I am pretty sure I am not a super-taster given my narrow food preferences
05 Apr 2015 Leave a comment
in human capital, occupational choice Tags: economics of personality traits, economics of physiology
Single motherhood compared internationally
05 Apr 2015 Leave a comment
in gender, health economics, labour economics, occupational choice, population economics, welfare reform Tags: single parents
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Trends in bachelor degrees conferred on women since 1970
04 Apr 2015 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of education, gender, occupational choice Tags: compensating differentials, gender wage gap, reversing gender gap, STEM
A lot of women did information science in the 70s, close to 40% of all information science majors, then women moved away to invest in other majors. It would be laughable to suggest that information science was more welcoming to women in the 1970s but not now. Clearly, a third set of factors is at play unrelated to hostile working environments. Similarly, a large number of women did maths and statistics then that trend petered out in the 1980s.
Hillary Clinton says women earned 2x CS degrees in the '80s as today. Mostly True: politifact.com/truth-o-meter/… #dataviz http://t.co/Zg82d8ZfQh—
Randy Olson (@randal_olson) March 03, 2015
13% of American biology teachers should be fired
04 Apr 2015 2 Comments
in economics of education, labour economics, occupational choice, personnel economics Tags: creationism, Quacks
Bad #dataviz but interesting data -> 13% of US biology teachers advocate teaching Creationism: samuelwbennett.com/the-struggle/1… http://t.co/vmchwAQUsy—
Randy Olson (@randal_olson) March 07, 2015
The relative death rate of professional wrestlers
04 Apr 2015 2 Comments
in health and safety, labour economics, occupational choice, TV shows Tags: Celebrities, pro wrestling
Are pro wrestlers dying at an unusual rate? 53eig.ht/1kS1OWE http://t.co/YOseSouz3d—
(@FiveThirtyEight) March 15, 2015
Claudia Goldin on Gender Equality in the Labor Market
02 Apr 2015 Leave a comment
in discrimination, gender, human capital, labour economics, managerial economics, occupational choice, organisational economics, personnel economics Tags: Claudia Goldin, gender wage gap, wage gaps
Causes of death of pop musicians and the general population
01 Apr 2015 Leave a comment
in health and safety, health economics, labour economics, labour supply, Music, occupational choice Tags: life expectancy
Musical life expectancy
31 Mar 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of media and culture, health economics, labour economics, Music, occupational choice Tags: compensating differentials, life expectancy
via The 27 Club is a myth: 56 is the bum note for musicians and Stairway to hell: life and death in the pop music industry..
A tale of two parents
30 Mar 2015 Leave a comment
in human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, politics - USA, population economics, poverty and inequality, welfare reform Tags: child poverty, family demographics, family structures, single parents
Whitlam’s curse – How higher education drives inequality among the bottom 99%
30 Mar 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of education, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, politics - Australia, politics - USA Tags: David Autor, education premium, Gough Whitlam, top 1%
Gough Whitlam abolished tuition fees at Australian universities in 1972. The idea was to reduce inequality. He entrenched it instead, and gave a flying start to those of already above-average talents.
David Autor in a recent paper has illustrated how the gap between the highly educated and the less educated is growing at a far faster rate than the gap between the top 1% in the bottom 99% in the USA. David Autor argues that
a single minded focus on the top 1% can be counterproductive given that the changes to the other 99% have been more economically significant.
- since the early 1980s, the earnings gap between workers with a high school degree and those with a college education has become four times greater than the shift in income during the same period to the very top from the 99%.
- Between 1979 and 2012, the gap in median annual earnings between households of high-school educated workers and households with college-educated ones expanded from $30,298 to $58,249, or by roughly $28,000.
- If the incomes of the bottom 99% are grown at the same pace as the top 1% their incomes would have increased by $7000 per household.
Autor argues that the growth of skill differentials among the other 99% is more consequential than the rise of the 1% for the welfare of most citizens.
via How Education Drives Inequality Among the 99% – Real Time Economics – WSJ.
The downtrodden low paid workers are experiencing the fastest wages growth
29 Mar 2015 Leave a comment
Is the gender wage gap in New Zealand 6% or 9.9%?
26 Mar 2015 Leave a comment
in discrimination, econometerics, gender, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, politics - New Zealand
The OECD puts the gender wage gap in New Zealand at about 6% for full-time employees on an hourly basis when measured using median earnings.
The Ministry of Women’s Affairs puts that gender wage gap estimate at 9.9% by measuring median hourly earnings, but the Ministry includes both full-time and part-time employees.
Conflating full-time and part-time earnings when measuring wage gaps is unwise. The level of compensating differentials in full-time and part-time jobs differ. More of the net pay package of a part-time job would be convenience and flexibility. A full-time job tends to indicate greater commitment to the labour force day in day out and less interest in flexibility and time off during the week.
England riots culprits jailed for 1,800 years, which deterred crime
26 Mar 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, labour economics, law and economics, occupational choice Tags: crime and punishment, criminal deterrence, London riots
The level of lawlessness was shocking and wholly inexcusable. The imposition of severe sentences, intended to provide both punishment and deterrence, must follow…
The context hugely aggravates the seriousness of each individual offence … the sheer numbers involved may have led some of the offenders to believe that they were untouchable and would escape detection…
When there is wanton and vicious violence of gross degree the court is not concerned with whether it originates from gang rivalry or from political motives. It is the degree of mob violence that matters and the extent to which the public peace is broken.”
The Lord Chief Justice Judge
The response of the criminal fraternity in London to the sentences handed out during the London riots was very business like. Offending for those particular sentences dropped. Criminals substituted to other forms of crime to pursue their chosen occupation as a criminal in light of the changed incentives:
…a significant drop in riot crimes across London in the six months after the riots, consistent with a deterrence effect from the tougher sentencing. More evidence of general deterrence comes from the observation that crime also fell in the post‐riot aftermath in areas where rioting did not take place.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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