Nina Smith

Income Inequality and Income Mobility in the Scandinavian Countries Compared to the United States

This paper compares income inequality and income mobility in the Scandinavian countries and the United States during 1980–90. The results suggest that inequality is greater in the United States than in the Scandinavian countries and that this inequality ranking of countries remains unchanged when the accounting period of income is extended from one to eleven years. The pattern of mobility turns out to be remarkably similar, in the sense that the proportionate reduction in inequality from extending the accounting period of income is much the same. But we do find evidence of greater dispersion of first differences of relative earnings and income in the United States. Relative income changes are associated with changes in labor market and marital status in all four countries, but the magnitude of such changes are largest in the United States.

Employment and Wage Assimilation of Male First Generation Immigrants in Denmark

Labour market assimilation of Danish first generation male immigrants is analysed based on two panel data sets covering the population of immigrants and 10% of the Danish population during 1984-1995. Wages and employment probabilities are estimated jointly in a random effects model which corrects for unobserved cohort and individual effects and panel selectivity due to missing wage information. The results show that immigrants assimilate partially to Danes, but the assimilation process differs between refugees and non-refugees.

Unemployment and marital dissolution

This paper analyses the effects of unemployment on the probability of marital dissolution. Based on panel data for a sample of Danish married couples, we estimate a dynamic model for the probability of marital dissolution where we take into account the possible effects of unemployment for both spouses. We also control for other factors such as education, age, presence of children, place of residence, health and economic factors. The empirical results show that unemployment seems to be an important factor behind marital instability. However, only unemployment of the husband has an effect, and this effect is immediate.

Unemployment Shocks and Income Distribution: How did the Nordic Countries Fare during their Crises?*

We study the inequality of disposable income in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden during the late 1980s and early 1990s when unemployment rose dramatically in all four countries. A standard measure of inequality - the Gini coefficient - was surprisingly stable in all countries during this period. By decomposing the Gini into income components, we test hypotheses about the reasons for this stable income distribution. Our most straightforward hypothesis, that rising unemployment benefits counteracted the impact of more unequally distributed earnings, receives only limited support. More complex mechanisms seem to have been at work.

Swimming Upstream, Floating Downstream: Comparing Women's Relative Wage Progress in the United States and Denmark

Applying a new decomposition method to U.S. PSID and Danish Longitudinal Sample data, the authors compare how U.S. and Danish gender wage gaps developed between 1983 and 1995. In Denmark, they find, the wage gap widened, because the worsening in womens relative returns to observable human capital attributes, as well as in their ranking relative to men in unobservable productive attributes, more than offset their wage gains from improved observable qualifications relative to mens. In the United States, in contrast, the gender convergence in qualifications offset adverse influences, including increasing wage dispersion throughout the labor market, to result in a narrowing of the gap. The largest increase in the gap in Denmark was experienced by women in the top earnings decile, and the largest decline in the gap in the United States affected those at the top and in the middle of the distribution.

Wage differentials between the public and private sectors

Abstract Public sector employment and the tax pressure has grown very rapidly in Denmark in recent years. This paper discusses a new policy option for government using its role as a dominant employer to reduce relative public sector wages. The paper contains an empirical analysis of wage differences between the public and the private sectors in Denmark using a longitudinal data set covering the years 1976–1985. Fixed effect regressions show that a wage-twist policy of this type has been used in these years. One of the consequences of a wage-twist policy in the public sector is recruitment and retention problems for public employees.

Why are So Few Females Promoted into CEO and Vice-President Positions? Danish Empirical Evidence 1997-2007

The authors estimate the probability of promotion into VP and CEO positions using employer-employee data from all Danish companies observed during the period 1997 to 2007. After controlling for a large number of firm and family-related variables, including take-up history of maternity and paternity leave and proxies for female-friendly companies, a considerable gap still occurs in the promotion probabilities for CEO positions. Part of the gap is due to gender differences in the area of specialization as top executive. Women tend to cluster in VP positions in HR, R&D, and IT areas in which the chances of a CEO promotion are lower than for positions as CFOs and VPs in Sales or Production areas.

Timing and Flexibility of Housework and Men and Women's Wages

This paper analyses the effect of housework on men and women’s wages in Denmark by estimating quantile regressions on Danish time use survey data from 1987, merged to register information on hourly wages and other labour market variables for each of the years 1987-1991. We find, as in U.S. studies, that housework has negative effects on the wages of women and positive effects on the wages of men, except at the high end of the conditional wage distribution. At the 90th quantile, housework has a positive effect on the wages of women and a negative effect on the wages of men, and in fact, high-wage men receive the largest wage penalty of doing housework. Timing and flexibility of housework turn out to be more important than the level of housework, and women, particularly at the high end of the conditional wage distribution, who time their housework immediately before or after market work or engage in home tasks that require contiguous blocks of time are significantly penalized in terms of lower wages. These findings are even stronger for married and cohabiting couples and for workers on fixed time schedules as opposed to workers with flexible time schedules which are part of a bargain with the employer.

Household labour supply in Britain and Denmark: some interpretations using a model of Pareto Optimal behaviour

This paper analyses the labour supply behaviour of households in Denmark and Britain. It employs models in which the preferences of individuals within the household are explicitly represented. The households are then assumed to decide on their labour supply in a Pareto Optimal fashion. Describing the structure of the household decision in this way allows preliminary results to be obtained on the internal weighting of utilities within the household.

The gender pay gap in top corporate jobs in Denmark: Glass ceilings, sticky floors or both?

This paper analyses the gender gap in compensation for CEOs, Vice-Directors, and potential top executives in the 2000 largest Danish private companies based on a panel data set of employer-employees data covering the period 1996-2005. During the period, the overall gender gap in compensation for top executives and potential top executives decreased from 35 percent to 31 percent. However, contrary to many other studies, we do not find that the gender gap for Danish top executives disappears when controlling for observed individual and firm characteristics and unobserved individual heterogeneity. For CEOs, the raw compensation gap is 28 percent during the period while the estimated compensation gap after controlling for observed and unobserved characteristics increases to 30 percent. For executives below the CEO level, the estimated compensation gap is lower, ranging from 15 to 20 percent. Thus, we find evidence of both glass ceilings and sticky floors in Danish private firms.