IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/6078.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Gender and Youth Employment Outcomes: The US and West Germany, 1984-91

Author

Listed:
  • Francine D. Blau
  • Lawrence M. Kahn

Abstract

This paper examines gender differences in labor market outcomes for hard-to-employ youth in the US and West Germany during the 1984-91 period. We find that young, less educated American men and especially women are far less likely to be employed than their German counterparts. Moreover, less educated young women and men in the United States have lower earnings relative to more highly educated youth in their own country, and also fare much worse than less educated German youth in absolute terms, correcting for purchasing power. The relatively high employment rates of less educated German youth combined with their relatively high wages raise the question of how they are successfully absorbed into the labor market. We present evidence that the large public sector in Germany in effect functions as an employer of last resort, absorbing some otherwise unemployable low skilled youth. Our findings also suggest that the US welfare system accounts for very little of the US-German difference in employment rates.

Suggested Citation

  • Francine D. Blau & Lawrence M. Kahn, 1997. "Gender and Youth Employment Outcomes: The US and West Germany, 1984-91," NBER Working Papers 6078, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:6078
    Note: CH LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w6078.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bound, John & Johnson, George, 1992. "Changes in the Structure of Wages in the 1980's: An Evaluation of Alternative Explanations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(3), pages 371-392, June.
    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. Alan B. Krueger & Jorn-Steffen Pischke, 1997. "Observations and Conjectures on the U.S. Employment Miracle," Working Papers 769, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    2. Lawrence Kahn, 2003. "Labour Market Institutions and Unemployment in OECD Countries," ifo DICE Report, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 1(4), pages 25-32, October.
    3. Alexander Mihailov & Giovanni Razzu & Zhe Wang, 2020. "The Gender Unemployment Gap Across the Euro Area: The Role of Macroeconomic Shocks and Labour Market Institutions," Economics Discussion Papers em-dp2020-26, Department of Economics, University of Reading.
    4. Niall O'Higgins, 1997. "The challenge of youth unemployment," International Social Security Review, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 50(4), pages 63-93, October.

    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. Cristóbal Huneeus & Andrea Repetto, 2005. "The Dynamics of Earnings in Chile," Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies Book Series, in: Jorge Restrepo & Andrea Tokman R. & Norman Loayza (Series Editor) & Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel (Series Edi (ed.),Labor Markets and Institutions, edition 1, volume 8, chapter 12, pages 383-410, Central Bank of Chile.
    2. Günther Rehme, 2007. "Education, Economic Growth and Measured Income Inequality," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 74(295), pages 493-514, August.
    3. Franzini, Maurizio & Raitano, Michele, 2019. "Earnings inequality and workers’ skills in Italy," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 215-224.
    4. Lawrence F. Katz, 1994. "Active labor market policies to expand employment and opportunity," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, issue Jan, pages 239-322.
    5. Fatih Guvenen & Burhanettin Kuruscu, 2010. "A Quantitative Analysis of the Evolution of the US Wage Distribution, 1970–2000," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2009, Volume 24, pages 227-276, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Tschopp, Jeanne, 2015. "The Wage Response to Shocks: The Role of Inter-Occupational Labour Adjustment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 28-37.
    7. Dennis J. Snower & Alessio J. G. Brown & Christian Merkl, 2009. "Globalization and the Welfare State: A Review of Hans-Werner Sinn's Can Germany Be Saved?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(1), pages 136-158, March.
    8. Pupato, Germán, 2017. "Performance pay, trade and inequality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 172(C), pages 478-504.
    9. James Spletzer & Elizabeth Weber Handwerker, 2015. "The Role of Establishments and the Concentration of Occupations in Wage Inequality," Working Papers id:7427, eSocialSciences.
    10. James P. Vere, 2005. "Wage Structure Effects of Taiwan's Science and Technology Development Policy," Asian Economic Journal, East Asian Economic Association, vol. 19(2), pages 159-180, June.
    11. Sakurai, Kojiro, 2001. "Biased Technological Change and Japanese Manufacturing Employment," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 15(3), pages 298-322, September.
    12. Sabine Engelmann, 2014. "International trade, technological change and wage inequality in the UK economy," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 41(2), pages 223-246, May.
    13. Karnit Flug & Zvi Hercowitz, 2000. "Equipment Investment and the Relative Demand for Skilled Labor: International Evidence," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 3(3), pages 461-485, July.
    14. Adsera, Alicia & Boix, Carles, 2000. "Must we choose? European unemployment, American inequality, and the impact of education and labor market institutions," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 611-638, November.
    15. Arai, Yoichi & Ichimura, Hidehiko & Kawaguchi, Daiji, 2015. "The educational upgrading of Japanese youth, 1982–2007: Are all Japanese youth ready for structural reforms?," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 100-126.
    16. John Dinardo & Thomas Lemieux, 1997. "Diverging Male Wage Inequality in the United States and Ganada, 1981–1988: Do Institutions Explain the Difference?," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 50(4), pages 629-651, July.
    17. Michel Lubrano & Abdoul Aziz Junior Ndoye, 2014. "Bayesian Unconditional Quantile Regression: An Analysis of Recent Expansions in Wage Structure and Earnings Inequality in the US 1992–2009," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 61(2), pages 129-153, May.
    18. Michael C. Burda, 2016. "The German Labor Market Miracle, 2003 -2015: An Assessment," SFB 649 Discussion Papers SFB649DP2016-005, Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany.
    19. Per-Anders Edin & Bertil Holmlund, 1995. "The Swedish Wage Structure: The Rise and Fall of Solidarity Wage Policy?," NBER Chapters, in: Differences and Changes in Wage Structures, pages 307-344, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Franz, Wolfgang, 1994. "Central and East European labor markets in transition: Developments, causes, and cures," Discussion Papers 19, University of Konstanz, Center for International Labor Economics (CILE).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials

    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:nbr:nberwo:6078. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.