year: 2012 +title: The Opt-In Revolution? Contraception and the Gender Gap in Wages +publisher: "Economic journal: applied economics" +uri: https://doi.org/10.1257/app.4.3.225 +pubtype: article +discipline: economics + +country: United States +period: 1968-1989 +maxlength: +targeting: implicit +group: young women +data: longitudinal administrative National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women (NLS-YW) + +design: quasi-experimental +method: linear regression models, Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition with recentered influence function (RIF) procedure +sample: 5159 +unit: individual +representativeness: national +causal: 0 # 0 correlation / 1 causal + +theory: +limitations: dataset does not capture access to contraception beyond age 20 and social multiplier effects (e.g. changed hiring/promotion patterns) +observation: + - intervention: technological change (contraception) + institutional: 0 + structural: 1 + agency: 0 + inequality: gender; income + type: 1 # 0 vertical / 1 horizontal + indicator: 1 # 0 absolute / 1 relative + measures: hourly wage distribution (gendered) + findings: early legal access to contraceptives ('the pill') influenced decrease in gender gap by 10% in 1980s, 30% in 1990s; estimates 1/3rd of total female wage gains induced by access 1980s-1990s + channels: increased labor market experience (due to not exiting early); greater educational attainment, occupational upgrading; spurred personal investment in human capital and careers + direction: -1 # -1 neg / 0 none / 1 pos + significance: 2 # 0 nsg / 1 msg / 2 sg + +notes: +annotation: | + 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. diff --git a/scoping_review.qmd b/scoping_review.qmd index cd0a699..2e36519 100644 --- a/scoping_review.qmd +++ b/scoping_review.qmd @@ -916,6 +916,14 @@ as well as having to make the assumption of no population growth for measures to ## Agency-oriented +@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 Similarly, @Shepherd-Banigan2021 undertake a qualitative study on the significance of vocational and educational training provided for disabled veterans in the United States. From 2333925211f0dd8b75f180e34c80edf7acaf3f62 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Marty Oehme Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2024 16:52:38 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 6/6] chore(script): Clean script whitespaces --- scoping_review.qmd | 74 +++++++++++++++++++++++----------------------- 1 file changed, 37 insertions(+), 37 deletions(-) diff --git a/scoping_review.qmd b/scoping_review.qmd index 2e36519..8dd093b 100644 --- a/scoping_review.qmd +++ b/scoping_review.qmd @@ -117,7 +117,7 @@ This study presents a systematic scoping review of the current literature concer It attempts to trace the main mechanisms and channels of the interventions employed in the global world of work to reduce its inequalities, while simultaneously investigating the methodologies and indicators used in evidence-based research on them to systematically elaborate the current state of the art on inequalities in the world of work. -The following section presents a typology of policies that directly or indirectly tackle inequalities in the WoW both within the labour market and outside this domain (e.g. education policy). +The following section presents a typology of policies that directly or indirectly tackle inequalities in the world of work both within the labour market and outside this domain (e.g. education policy). The section also makes an attempt to clearly identify the theoretical mechanisms and channels through which policies are expected to impact inequalities in forms of work and ultimate labour market outcomes. The ILO has a policy approach to reducing inequalities in the world of work segmented into five major focus areas: @@ -126,8 +126,8 @@ Each of these areas in turn rests on a variety of more specific emphases which f The rest of the study is structured as follows: Section 2 will introduce the world of work, as well as the ILO's approach to inequalities within it, and provide a variety of other recent approaches to make sense of inequalities in the world of work. -Section 3 will then introduce the method applied in the scoping review of this study, before introducing the initial identified literature as a coherent sample. -Section 4 will synthesize findings on a variety of intervention found in the literature, organized by general policy area of intervention pursued. +Section 3 will then introduce the method applied in the scoping review of this study, before introducing the initial identified literature as a coherent sample. +Section 4 will synthesize findings on a variety of intervention found in the literature, organized by general policy area of intervention pursued. Section 5 will then provide a brief discussion on these findings from the perspective of individual inequalities, the interventions found to reduce them, and resulting policy implications, before Section 6 briefly concludes. # The world of work @@ -343,7 +343,7 @@ Its purpose, clearly mapping a body of literature on a (broad) topic area, is th With an increasingly adopted approach in recent years, with rigorous dichotomy of inclusion and exclusion criteria it provides a way of charting the relevance of literature related to its overall body that strives to be free of influencing biases which could affect the skew of the resulting literature sample [@Pham2014]. -The search protocol will be carried out based on the introduced areas of policies as well as the possible combination of definitions and outcomes in the WoW. +The search protocol was carried out based on the introduced areas of policies as well as the possible combination of definitions and outcomes in the world of work. For each dimension of definitions, a cluster containing possible utilized terms will be created, that is for: definitions of work and labour, forms of work, definitions of inequality, forms of vertical and forms of horizontal inequalities, labour market outcomes, and definitions of policy. Each of the clusters contains synonymous terms as well as term-adjacent phrase combinations which are in turn used to refine or broaden the search scope to best encapsulate each respective cluster, based on the above definitions. @@ -546,7 +546,7 @@ plt.show() ``` Second, while such a decrease is visible the changes between individual years are more erratic due to strong changes from year to year. -This suggests, first, no overall decrease in academic interest in the topic over this period of time, +This suggests, first, no overall decrease in academic interest in the topic over this period of time, and second, no linearly developing concentration or centralization of knowledge output and dissemination, though it also throws into question a clear-cut increase of *relevant* output over time. @@ -593,7 +593,7 @@ by_intervention = None ``` @fig-intervention-types shows the most often analysed interventions for the literature reviewed. -Overall, there is a focus on measures of minimum wage and education interventions, +Overall, there is a focus on measures of minimum wage and education interventions, as well as collective action, subsidies, trade liberalization changes and training. This points to a spread capturing both institutional, as well as structural and agency-driven programmes. @@ -741,7 +741,7 @@ It also finds significantly positive impacts on the human capital of the childre 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 action +### 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. @@ -761,18 +761,18 @@ It also finds that collective negotiation practices targeting especially manager The primary channel for only marginal significance stems from internal heterogeneity in that only the median part of wage distributions is significantly affected by the measures. Instead, the authors recommend a stronger mix of policy approaches, also considering the human-capital aspects with for example active labour-market policies targeting it. -@Dieckhoff2015 undertake a study on the effect of trade unionization in European labour markets, with a specific emphasis on its effects on gender inequalities. -It finds, first of all, that increased unionization is related to the probability of being employed on a standard employment contract for both men and women. -It also finds no evidence that men seem to carry increased benefits from increased unionization, although in combination with temporary contract and family policy re-regulations, men do seem to experience greater benefits than women. +@Dieckhoff2015 undertake a study on the effect of trade unionisation in European labour markets, with a specific emphasis on its effects on gender inequalities. +It finds, first of all, that increased unionisation is related to the probability of being employed on a standard employment contract for both men and women. +It also finds no evidence that men seem to carry increased benefits from increased unionisation, although in combination with temporary contract and family policy re-regulations, men do seem to experience greater benefits than women. At the same time women's employment under standard contracts does not decrease, such that there is no absolute detrimental effect for either gender. -It does, however, pose the question of the allocation of relative benefits between the genders through unionization efforts. +It does, however, pose the question of the allocation of relative benefits between the genders through unionisation efforts. The study is limited in that, by averaging outcomes across European nations, it can not account for nation-specific labour market contexts or gender disaggregations. @Ahumada2023 on the other hand create a study on the effects of unequal distributions of political power on the extent and provision of collective labour rights. It is a combination of quantitative global comparison with qualitative case studies for Argentina and Chile. It finds that, for societies in which power is more unequally distributed, collective bargaining possibilities are more limited and weaker. -It suggests that, aside from a less entrenched trade unionization in the country, the primary channel for the its weakening are that existing collective labour rights are often either restricted or disregarded outright. -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 unionization, due to being more separate and uncoordinated. +It suggests that, aside from a less entrenched trade unionisation in the country, the primary channel for the its weakening are that existing collective labour rights are often either restricted or disregarded outright. +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. ## Structural @@ -960,10 +960,10 @@ Some limitations of the study include its limited generalizability, having a sam It finds, foremost, that initially both the hours worked and the income of people with disabilities are lower on the Australian labour market in general and this reflects in the results for the disability group of participants, which have significantly lower weekly incomes and hours worked than the control group. Over time, hours worked increase for the disability group to no longer be significantly different but still lower than for the control group (from 3.1 hours to 1 hour difference per week), however there are large fluctuations in the control group. -Similarly, the wages of the disability group are initially substantially lower than of the control group, +Similarly, the wages of the disability group are initially substantially lower than of the control group, which increases to be non-significant though still lower over time, more so for the earnings of female participants and participants which received a disability pension. -Relevant limitations of the study include the use of a non-representative sample for the national representativeness, -and the overall generalisability being low due to an increased labour force participation bias and attrition bias of the surveys, +Relevant limitations of the study include the use of a non-representative sample for the national representativeness, +and the overall generalisability being low due to an increased labour force participation bias and attrition bias of the surveys, 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. @@ -998,7 +998,7 @@ working time reductions significantly decrease aggregate demand through lower in 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. -### Microfinance +### 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. @@ -1084,7 +1084,7 @@ Policy interventions undertaken either with the explicit aim of reducing one or To make further sense of the studies shining a light on such approaches, it makes sense to divide their attention not just by primary approach, but by individual or overlapping inequalities being targeted, as well as the region of their operation. -As can be seen in @fig-inequality-types which breaks down available studies by targeted inequalities, +As can be seen in @fig-inequality-types which breaks down available studies by targeted inequalities, income inequality is the type of inequality traced in most of the relevant studies. This follows the identified multi-purpose lens income inequality can provide, through which to understand other inequalities --- many studies use income measurements and changes in income or income inequality over time as indicators to understand a variety of other inequalities' linkages through. @@ -1117,7 +1117,7 @@ plt.show() by_inequality = None ``` -With income inequality on its own often describing vertical inequality within a national context, +With income inequality on its own often describing vertical inequality within a national context, the remaining inequalities gathered from the data rather form horizontal lenses to view their contexts through. The second most analysed inequality is that of gender, followed by spatial inequalities, disabilities, generational inequalities, inequalities of migration, education and age. The following sections will dive deeper into each predominant identified inequality, discuss what the main interventions analysed in the literature are and where gaps and limitations lie. @@ -1144,7 +1144,7 @@ The effects on low-skill income share under a system of minimum wage are thus pr Ultimately, the author also suggests the institution of low-skill worker training programmes either targeting enhanced productivity for their existing tasks ('deepening skills') or enabling their capability for undertaking tasks previously only assigned to high-skill workers ('expanding skills') which would respectively counteract the negative automation effects on both margins. Thus, for the current state of the literature on analyses of policy interventions through the lens of inequality reduction within the world of work, there are strong gaps of academic lenses for generational inequalities, age inequalities, education inequalities and inequalities of non-ethnic migration processes going purely by quantity of output. -Care should be taken not to overestimate the decisiveness of merely quantified outputs --- +Care should be taken not to overestimate the decisiveness of merely quantified outputs --- multiple studies with strong risk of bias may produce less reliable outcomes than fewer studies with stronger evidence bases --- however, it does provide an overview of the size of evidence base in the first place. @@ -1153,8 +1153,8 @@ as well as providing a comparative view of the respective intersection with inco ## Gender inequalities -