Hugo Figueiredo

Towards a European Union Gender Equality Index

In order to monitor progress with respect to gender equality in European Union member states, indices are extremely useful. Existing indices are, however, not appropriate because they do not focus exclusively on gender (in)equality and have not been created to be used at the European level. Therefore a European Union Gender Equality Index is presented in this article. Based on the universal caregiver model as outlined by Fraser (1997), the index is composed of four dimensions: equal sharing of paid work, money, decision-making power and time. With regard to the applied methodology, the index is constructed in such a way that the value indicates the actual distance from a situation of full equality. The empirical results show that full equality is still a long way off. Finland, Sweden and Denmark display the highest overall performance, whereas the southern countries — Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Spain and Italy — perform rather poorly.

Unequal futures? Mass higher education and graduates' relative earnings in Portugal, 1995–2009

This article analyses the evolution of relative earnings premiums for young university graduates in Portugal (1995–2009), suggesting that the previous picture of a successful transition towards mass higher education changed significantly. Our results indicate a decline in the average premium and an increasing dispersion in the returns to higher education. The relative position of graduates at the top of the wage distribution, in jobs in which the majority of workers have a degree, has, however, remained stable. These trends raise the risk of increasing expectations mismatches among recent graduate cohorts.

Should we start worrying? Mass higher education, skill demand and the increasingly complex landscape of young graduates’ employment

Recent decades have seen a massive expansion in higher education (HE), fuelled by high expectations about its private benefits. This has raised concerns about the impact on the employability of recent graduates and the potential mismatches between their skills and the competences required by the job structure. Equally, it could set the ground for a possible transformation of demand for graduate skills and the emergence of new employment profiles. In this article, data for Portugal for the period 2000–2010 were used to look at compositional changes in graduate employment and the incidence of three potential problems in graduates’ transition to the labour market: overeducation, overskilling and education–job mismatches. The implications of growing demand heterogeneity on increasing inequality in graduate labour markets and on the expectations supporting mass HE in a country that rapidly expanded access to tertiary education as a strategy to converge with the productivity levels of other more developed economies are discussed.

Still holding on? Inequality, labour market and middle-income groups in Portugal

While recent studies have highlighted the phenomenon and risks of increased inequalities between the top and the bottom of society, little research has so far been carried out on trends relating to the median income range that generally represents the middle class. This volume examines the following questions: what are the main transformations in the world of work over the last 20 years in terms of the labour market, social dialogue, and conditions of work, wages and incomes that may have affected the middle class? How has the middle class been altered by the financial and economic crisis? What are the long-term trends for the middle class in Europe?

Women’s Changing Job Structure in Europe: Patterns of Job Concentration, Low Pay and Welfare State Employment

The argument of this book is that the changing structure of jobs in a country, both across industries and between low-skill and high-skill occupations, is a critical factor shaping the nature of a country’s path of development and the distribution of opportunities for quality employment. Currently received wisdom suggests that recent job change in many countries is characterized by polarization, with more ‘good jobs’ and more ‘bad jobs’, but fewer mid-ranking jobs in terms of skills required or wages paid (e.g. Goos and Manning 2007; Goos et al. 2009; Wright and Dwyer 2003). Mainstream economists argue that there is a universal logic at work, that advances in information and communication technologies increase the demand for high-skill jobs and growing economic wealth increases demand for non-routine service-sector jobs, while many routine and tradable jobs are offshored or outcompeted by imports from low-cost countries (Autor et al. 2006). In this chapter we take issue with this reasoning on two counts. First, it is not clear in the mainstream economics account why some workforce groups more than others are penalized in the changing distribution of job opportunities. Interrogation of the evidence for the US shows that the ostensibly neutral economic forces are in fact biased against certain socio-economic groups; while white male and female workers witnessed most job growth among the upper end of the job structure, Hispanic and black men and women saw net job expansion clustered among the worst-quality job types (Wright and Dwyer 2003).