Sang-Hyop Lee

Has the Internet changed the wage structure too

Abstract By using recent Current Population Survey (CPS) data sets, this paper investigates whether workers who use the Internet at work earn a higher wage than otherwise similar workers who do not use the Internet at work. Estimates suggest that there was a substantial premium to Internet use in 1997 of about 8%. However, this premium disappeared very quickly thereafter, and there are grounds to believe that it is now negative. This result is in stark contrast with that for computer use.

Labor: Decisions, Contracts and Organization

We assess the development economics of on-farm employment with an eye toward policy implications. What do we know and what additional research is needed? The older tradition of labor market dualism and some of the more modern research are seen to share a characteristic of misplaced exogeneity, and calls for asset redistribution and institutional regulation may need to be tempered by more fundamental explanations. Understanding labor contracts as a facilitator of specialization on the farm and in the larger economy is key. Integrating the wedge model of farm behavior with agency-cost explanations of organization will provide a powerful analytical tool. Ultimately, a general equilibrium view with endogenous institutions will deepen our understanding of why total costs of coordination increase even as turnover costs per worker decline and how public policy can facilitate that cooperation.

Aging, Economic Growth, and Old-Age Security in Asia

First, the expert contributors argue, Asia must find ways to sustain rapid economic growth in the face of less favorable demographics, which implies slower growth of the workforce. Second, they contend, Asia must find ways to deliver affordable, adequate, and sustainable old-age economic security for its growing elderly population. Underpinned by rigorous analysis, a wide range of concrete policy options for sustaining economic growth while delivering economic security for the elderly are then presented. These include Asia-wide policy options – relevant to the entire region – such as building up strong national pension systems, while other policy options are more relevant to sub-groups of countries.

Mother’s Education, Learning‐by‐Doing, and Child Health Care in Rural India

This study analyzes the determinants of the use of prenatal care and child immunization in rural India relying primarily on the 1993/94 National Family Health Survey. The key question addressed is whether learning-by-doing is an important feature of the health care system. More specifically, are women who use prenatal care as a result more likely to immunize their children? We conclude that important unobserved traits influence the utilization of both prenatal and immunization services. Once these are controlled, learning-by-doing is important for educated women, but not for uneducated women. There are two possible interpretations of this finding. One is that a lack of education limits the ability of women to effectively learn from the prenatal experience. The other is failings of the health care system limits its effectiveness with uneducated women. We also find strong evidence of gender bias in the demand for immunization services particularly among uneducated women. In addition, the analysis provides estimates of the effects on prenatal care and immunization of formal education, media exposure, economic status, family composition, access to services, and other variables.

HEALTH AND ITS IMPACT ON WORK AND DEPENDENCY AMONG THE ELDERLY IN JAPAN

The present study seeks to provide new evidence on the determinants of retirement for older Japanese men and women, using a unique longitudinal survey of households, the Nihon University Japan Longitudinal Study of Ageing (NUJLSOA). One of the major findings of the present study is that the primary determinant of the probability of remaining in work between 1999 and 2003 was changes in health status as measured by the change in the number of NAGI limitations. Using the same data set, this study also investigates how the status of health affects the degree to which the Japanese elderly expect to rely on their children for old-age security. The computed results were somewhat surprising. The respondents health status was not statistically significant, but the health status of the respondents spouse affected the probabilities of the respondents expectation to rely on children in both 2001 and 2003.

Why Does Population Aging Matter so Much for Asia? Population Aging, Economic Growth, and Economic Security in Asia

Asia as a whole is experiencing a rapid demographic transition toward older populations, though different countries are at different stages of this region- wide trend. We document Asia’s aging population, describe the region’s old-age support systems, and highlight the regional socioeconomic implications of the transition for those support systems. Aging populations present two fundamental challenges to Asian policymakers: (1) developing socioeconomic systems that can provide economic security to growing numbers of elderly while (2) sustaining strong economic growth over the next few decades. Successfully addressing these two challenges will be vital for ensuring Asia’s continued economic success in the medium and long term.

Population dynamics: Social security, markets, and families

Upward intergenerational flows - from the working ages to old age - are increasing substantially in the advanced industrialized countries and are much larger than in developing countries. Population aging is the most important factor leading to this change. Thus, in the absence of a major demographic shift, e.g., a return to high fertility, an increase in upward flows is inevitable. Even so, three other important factors will influence the magnitudes of upward flows. First, labor income varies at older ages due to differences in average age at retirement, productivity, unemployment, and hours worked. Second, the age patterns of consumption at older ages vary primarily due to differences in spending on health. Third, spending on human capital, i.e., spending child health and education, varies. Human capital spending competes with spending on the elderly, but it also increases the productivity of subsequent generations of workers and the resources available to support consumption in old age. All contemporary societies rely on a variety of institutions and economic mechanisms to shift economic resources from the working ages to the dependent ages - the young and the old. Three institutions dominate intergenerational flows: governments which implement social security, education, and other public transfer programs; markets which are key to the accumulation of assets, e.g., funded pensions and housing; and families which provide economic support to children in all societies and to the elderly in many. The objectives of this paper are, first, to describe how population aging and other changes influence the direction and magnitude of intergenerational flows; and, second, to contrast the institutional approaches to intergenerational flows as they are practiced around the world. The paper relies extensively on National Transfer Accounts, a system for measuring economic flows across age in a manner consistent with the UN System of National Accounts. These accounts are currently being constructed by research teams located in 33 countries on six continents representing wide variations in the level of development, demographics, and policies regarding intergenerational transfers.

Population aging, economic growth, and intergenerational transfers in Japan: how dire are the prospects?

First, the expert contributors argue, Asia must find ways to sustain rapid economic growth in the face of less favorable demographics, which implies slower growth of the workforce. Second, they contend, Asia must find ways to deliver affordable, adequate, and sustainable old-age economic security for its growing elderly population. Underpinned by rigorous analysis, a wide range of concrete policy options for sustaining economic growth while delivering economic security for the elderly are then presented. These include Asia-wide policy options – relevant to the entire region – such as building up strong national pension systems, while other policy options are more relevant to sub-groups of countries.

Benefit Incidence of Public Transfers: Evidence from the People's Republic of China

Benefit incidence analyses provide important insights into problems facing any government struggling to deliver essential and equitable social services. Utilizing the framework of the National Transfer Accounts Project, this paper analyzes the benefit incidence of public transfers across generations and socioeconomic groups in the People’s Republic of China in 2009. Public education transfers were equally distributed by residence, gender, and income groups at the primary and secondary levels but favored city dwellers, females, and the wealthy at the tertiary level. Public health-care programs tended to equally target the young and middle-aged from different socioeconomic groups but tilted toward urban dwellers, males, and higher income groups at older ages. Public pension spending strongly favored high-income groups, with rural residents, females, and lower income groups receiving greatly reduced benefits. Our results also indicate that total public spending favored elderly people as spending per person 65 years and older was twice that per child younger than 19. In the next 10 or 20 years, the government should endeavor to improve and strengthen public support systems. In addition to this effort, the currently fragmented health insurance system and pension system should move toward a unified system to reduce inequalities in benefit incidence across socioeconomic groups.

IS CHILDCARE LEAVE EFFECTIVE IN RAISING FERTILITY IN JAPAN

This paper estimates the effect of childcare leave on married womens fertility in Japan, based on data from the 2007 National Survey on Work and Family. The analysis takes into account how childcare leave influences fertility through its intermediate effects on womens selection into the labor market, job tenure, wages and the opportunity cost of children. Results indicate a strong effect of childcare leave on years of continuous job tenure with the same employer, and on predicted wages for full-time working women. Taking childcare leave for the first child increases the percentage progressing from first to second birth by six percentage points. There is also clear evidence that lowering the opportunity cost of children increases fertility, net of the effect of childcare leave, which affects fertility via the opportunity cost of children.