Discussion paper ;

"This paper develops a scalar or quantitative measure of the "distance" between English and a myriad of other (non-native American) languages. This measure is based on the difficulty Americans have learning other languages. The linguistic distance measure is then used in an analysis of the determinants of English language proficiency among adult immigrants in the United States and Canada. It is shown that, when other determinants of English language proficiency are the same, the greater the measure of linguistic distance, the poorer is the respondent's English language proficiency. This measure can be used in research, evaluation and practitioner analyses, and for diagnostic purposes regarding linguistic minorities in English-speaking countries. The methodology can also be applied to develop linguistic distance measures for other languages"--Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit web site.

"This paper compares the occupational distributions in 1990 and 2000 of adult white men and women for American Jews and non-Jews, after adjusting for the changes in occupational classifications. The data are from the microdata files from the National Jewish Population Surveys (1990, 2000/01) and the 1990 and 2000 Censuses of Population. Among both men and women, American Jews had a greater proportion in the high level occupations (managerial and professional) in 1990, and the difference increased over the next decade. Among Jews and among non-Jews, there were only small gender differences in the proportions in the high level occupations. Thus, religion was more important than gender in explaining occupational patterns. American Jews of both genders experienced a continued decline in self-employment over the decade, and a continued shift among those in managerial and professional jobs away from self employment and toward being salaried workers"--Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit web site.

"This study provides an account of the dynamics of the dominant language adjustment process among immigrants in Australia using the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Australia, which comprises two cohorts of immigrants that arrived in Australia around five years apart. There are two special features of these data that provide the framework for analysis. First, the visa class under which the immigrants entered Australia is known from administrative records. Second, between the two surveys, some visa classes, but not others, were affected by changes in government policy relating to the role of English language skills in immigrant selection. A difference between differences approach is used to isolate the impacts of these policy changes, and thus enable an assessment of what immigrant selection policy can do in this area. It is found that visa category, educational attainment and age at migration impact on immigrant's language skills. The increased English Proficiency requirement for the Independent and Skilled-Australian Sponsored categories appears to have been successful in raising the English language proficiency of these immigrants"--Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit web site.

"This paper is concerned with the location of immigrants in the United States, as reported in the 1990 Census. Where they settle has implications for the economic, social and political impact of immigrants. Immigrants are highly geographically concentrated. Compared to the native born they are more likely to live in the central parts of Metropolitan Areas in "gateway (major international airport) cities" in six states (California, New York, Texas, Florida, New Jersey and Illinois). The shift away from the east coast metropolitan areas to California reflects the change in the origins of immigrants from Europe/Canada to Asia, Mexico and other parts of Latin America. Differences by linguistic origin and period of arrival are also considered"--Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit web site.

"Using a large recent representative sample of the adult German population this paper demonstrates that nascent necessity and nascent opportunity entrepreneurs are different with respect to some of the characteristics and attitudes considered to be important for becoming a nascent entrepreneur, and that they behave differently. Given the lack of longitudinal data, however, we have no information about the performance of entrepreneurs from both groups in the longer run"--Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit web site.

"This paper models the relationship between income and reported well-being using latent class techniques applied to panel data from twelve European countries. Introducing both intercept and slope heterogeneity into this relationship, we strongly reject the hypothesis that individuals transform income into well-being in the same way. We show that both individual characteristics and country of residence are strong predictors of the four classes we identify. We expect that differences in the marginal effect of income on well-being across classes will be reflected in both behaviour and preferences for redistribution"--Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit web site.

"We construct indicators of the perception of job security for various types of jobs in 12 European countries using individual data from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). We then consider the relation between reported job security and OECD summary measures of Employment Protection Legislation (EPL) strictness on one hand, and Unemployment Insurance Benefit (UIB) generosity on the other. We find that, after controlling for selection into job types, workers feel most secure in permanent public sector jobs, least secure in temporary jobs, with permanent private sector jobs occupying an intermediate position. We also find that perceived job security in both permanent private and temporary jobs is positively correlated with UIB generosity, while the relationship with EPL strictness is negative: workers feel less secure in countries where jobs are more protected. These correlations are absent for permanent public jobs, suggesting that such jobs are perceived to be by and large insulated from labor market fluctuations"--Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit web site.

"Nascent entrepreneurs are people who are engaged in creating new ventures. This chapter reviews the international evidence on how many of them are there around the world, what they are doing, who they are, what makes them different, and which ones see their vision through to eventual start-up"--Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit web site.

"Utilizing a new survey of employers, this paper examines how and why establishments differ in their willingness to permit an older full-time white-collar worker to take phased retirement. Phased retirement means that an older worker remains with his or her employer while gradually reducing work hours and effort. Although older workers often express an interest in phased retirement, actual occurrences are evidently rare. A possible explanation is that employers limit opportunities for phased retirement. The survey indicates that employers are often willing to permit phased retirement, but primarily as an informal arrangement. The results also indicate that opportunities for phased retirement are greater in establishments that employ part-time white-collar workers, allow job sharing, and have flexible starting times. Opportunities tend to be more limited in establishments where white collar workers are unionized, and where the establishment is part of a larger organization"--Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit web site.

"This paper presents the first nonparametric test whether German works councils go hand in hand with higher labor productivity or not. It distinguishes between establishments that are covered by collective bargaining or not. Results from a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test for first order stochastic dominance tend to indicate that pro-productive effects are found in firms with collective bargaining only. However, the significance level of the test statistic is higher than a usually applied critical level. This somewhat weak evidence casts doubts on the validity of results from recent parametric approaches using a regression framework that point to high positive effects of works councils on productivity"--Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit web site.

"This paper considers the allocation of labour on the French and British markets, using objective wage and subjective satisfaction data. We show that, in some sectors, workers enjoy both higher wages and higher job satisfaction. We argue that this reflects labour market wage rents. Perhaps surprisingly, wage rents are typical of the British public sector and permanent contracts, but not of their French counterparts. In France, such rents are found in full-time, rather than part-time jobs. Hence, the data provide little support for the usual a priori that the French labour market is structured along insider-outsider model lines, whereby wage rents are captured by the insiders of the public sector to the detriment of the private sector. However, they do suggest that part-time employment is involuntary to a far greater extent in France than in Great Britain"--Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit web site.

"This paper extends the analysis of the acquisition of destination language proficiency among immigrants by explicitly incorporating dynamics among family members -- mother, father and children. Single equation, bivariate, and four-state (multivariate) probit analyses are employed. Immigrant English language skills are greater the younger the age at migration, the longer the duration of residence, the higher the level of education, and for immigrants not from Asia. Large positive correlations in the unmeasured determinants of proficiency exist between spouses, between siblings, and between parents and children, although the latter relationship is stronger for the mother"--Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit web site.

"This paper tests whether school-to-work (STW) programs are particularly beneficial for those less likely to go to college in their absence -- often termed the "forgotten half" in the STW literature. The empirical analysis is based on the NLSY97, which allows us to study six types of STW programs, including job shadowing, mentoring, coop, school enterprises, tech prep, and internships/apprenticeships. For men there is quite a bit of evidence that STW program participation is particularly advantageous for those in the forgotten half. For these men, specifically, mentoring and coop programs increase post-secondary education, and coop, school enterprise, and internship/apprenticeship programs boost employment and decrease idleness after leaving high school. There is less evidence that STW programs are particularly beneficial for women in the forgotten half, although internship/apprenticeship programs do lead to positive earnings effects concentrated among these women"--Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit web site.

"This paper is concerned with why immigrants appear to have consistently lower partial effects of schooling on earnings than the native born, both across destinations and in different time periods within countries. It uses the Over-Under-Required education approach to occupations, a new decomposition technique developed especially for this approach, and data from the 2000 Census of the United States. Based on the average (mean or mode) level of schooling in their occupation, the schooling of the native and foreign born adult men is divided into the "required" (average) level, and years of under- or overeducation. Immigrants have a wider variance in schooling, with an especially large proportion undereducated given the average schooling level in their occupation. Immigrants are shown to receive approximately the same rate of return to the "required" (occupational norm) level of education, but experience a smaller negative effect of years of undereducation, and to a lesser extent a small positive effect of overeducation. About two-thirds of the smaller effect of schooling on earnings for immigrants is due to their different payoffs to undereducation and overeducation. The remainder is largely due to their different distribution of years of schooling. The country-of-origin differences in the returns to under- and overeducation are consistent with country differences in the international transferability of skills to the US and the favorable selectivity of economic migrants, especially those from countries other than the English-speaking developed countries"--Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit web site.

"Many years of concerted policy effort in Western countries has not prevented young people from experimenting with cigarettes, alcohol and marijuana. One potential explanation is that social interactions make consumption "sticky". We use detailed panel data from the Add Health survey to examine risky behavior (the consumption of tobacco, alcohol and marijuana) by American adolescents. We find that, even controlling for school fixed effects, these behaviors are correlated with lagged peer group behavior. Peer group effects are strongest for alcohol use, and young males are more influential than young females. Last, we present some evidence of non-linearities in social interactions"--Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit web site.

"The Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program in the United States creates incentives for potential aged recipients to reduce labor supply prior to becoming eligible, and our past research finds that older men likely to be eligible for SSI at age 65 reduce their labor supply in the years immediately before the age of eligibility. However, given the dramatic supplementation of SSI benefits in some states, a migration response to these benefits cannot be dismissed, and migration that is associated with SSI benefits can lead to bias in estimates of the effects of SSI benefits on labor supply; depending on retirement and migration behavior, the disincentive effects can be overstated or understated. Migration responses to SSI benefits are also important in their own right, as another instance of the potential problem of "welfare magnets." We fail to find any statistically significant evidence that older individuals likely to be eligible for SSI in the near future, or already eligible for SSI, are more likely to move from low benefit to high benefit states. These findings are robust to the use of a number of different comparison groups to try to capture the state-to-state migration patterns that exist independently of a response to SSI. The evidence indicates that labor supply disincentive effects of SSI do not stem from migration behavior that could, in principle, spuriously generate these findings"--Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit web site.

"This paper uses the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Australia to analyze the determinants of the level and growth in earnings of adult male immigrants in their first 3.5 years in Australia. The theoretical framework is based on the immigrant adjustment model, which incorporates both the transferability of immigrant skills and selectively in migration. The cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses generate similar findings. The level and relative growth of earnings are higher for immigrants with higher levels of skill and who are economic/skills tested migrants, as distinct from family based and refugee migrants. The analysis indicates that immigrant economic assimilation does occur and that in these data the cross-section provides a good estimate of the longitudinal progress of immigrants. The findings are robust across statistical techniques"--Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit web site.

"This paper is an analysis of the English-language proficiency and labor market earnings of Soviet Jewish immigrants to the United States from 1965 to 2000, using the 2000 Census of Population. Comparisons are made to similar analyses using the 1980 and 1990 Censuses. A consistent finding is that recently arrived Soviet Jewish immigrants have lower levels of English proficiency and earnings than other immigrants, other variables being the same. However, they have a steeper improvement in both proficiency and earnings with duration in the United States and the differences from the other European immigrants disappear after a few years. The Soviet Jewish immigrants have both a higher level of schooling and a larger effect of schooling on earnings than other immigrants, even other European immigrants. The lower initial English proficiency and earnings, the steeper improvement with duration and the rapid attainment of parity is consistent with the refugee nature of their migration. That the same pattern exists across three censuses suggests that it is a refugee assimilation process, and not a decline in the unmeasured dimensions of the earnings potential of recent cohorts of Soviet Jewish immigrants. The larger effect of schooling on earnings among Soviet Jewish immigrants is similar to the larger effect of schooling on earnings among Jews born in the United States. Soviet Jewish immigrants to the United States since 1965 appear to have made a very successful linguistic and labor market adjustment"--Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit web site.

"Public opinion influences politicians, and therefore influences public policy decisions. What are the roles of self-interest, knowledge, and ideology in public opinion formation? And how do people learn about economic issues? Using a new, specially-designed survey, we find that most respondents express a strong desire to be well informed on economic policy issues, and that television is their dominant source of information. On a variety of major policy issues (e.g., taxes, social security, health insurance), ideology is the most important determinant of public opinion, while measures of self-interest are the least important. Knowledge about the economy ranks somewhere in between"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.

"Using data from the 2001 Census of Population and Housing in Australia, this paper investigates the determinants, and consequences for earnings, of computer use by both the native born and the foreign born. Focussing on the foreign born, the multivariate analyses show that recent arrivals are more likely to use computers than the Australian born. As the level of computer use in Australia is much higher than in most of the countries that Australia's immigrants come from, this evidence suggests a high degree of favorable selection in migration. Study of the links between earnings, computer use and other human capital skills shows that educational attainment and destination language skills are complements to computer use. The use of a computer is shown to be a way the foreign born can increase the international transferability of their pre-immigration skills, a finding that has implications for immigrant settlement policies"--Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit web site.

"There has been minimal research on the pre-school enrollment of immigrant children. Using 1990 U.S. Census data, this paper investigates pre-school enrollment of child immigrants, those who immigrated as children and the U.S.-born children of immigrants. The analysis is conducted using probit analysis. Pre-school enrollment is found to vary systematically with parental characteristics (income and education), immigrant generation, number of siblings, mother's labor supply and country of origin. Among the foreign-born, differences in preschool enrollment are analyzed by country of origin. Among the U.S.-born children of immigrants pre-school enrollment is greatest among those with both parents foreign born"--Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit web site.