A new paper published in the Journal of Population Economics finds by comparing twins and close siblings in Swedish register data that the negative association between human capital and fertility mostly reflects family background factors.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
How family background shapes the relationship between human capital and fertility by Francis Kramarz, Olof Rosenqvist & Oskar Nordström Skans
Published ONLINE FIRST 2021: Journal of Population EconomicsOPEN ACCESS.
Author Abstract: Many previous studies have shown that skilled and educated women have fewer children. By comparing twins and close siblings in Swedish register data, we show that the negative association between human capital and fertility mostly reflects family background factors. For males, human capital measures are unrelated to fertility in the overall population, but this again masks the influence of family background factors as high-skilled males tend to have more children than their less-skilled twins or siblings. Hence, family background factors have a strong negative impact on the overall association between human capital measures and fertility for both women and men. Non-cognitive abilities deviate from these patterns—these abilities remain strongly complementary to fertility both within and across families. Our results can be reconciled with a stylized model where family-specific preferences for fertility are shared across generations and shape investments in skills and traits when children are young.
The Journal of Population of Economicsis an international quarterly that publishes original theoretical and applied research in all areas of population economics, household economics, and human resources. This report contains information about the Journal and its editorial process in the past year and some earlier years.
Figure 1: Number of Submissions
The number of submissions has substantially increased over recent years (Figure 1). Between 2011 and 2013, the Journal received about 400 submissions per year; by 2016 the number of submissions neared 500, and in 2020, 871 manuscripts were received. This marks an annual increase of submissions of 41%. Over the decade 2010-2020, the manuscript inflow rose from 337 to a level 2.6 times higher. The additional workload was managed through an efficient desk rejection policy for initial screening.
Figure 2: Origin of Submissions
In line with past years, the largest single share of submissions made in 2020 were from corresponding authors based in Europe (Figure 2). Nearly 40% of all submissions originated from Europe, and over one-third (34%) of submissions came from authors based in Asia and the Middle East. Under one-fifth (17%) of submissions came from authors based in North America. The remaining submissions came from contributors from Africa (6%), Oceania (Australia and New Zealand; 4%), and South and Central America (4%).
Figure 3: Visits by World Region 2019
Figure 3 contains the internet visits to the Journal on the Springer website from the world regions. With over a third of visits coming from North America and 29% from Europe, followed by the Asia-pacific region (22%), the Journal is globally accessed and read.
Figure 4: Days to First Decision
Figure 4 shows that the average number of days between submission and first decision has generally declined over time. Despite a slight uptick in the turnaround time for first decisions between 2015 and 2016, which may be partially attributed to the increased volume of submissions, there was a substantial reduction in turnaround time in following years. In 2020, the average time for first decisions was 24 days. The Journal is committed to keep the time between submission and decisions low, including eventual publication. Since 2013 the Journal has executed a desk rejection policy to provide authors with an early signal for better targeting of their work. The large number of submissions combined with an annual quota of 40 manuscripts keeps the acceptance rates of the Journal very low.
Table 1 shows three acceptance rate measures: 1) the number of manuscripts accepted in a given year as a share of all final decisions made in that year; 2) the number of published articles in a given year as a share of all submissions in that year; and; 3) the number of articles published in a given year divided by the number of the previous year’s submissions.
The number of accepted papers (submitted at any point in time) in a given year as a share of all decisions made in that year has shifted over time. The acceptance rate has declined from 7% in 2018 to 4.9% in 2019, slightly increasing in 2020 to 5.4%. If acceptance rate is measured as the number of published manuscripts as a share of total submissions received in that year, the acceptance rate was slightly higher, at 4.6% in 2020 (at 40 manuscripts from among 871 submissions), falling from 7.1% in 2018 and 6.5% in 2019. Measuring the acceptance rate as the number of publications as a share of the number of submissions received in the previous year (2019) would yield a 2020 rate of 6.5%, which is lower than the previous years (7.6% in 2018 and 7.1% in 2019).
Table 1: Acceptance Rates
Index Year
2018
2019
2020
No. accepted / Total No. decisions
7.0%
4.9%
5.4%
No. articles publ. / No. submissions
7.1%
6.5%
4.6%
No. articles publ. / No. subm. prev. year
7.6%
7.1%
6.5%
Table 2 reports the status of papers submitted in the given year for years 2018 – 2020. The Journal’s Impact Factor has increased substantially over time (Figure 5). In 2019, the 2020 published simple Impact Factor was 1.840, and the 5-year Impact Factor was 2.353. The Journal ranked 120/371 in economics and 11/29 in demography in 2019. As of July 2020, the Journal’s IDEAS/RePEc ranking was 77/2,485 (based on the Simple Impact Factor 15.682, for Journals and all years).
Table 2: Status of Papers Submitted in Particular Year
Outcome/Year
2018
2019
2020
Accept
39
35
47
Revise
68
125
81
Reject
522
551
737
Figure 5: Impact Factor
The Journal is ranked in: Social Science Citation Index, Journal Citation Reports/Social Sciences, SCOPUS, EconLit, Google Scholar, EBSCO Discovery Service, ProQuest, CAB International, ABS Academic Journal Quality Guide, Academic OneFile, Academic Search, Bibliography of Asian Studies, CAB Abstracts, CSA Environmental Sciences, Current Contents/Social & Behavioral Sciences, ECONIS, ERIH PLUS, Gale, Global Health, International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS), JSTOR, OCLC, Research Papers in Economics (RePEc), Review of Population Reviews, SCImago, and Summon by ProQuest.
Klaus F. Zimmermann, Editor-in-Chief Journal of Population Economics
Posted inNews, Science|Comments Off on Over 40% rise in submissions, highest impact factor ever, even faster editorial decisions. Report 2020 of theJournal of Population Economics
A new GLO Discussion Paper finds that within the studied period 1991-2015the earnings of overeducated workers eroded at the lower and upper segments of the wage distribution.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
Author Abstract: The main aim of this study is to analyse the wage returns of Overeducated workers employed in Trinidad and Tobago. To undertake such a study, data from the Continuous Sample Survey of Population (CSSP) for the period 1991-2015 is used to estimate an initial OLS and Quantile regression version of the Mincerian Earnings equations, which is commonly used in the education mismatch literature. To observe the unconditional partial effects of small changes in wage returns of overeducated workers at the mean, the Recentred Influence Function is estimated. The results reveal that if the earnings of overeducated workers who receive low wages, was replaced with that of high wages, then this would lead to a rise, or shift in the returns of overeducated workers, if only their biographical information is considered. The inclusion of their skill and geographic location would cause their earnings to shift further. The shift in the earnings of overeducated workers, when examined across the wage distribution, would tend to favor those who were married, younger, i.e., in the 25-35 age group, who were highly skilled at their jobs. These groups of overeducated workers would experience the lowest wage penalties in comparison to their single, mature, and semi-skilled colleagues.
A new GLO Discussion Paper finds a rather limited role of mental health in comparison to physical health for older individuals’ work.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
Author Abstract: This paper contributes to the literature on old employment barriers by exploring empirically the relative importance of mental v.s. physical health in determining work. It combines regression and variance decomposition analyses to quantify the respective role of mental v.s. physical health. The data used are from SHARE and inform in great detail on the health but also work status (i.e. employment and hours) of individuals aged 50+, interviewed between 2004 and 2017 in 21 European countries. The main result of the paper is that of the rather limited role of mental health – in comparison to physical health – in accounting for older individuals’ work. The paper also shows that health (physical or mental) is much better at predicting old people’s propensity to be in employment than the number of hours they work. Finally, the paper reveals that, in comparison to women, men’s work is more driven by their health status.
A new GLO Discussion Paper finds that in less affluent transition economies, more workers use involuntary non-standard jobs as a means to escape unemployment, while in affluent economies, interventionist policies are associated with high levels of voluntary non-standard work and low unemployment.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
Author Abstract: This paper is dedicated to the cross-national comparison of the labour markets of the EU member countries and Albania. The aim is to establish whether or not cross-national variations in propensities of being hired in a non-standard job are the result of differences in national institutional regimes and labour market regulations. An adapted version of the Fraser Index is used to explain cross-country differences in relation to the application of rigid labour market regulation. The econometric analyses indicate that the net effect of more stringent labour market regulation, increase job quality in different senses: in less affluent transition economies, more workers use involuntary non-standard jobs as a means to escape unemployment. On the other hand, in affluent economies, interventionist policies are associated with high levels of voluntary non-standard work and low unemployment.
A new GLO Discussion Paper suggests that exposure to disadvantaged childhood circumstances can exacerbate cognitive deficits as well as cognitive decline over time.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
Author Abstract: We examine the long-term relationship between childhood circumstances and cognitive aging. In particular, we differentiate the level of cognitive deficit from the rate of cognitive decline. Applying a linear mixed-effect model to three waves of China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Surveys (CHARLS 2011, 2013, 2015) and matching cognitive outcomes to CHARLS Life History Survey (2014), we find that key domains of childhood circumstances, including family socioeconomic status (SES), neighborhood cohesion, friendship and health conditions, are significantly associated with both the level of cognitive deficit and the rate of decline. In contrast, childhood neighborhood safety only affects the level of cognitive deficit. Childhood relationship with mother only affects the rate of cognitive decline. The effects of adverse childhood circumstances are generally larger on level of cognitive deficit than on rate of cognitive decline. Moreover, education plays a more important role in mediating the relationships compared to other later-life factors. These findings suggest that exposure to disadvantaged childhood circumstances can exacerbate cognitive deficit as well as cognitive decline over time, which may be partially ameliorated by educational attainment.
A new GLO Discussion Paper finds that education indeed affects gender role attitudes in Europe.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
Author Abstract: This paper presents the first empirical evidence of the causal impact of individuals’ education on their attitudes towards traditional gender roles. We employ two national panel datasets from the UK and Switzerland and a repeated cross-sectional dataset with information from 13 Western European countries for the analysis. The causal impact of education on gender role attitudes is estimated by exploiting the exogenous variation in individuals’ education induced by the compulsory school reforms undertaken in European countries in the second half of the 20th century. We find evidence that an additional year of education instigates egalitarian gender role attitudes equivalent of 0.1-0.3 of a standard deviation. While education’s moderating effect is particularly prominent among women, no evidence of effect heterogeneity is found concerning the individuals’ religiosity. Our findings are robust to numerous checks performed and are briefly discussed for their policy relevance.
A new GLO Discussion Paper finds systemic discrimination in a procedurally fair hiring process using culture as hiring criterion.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
Author Abstract: Criteria used in hiring workers often do not reflect the skills required on the job. By comparing trainee performance for newly hired workers conditional on competitive civil service examination scores for hiring French public sector workers, we test whether women and men with the same civil service examination score exhibit similar performance in a job-related trainee programme. Both the civil service examination and trainee scores contain anonymous and non-anonymous components that we observe separately. We find that by the end of the trainee programme (first year of employment), women are outperforming men on both anonymous written and non-anonymous oral evaluations, a finding that holds both conditionally and unconditionally for the civil service examination results. According to further analysis, however, it is the anonymously graded “essay on common culture” civil service examination that, unlike the other CSE components, disadvantages women in this particular context.
A new GLO Discussion Paper shows that the enforced increase in work from home in the pandemic in the United Kingdom is associated with a higher self-perceived productivity per hour, and an increase in weekly working hours among the employed.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
Author Abstract: In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced governments in many countries to ask employees to work from home (WFH) where possible. Using representative data from the UK, we show that increases in WFH frequency are associated with a higher self-perceived productivity per hour and an increase in weekly working hours among the employed. The WFH-productivity relationship is stronger for employees residing in regions worse affected by the pandemic and those who previously commuted longer distances, while it is weaker for mothers with childcare responsibilities. Also, we find that employees with higher autonomy over job tasks and work hours and those with childcare responsibilities worked longer hours when working from home. With prospects that WFH possibility may remain permanently open for some employees, we discuss our results’ labor market policy implications.
A new GLO Discussion Paper finds that payments to works councilors in Germany are broadly in line with legal regulations.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
Author Abstract: The German law on co-determination at the plant level (Betriebsverfassungsgesetz) stipulates that works councilors are neither to be financially rewarded nor penalized for their activities. This regulation contrasts with publicized instances of excessive payments. The divergence has sparked a debate about the need to reform the law. This paper provides representative evidence on wage payments to works councilors for the period 2001 to 2015. We find wage premia of 2% to 6% in OLS-specifications, which are more pronounced for long-term works councilors. Moreover, we observe no wage premia in linear fixed-effects panel data specifications, suggesting that the OLS-results capture the effect of selection into works councillorship. We obtain no evidence for a delayed compensation or a special treatment of works councilors released from work. Hence, our results indicate that payments to works councilors are broadly in line with legal regulations.
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