Shoshana Neuman

On the effects of schooling vintage on experience-earnings profiles: Theory and evidence☆

Abstract In this paper a distinction is made between human capital depreciation related to a workers aging and depreciation due to the obsolescence of the workers education. Schooling-specific obsolescence of human capital is incorporated in the Mincerian model of earnings, and it is shown how this obsolescence affects the workers earnings profile. Using the Israeli 1983 Census we show that for ‘high-tech’ oriented industries (for which obsolescence is relatively important) obsolescence effects are more significant than for ‘low-tech’ oriented industries, and, consequently, the experience-earnings peak falls faster with increasing education in the former.

Vocational Schooling, Occupational Matching, and Labor Market Earnings in Israel

The authors conducted a comparative analysis of the earnings of workers in Israel who had last attended vocational schools and those who had last attended academic secondary schools before entering the labor force. Their findings suggest that Israel may provide an example of an educational system in which vocational schooling is economically effective. Vocational schooling in Israel has proven more cost-effective than general academic training. In particular, vocational school attenders who later worked in occupations related to their course of study earned more. Their wages were up to 10 percent more a month than their peers who studied at academic secondary schools and those who attended vocational schools but found employment in other occupations not related to their field of study. These results reinforce similar findings in recent research on vocational schooling in the United States. A caveat is necessary to temper the generally positive findings concerning vocational schooling in Israel. While vocational schooling is cost-effective compared with other forms of secondary schooling, it does not compare favorably with other forms of training for skilled trades, such as apprenticeships and factory-based vocational schools. Another factor is the national consensus in Israel favoring education designed to equip young people for the social and cultural role of integrating the countrys heterogenous, largely immigrant population.

Wage Differentials in the 1990s in Israel: Endowments, Discrimination, and Selectivity

The purpose of this Paper is to investigate wage structures of professional workers in the Israeli labour market, using data from the most recent 1995 Census and correcting for selectivity at the stage of entrance into the occupation. The sample of professionals is decomposed into several subsamples: men and women, and within each gender a distinction is made between Easterners (originating from Asian/African countries) and Westerners (from European/American countries of origin). Comparisons by gender and ethnicity can then be made. Characteristics (endowments) and wage structures of the four groups are presented.Wage equations include the Inverse of Mills Ratio as a regressor to correct for selection into the professional occupations. Wage differences are then examined and decomposed into three components: endowments (human capital), discrimination and selectivity. Following the methodology presented in Neuman and Oaxaca (2004), four alternative decompositions are suggested and discussed.

Vocational Education in Israel: Wage Effects of the VocEd-Occupation Match

In an earlier paper based on Israeli census data, the authors showed that vocational school completers achieved higher earnings than their counter-parts who attended academic secondary schools, but only if they worked in occupations related to the vocational course of study pursued. These findings were challenged by Lawrence Hotchkiss; using U.S. follow-up data from the High School and Beyond survey, he argued that the wage advantage of vocational school completers working in related occupations stemmed from employment in a well-paid occupation (a possibility not examined in our earlier estimating model) and was not the result of the training received. In this paper, we replicate the U.S. study using our Israeli data base; the results strongly confirm those from our earlier study. How may the contrasting results for Israel and the United States be explained? We suggest that the U.S. study may be faulted; its focus on young workers in their first job after graduation, may have led to unduly pessimistic results with regard to the labor market outcomes of vocational schooling.

The Extra Burden of Moslem Wives: Clues from Israeli Women's Labor Supply

This paper examines differences in the labour supply of women of different religions in Israel. We estimate religious differentials in the effect of husband’s income, number of children, education, and age on married women’s labour supply. It is suggested that labour supply patterns of wives from different religious backgrounds may reveal differences in the institutions which different religious groups have established to regulate marriage and divorce. Our results suggest that Christian marital institutions are closer to Jewish marital institutions than they are to Moslem marital institutions. Moslem women appear to be less likely to translate their resources into a higher value of time in marriage than either Christian women or Jewish women. Educated Moslem women seem to have fewer constraints on their marriages than their uneducated counterparts.

Can Vocational Education Improve the Wages of Minorities and Disadvantaged Groups? The Case of Israel

There is a considerable empirical literature which compares wage levels of workers who have studied at secondary vocational schools with wages of workers who took academic schooling. In general, vocational education does not lead to higher wages. However, in some countries where labor markets are characterized by employment growth, skill shortages and a good match between vocational skills and available jobs, the record of vocational schooling has been more positive. Israel constitutes a case in point. However, little attention has been given to examining the success of vocational education in raising the wages of various sub-sections of the labor force, in particular of minorities and disadvantaged groups. In this paper, we examine the efficacy of vocational education in raising the wage levels of four such groups: recent immigrants, Jews of Eastern origin, Israeli Arabs and females. The results are mixed, differing from group to group, thus justifying our approach of examining the impact of vocational schooling on finer breakdowns of the population of secondary school completers.

Testing the Dual Labor Market Hypothesis Evidence from the Israel Labor Mobility Survey

Little research seems to have addressed the testing of the dual labor market model for nondeveloping economies outside the U.S. and the U.K. This paper examines the hypothesis for Israel. Utilizing individual data drawn from the Israel labor mobility survey and assigning workers to primary and secondary sectors on the basis of occupational prestige scores, earnings functions are estimated and compared for the two sectors. The results are very closely in line with predictions of the dual labor market model, thus strongly suggesting that the dual labor market hypothesis may be relevant for Israel.

Is fertility indeed related to religiosity? A note on: ‘Marital fertility and religion in Spain, 1985 and 1999’, Population Studies 60(2): 205–221 by Alicia Adsera

In a paper published in this journal Adsera (2006) presents an empirical study of the link between religiosity and fertility in Spain. She examines differences in fertility between practising and non-practising Catholics and between religions thus contributing to the literature on these two complementary lines of research. Adsera uses two Spanish Fertility Surveys (SFS)*administrated in 1985 and in 1999 both of which include rich information on fertility though quite limited data on religiosity. The purpose of this note is to question the validity of some of the central findings on the grounds that they rest on a misspecification of the core variable of religiosity and that the composition of the sample is problematic. I show that a replication of Adseras regression models using a more appropriate database yields different results. (In the second part of her study Adsera analyses the interrelationship between religiosity and the spacing of births. My comment does not refer to this topic.)(excerpt)

Marriage and the Economy: Marriage and Work for Pay

This chapter reports some differences between married and unmarried people – marital differentials – with respect to the following characteristics of paid employment: labor force participation, labor force attachment, and wages. Most of the evidence that we report is for the United States, although we also report patterns for some other parts of the world. We also explore some ethnic variations in marital differentials, and some changes over time. Observed relationships between paid employment and marriage may have three possible causes: Marriage may affect labor market experience, labor market experience may affect marriage, or the relationship between marriage and labor market experience may be explained by third factors influencing both marriage and paid employment. Any explanation of marital differentials in paid employment has to start by recognizing these two facts: Marriage is an institution that organizes household production, and work in household production is a major alternative to paid employment. Gender differences in labor supply and earnings have been well documented, and we look at women and men separately. These gender differences could be related to gender differences in household production (see Chapter 9 by Joni Hersch). At least since Jacob Mincer (1962), it has been postulated that for women household production and paid employment are inversely related. We then present econometric models that attempt to disentangle causal relationships. We also present marriage market models that lead to the inclusion of marriage-related variables that are usually overlooked in labor supply models, including a number of individual characteristics (such as age, ethnicity, and religion) and aggregate characteristics (such as sex ratios and government policies) that are expected to affect opportunities in marriage and labor markets.

Gender vs Ethnic Wage Differentials Among Professionals: Evidence from Israel

The purpose of this paper is to investigate wage structures of professional workers in the Israeli labor market using data from the 1983 Israeli census and correcting for selectivity at the state of entrance into the occupation. The sample of professionals is decomposed into several subsamples: Jewish men and Jewish women; within the Jewish sample a distinction is made between Westerners and Easterners. The core of this study is the investigation of wage differentials between the various groups, taking into account differences in entrance probabilities. The standard Oaxaca decomposition does not take into account different probabilities of entering the professional occupations (i.e., occupational segregation). In order to incorporate this type of segregation into the wage differential decompositions, two statistical methodologies are merged: the Oaxaca methodology and the Heckman selectivity bias correction procedure. The decomposition procedure is then modified in order to take into account the contribution of segregation to the characteristics and the discrimination components. We propose four alternative decompositions of the selectivity corrected wage equations and present the results based on these decompositions.