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Two Essays on the Challenges Facing Women and Minorities in the Labor Market /cJennifer Anne Tracey

出版	Michigan State University. Department of Economics, 2001
URL	http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=h3KqiRA2KYsC&hl=&source=gbs_api

註釋This dissertation contributes to the literature on women and minorities in the labor market by investigating two unique challenges facing these groups of workers that have been overlooked in the past. The first chapter investigates the relationship between fertility and job search behavior, uncovering a potential reason behind the poorer labor market outcomes for women with young children. Specifically, it looks at how the presence of young children at home affects the amount of time an individual devotes to job search. Although the effect of fertility on job search intensity is analyzed for both men and women, the findings show that children represent a significant constraint on search intensity for women, while the results for men are somewhat mixed. These are significant findings given the current political attention to child care as a national concern and the importance of search behavior in determining labor market outcomes, such as wages, unemployment duration and the probability of remaining in the labor force. This is true regardless of whether the negative relationship between children and search intensity is primarily due to the cost of child care while searching, or to the expectation of a lower effective wage once work is found due to child care costs while working. The second chapter takes a new look at the problem of racial and ethnic job segregation, investigating both its effects and causes. Even after controlling for differences in personal human capital and job characteristics, the results confirm that racial and ethnic job segregation is an important contributor to the lower wages paid to blacks and Hispanics than to similar whites. This study also explores the potential impact of racial and ethnic segregation on the likelihood of receiving various employment benefits, yet finds job segregation to play a smaller role in explaining differences between minorities and whites in the number of employment benefits received than it does in explaining wage differentials. Finally, the potential causes of racial and ethnic job segregation are explored. The results show that while minorities who reside in more segregated neighborhoods are significantly more likely to work in segregated jobs, those who commute longer distances to work are less likely to work in a segregated job, two findings consistent with Kain's (1968) “spatial mismatch hypothesis.” The findings also indicate that blacks and Hispanics who work in larger firms are less likely to be in segregated jobs, and that English fluency and citizenship status are strongly associated with the likelihood of job segregation for Hispanics.