IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp8190.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Availability of Family-Friendly Work Practices and Implicit Wage Costs: New Evidence from Canada

Author

Listed:
  • Fakih, Ali

    (Lebanese American University)

Abstract

Using Canadian linked employer-employee data covering the period 1999-2005, I examine the determinants of the availability of family-friendly "care" practices and the impact of such practices on wages. The results show that the provision of family-friendly practices is not mainly derived from socio-demographic characteristics of workers but rather from job- and firm-related factors. The findings also reveal that there is a trade-off between the provision of family-friendly practices and earnings indicating the existence of an implicit market in which workers face reductions in their wages. This result supports the hypothesis that family-friendly benefits are to some extent conceived as a gift or a signal that employers care about employees' family responsibilities and, in return, employees are willing to “buy” these practices and thus accept a wage offset.

Suggested Citation

  • Fakih, Ali, 2014. "Availability of Family-Friendly Work Practices and Implicit Wage Costs: New Evidence from Canada," IZA Discussion Papers 8190, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8190
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp8190.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kevin Lang & Sumon Majumdar, 2004. "The Pricing Of Job Characteristics When Markets Do Not Clear: Theory And Policy Implications," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 45(4), pages 1111-1128, November.
    2. Budd, John W. & Mumford, Karen A., 2005. "Family-Friendly Work Practices in Britain: Availability and Perceived Accessibility," IZA Discussion Papers 1662, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Rebitzer, James B & Taylor, Lowell J, 1995. "Do Labor Markets Provide Enough Short-Hour Jobs? An Analysis of Work Hours and Work Incentives," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 33(2), pages 257-273, April.
    4. Nick Bloom & Tobias Kretschmer & John Van Reenen, 2011. "Are family-friendly workplace practices a valuable firm resource?," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(4), pages 343-367, April.
    5. Becker, Gary S, 1985. "Human Capital, Effort, and the Sexual Division of Labor," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 3(1), pages 33-58, January.
    6. Schmidt, Christoph M & Zimmermann, Klaus F, 1991. "Work Characteristics, Firm Size and Wages," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 73(4), pages 705-710, November.
    7. Masters, Stanley H, 1969. "An Interindustry Analysis of Wages and Plant Size," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 51(3), pages 341-345, August.
    8. John M. Evans, 2002. "Work/Family Reconciliation, Gender Wage Equity and Occupational Segregation: The Role of Firms and Public Policy," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 28(s1), pages 187-216, May.
    9. John S. Heywood & W. Stanley Siebert & Xiangdong Wei, 2007. "The implicit wage costs of family friendly work practices," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 59(2), pages 275-300, April.
    10. Rosen, Sherwin, 1974. "Hedonic Prices and Implicit Markets: Product Differentiation in Pure Competition," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(1), pages 34-55, Jan.-Feb..
    11. Hwang, Hae-shin & Mortensen, Dale T & Reed, W Robert, 1998. "Hedonic Wages and Labor Market Search," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 16(4), pages 815-847, October.
    12. Jonathan Gruber & Alan B. Krueger, 1991. "The Incidence of Mandated Employer-Provided Insurance: Lessons from Workers' Compensation Insurance," NBER Chapters, in: Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 5, pages 111-144, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Michelle M. Arthur & Alison Cook, 2004. "Taking Stock of Work-Family Initiatives: How Announcements of “Family-Friendly†Human Resource Decisions Affect Shareholder Value," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 57(4), pages 599-613, July.
    14. Duncan, Greg J & Stafford, Frank P, 1980. "Do Union Members Receive Compensating Wage Differentials?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(3), pages 355-371, June.
    15. George A. Akerlof, 1982. "Labor Contracts as Partial Gift Exchange," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 97(4), pages 543-569.
    16. Johnson, Nancy Brown & Provan, Keith G., 1995. "The relationship between work/family benefits and earnings: A test of competing predictions," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 571-584.
    17. Matthew Gray & Jacqueline Tudball, 2004. "Family-friendly work practices: differences within and between workplaces," Labor and Demography 0405003, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. John M. Evans, 2001. "Firms' Contribution to the Reconciliation between Work and Family Life," OECD Labour Market and Social Policy Occasional Papers 48, OECD Publishing.
    19. Senesky, Sarah, 2005. "Testing the intertemporal labor supply model: are jobs important?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(6), pages 749-772, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ariane Pailhé & Anne Solaz, 2019. "Is there a wage cost for employees in family‐friendly workplaces? The effect of different employer policies," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(5), pages 688-721, June.
    2. Verena Lauber & Johanna Storck, 2016. "Helping with the Kids? How Family-Friendly Workplaces Affect Parental Well-Being and Behavior," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 883, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    3. Uwe Jirjahn & Jens Mohrenweiser, 2021. "Works councils and organizational gender policies in Germany," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 59(4), pages 1020-1048, December.
    4. Verena Lauber & Johanna Storck, 2016. "Helping with the Kids? How Family-Friendly Workplaces Affect Parental Well-Being and Behavior," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1630, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    5. Verena Lauber & Sarah Reiter & Johanna Storck, 2015. "Familienfreundlichkeit in Unternehmen - Status Quo in Deutschland und Forschungsstand," DIW Roundup: Politik im Fokus 77, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    6. Özgür Demirtaş & Aykut Arslan & Mustafa Karaca, 2019. "Why perceived organizational and supervisory family support is important for organizations? Evidence from the field," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 13(4), pages 841-869, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ali Fakih, 2014. "Vacation Leave, Work Hours, and Wages: New Evidence from Linked Employer–Employee Data," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 28(4), pages 376-398, December.
    2. Fang, Tony & Lee, Byron & Timming, Andrew R. & Fan, Di, 2019. "The Effects of Work-Life Benefits on Employment Outcomes in Canada: A Multivariate Analysis," IZA Discussion Papers 12322, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Ariane Pailhé & Anne Solaz, 2019. "Is there a wage cost for employees in family‐friendly workplaces? The effect of different employer policies," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(5), pages 688-721, June.
    4. Usui, Emiko & 臼井, 恵美子, 2012. "Gender Occupational Segregation in an Equilibrium Search Model," CIS Discussion paper series 560, Center for Intergenerational Studies, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    5. Joseph G. Altonji & Emiko Usui, 2007. "Work Hours, Wages, and Vacation Leave," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 60(3), pages 408-428, April.
    6. Emiko Usui, 2015. "Occupational gender segregation in an equilibrium search model," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 4(1), pages 1-14, December.
    7. John S. Heywood & Laurie A. Miller, 2015. "Schedule Flexibility, Family Friendly Policies and Absence," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 83(6), pages 652-675, December.
    8. Flabbi, Luca & Moro, Andrea, 2012. "The effect of job flexibility on female labor market outcomes: Estimates from a search and bargaining model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 168(1), pages 81-95.
    9. Han, Seungjin & Yamaguchi, Shintaro, 2015. "Compensating wage differentials in stable job matching equilibrium," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 36-45.
    10. StÈphane Bonhomme & GrÈgory Jolivet, 2009. "The pervasive absence of compensating differentials," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(5), pages 763-795.
    11. Panos, Georgios & Theodossiou, Ioannis, 2009. "Union Mediation and Adaptation to Reciprocal Loyalty Arrangements," MPRA Paper 15471, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Ernesto Villanueva, 2004. "Compensating wage differentials and voluntary job changes: Evidence from West Germany," Economics Working Papers 738, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    13. Haoran He & David Neumark & Qian Weng, 2021. "Do Workers Value Flexible Jobs? A Field Experiment," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 39(3), pages 709-738.
    14. Geraci, Andrea & L. Bryan, Mark, 2016. "Non-standard work: what’s it worth? Comparing alternative measures of workers’ marginal willingness to pay," ISER Working Paper Series 2016-12, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    15. Haoran He & David Neumark & Qian Weng, 2019. "Do Workers Value Flexible Jobs? A Field Experiment on Compensating Differentials," Natural Field Experiments 00667, The Field Experiments Website.
    16. Beckmann, Michael, 2016. "Self-managed working time and firm performance: Microeconometric evidence," Working papers 2016/01, Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel.
    17. Anelli, Massimo & Koenig, Felix, 2021. "Willingness to Pay for Workplace Safety," IZA Discussion Papers 14919, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    18. Verena Lauber & Johanna Storck, 2016. "Helping with the Kids? How Family-Friendly Workplaces Affect Parental Well-Being and Behavior," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 883, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    19. Verena Lauber & Sarah Reiter & Johanna Storck, 2015. "Familienfreundlichkeit in Unternehmen - Status Quo in Deutschland und Forschungsstand," DIW Roundup: Politik im Fokus 77, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    20. Georgios A. Panos & Ioannis Theodossiou, 2013. "Reciprocal Loyalty and Union Mediation," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(3), pages 645-676, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    family-friendly care practices; linked employer-employee data; simultaneous probit model; wage equation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
    • J32 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Nonwage Labor Costs and Benefits; Retirement Plans; Private Pensions
    • J70 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8190. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.