Marco Francesconi

Temporary Jobs: Stepping Stones or Dead Ends?

In Britain about 7% of male employees and 10% of female employees are in temporary jobs. In contrast to much of continental Europe, this proportion has been relatively stable over the 1990s. Using data from the British Household Panel Survey, we find that temporary workers report lower levels of job satisfaction, receive less work-related training, and are less well-paid than their counterparts in permanent employment. However, there is evidence that fixed-term contracts are a stepping stone to permanent work. Women (but not men) who start in fixed-term employment and move to permanent jobs fully catch up to those who start in permanent jobs.

A sticky floors model of promotion, pay, and gender

Abstract According to raw data from the British Household Panel Survey, full-time women are more likely than men to be promoted. Controlling for observed and unobserved individual heterogeneity, we find that women are promoted at roughly the same rate as men, but may receive smaller wage increases consequent upon promotion. To help explain these phenomena, we construct a new “sticky floors” model of pay and promotion. In our model, women are just as likely as men to be promoted but find themselves stuck at the bottom of the wage scale for the new grade.

A Joint Dynamic Model of Fertility and Work of Married Women

This article estimates a dynamic model of fertility and labor supply of married women drawn from the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women, 1968–91. It distinguishes part‐time and full‐time employment sectors, which differ by pecuniary and nonpecuniary returns and transferability of human capital. The model with unobserved heterogeneity in earning ability and preferences for children fits the data and produces reasonable forecasts of labor force participation in decisions. The estimates unpack important features of the persistence in labor market decisions, intertemporal substitution of leisure over the life cycle, and the effect of work interruptions, due to childbirth, on lifetime utility.

Job Tenure and Job Mobility in Britain

Using work-history data from the British Household Panel Survey, the authors examine job mobility and job tenure over the period 1915–90. British men and women held an average of five jobs over the course of their work lives, and half of all lifetime job changes occurred in the first ten years. Separation hazards were higher for more recent cohorts, implying an increase in job instability. As jobs accumulated, average tenure lengthened, but the proportion of involuntary separations increased. For both men and women, the rise in job instability was particularly marked in the lowest occupational classification. In general, job insecurity was greater for men than women.

Unions, Work-Related Training, and Wages: Evidence for British Men

Using data for the years 1991–96 from the British Household Panel Survey, the authors investigate how union coverage affected work-related training and how the union-training link affected wages and wage growth for a sample of full-time men. Relative to non-covered workers, union-covered workers were more likely to receive training and also received more days of training. Among workers who received training, those with union coverage enjoyed greater returns to training and higher wage growth than did those without. While some of these results have been found in previous studies, others are new. The wage results, in particular, suggest a need for rethinking the conventional view that union wage formation in Britain reduces the incentives to acquire work-related training.

Cohabitation in Great Britain: not for long, but here to stay

This paper uses a new source of data to study the dramatic increase in cohabiting unions in Great Britain. It analyses, in turn, entry into first partnership, the stability of cohabiting unions and repartnering after dissolution of cohabitation. In excess of 70% of first partnerships are now cohabitations, and these last a relatively short time before being either turned into marriage or dissolved. The shift to cohabitation as the dominant mode of first partnership plays an important role in the delay of first marriage and motherhood. The paper also investigates the factors that are associated with the outcome of cohabitations.

Educational choice, families, and young people's earnings

This paper presents two optimizing models of educational choice, discusses issues of identification, estimates earnings equations in the context of these models, and presents conditions under which we can test one against the other. The estimates indicate that education is endogenous for young peoples earnings, creating a downward bias in estimated returns from education that assume exogeneity. Identification and estimation relies on family background information from a special sample from the British Household Panel Study 1991-95, which matches mothers and their young adult children. Our estimates favor a family model over an individual model, and they suggest that parents allocate resources to education to compensate for differences in their childrens earnings endowments.

Job Changes and Hours Changes: Understanding the Path of Labor Supply Adjustment

We use British panel data to investigate single women’s labor supply changes in response to three reforms that affected individuals’ work incentives. We use these reforms to identify changes in labor supply. There is evidence of small hours of work effects for two of such reforms. A third reform in 1999 instead led to a significant increase in single mothers’ hours of work. The mechanism by which the labor supply adjustments were made occurred largely through job changes rather than hours changes with the same employer. This is little overall effect of the reforms on wages.

Job mobility in 1990s Britain: Does gender matter?

This chapter examines gender differences in intra-firm and inter-firm job changes, including worker-initiated and firm-initiated separations, for white full-time British workers over the period 1991-96. We document four main findings. First, job mobility is high for both men and women, with more than one quarter of the sample changing job each year. Second, the distinction between promotions, quits and layoffs is important, suggesting that studies that either aggregate worker-initiated and firm-initiated separations or neglect within-firm mobility may provide an inappropriate picture of career mobility. Third, we find that the average male and female quit and promotion probabilities are remarkably similar, but there are significant gender differences in layoff probabilities. Fourth, we find significant gender differences in the impact of variables such as union coverage, occupation and presence of young children.

Intrafamily Resource Allocations: A Dynamic Structural Model of Birth Weight

Using large American and British survey data, this paper provides structural estimates of the production functions for birth weight and fetal growth. In addition to maternal smoking, we estimate the impact of when a mother stops work, which has not been considered in the literature. Mothers’ work interruptions of up to 3 months before birth have a positive effect on birth outcomes, especially among British children. Parental behavior appears to respond to child idiosyncratic endowments in a way that suggests that parents have inequity aversion concerns. Evidence in favor of inequity aversion emerges also from the analysis of breast-feeding decisions.