Spot the key difference?
Difference in PISA scores of 15-year-old female and male students on reading literacy: 2012
06 Apr 2015 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of education, gender, human capital, labour economics, occupational choice Tags: reversing gender gap
via nces.ed.gov
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
Why Did Wal-Mart Raise Its Wages?
03 Apr 2015 Leave a comment
in industrial organisation, labour economics, labour supply, minimum wage, politics - USA, survivor principle Tags: Paul Krugman, supply and demand, Walmart
Why Did Walmart Raise Its Wages?
forbes.com/sites/realspin… http://t.co/0LRQQcKGKm—
Benn Steil (@BennSteil) April 02, 2015
The retail sector quits rate, the number of people quitting jobs as a per cent of total employment, is also considerably higher than the quits rate in the private sector broadly: 2.9% versus 2.2%.
Not surprisingly, Gap and Ikea have made wage-hike announcements similar to Wal-Mart’s. Retailers are clearly having more and more trouble finding and keeping workers at the federal minimum wage.
In short, Krugman’s story of Wal-Mart raising wages in response to political pressure simply flies in the face of the evidence. Wal-Mart is just being Wal-Mart: making a rational decision to lure and retain workers in a tightening retail labour market through greater compensation.
The problem with ignoring this evidence is that it encourages the notion that we can make wages, in Krugman’s words, “a political choice,” with no concern for its effect on employment.
The impact of US 1996 welfare reforms on single mothers’ employment
03 Apr 2015 Leave a comment
in gender, labour economics, labour supply, poverty and inequality, welfare reform Tags: 1996 US welfare reforms, female labour force participation, single parents
The withering away of union militancy in New Zealand
03 Apr 2015 Leave a comment
in labour economics, unions Tags: strikes, union power, union wage premium, Withering away of the proletariat
Bryan Caplan on being down and out in America
02 Apr 2015 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, politics - USA, poverty and inequality
Via Are We Stuck With the Great Society?, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty.
Who has the smallest Anglo-Saxon welfare state of them all?
02 Apr 2015 1 Comment
in income redistribution, labour economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, welfare reform Tags: social insurance, social safety nets, welfare reform, welfare state
I have reanalysed data published by the Peterson Institute on the true levels of social expenditure across the industrialised countries for the Anglo-Saxon countries.
Figure 1: gross public social expenditures in OECD countries, 2011
Source: POLICY BRIEF 15-4: The True Levels of Government and Social Expenditures in Advanced Economies.
When you just look at gross public social expenditure, New Zealand is in the middle of the pack with the United Kingdom having the largest spending. There are not particularly large differences across social spending in the Anglo-Saxon welfare states.
Figure 2: Gross public social expenditure and the effects of taxation in OECD countries, 2011
Source: POLICY BRIEF 15-4: The True Levels of Government and Social Expenditures in Advanced Economies.
There is not much change when you include the effects of taxation on consumption by benefit recipients.
Figure 3: Net after-tax public and private social expenditure in OECD countries, 2011
Source: POLICY BRIEF 15-4: The True Levels of Government and Social Expenditures in Advanced Economies.
When private mandatory social spending is included, such as employer sponsored health cover, there is considerable change with United States leaping to the front and New Zealand dropping to the bottom. The USA has the largest and most expensive is health sector in the world so they are leaping of the front, either because healthcare is expensive in United States or people in the United States are not constrained by government rationing to spend less than they would prefer on their own healthcare. Let’s leave that war of ideas for another day.
Figure 4: Net after-tax total social expenditures in OECD countries, 2011
Source: POLICY BRIEF 15-4: The True Levels of Government and Social Expenditures in Advanced Economies.
On the face of it, New Zealand has the smallest Anglo-Saxon welfare state while the United States has the largest. A more accurate measure of the relative sizes of these Anglo-Saxon welfare states would require the wisdom of Solomon in measuring waste and underfunding in the respective systems and more trust than you should have in services sector in purchasing power parity adjustments.
For those that are interested, the OECD-wide gross social spending and net after-tax total social spending are reproduced below in figures 5 and 6.
Figure 5: Net after-tax total social expenditures in OECD countries, 2011
Source: POLICY BRIEF 15-4: The True Levels of Government and Social Expenditures in Advanced Economies.
The Figure 5 data on the OECD wide welfare state sizes shows that when you add private spending, including social spending mandated by law, the US has the second largest OECD social safety net as Kirkegaard said in his Peterson Institute paper:
Taking the full effects of tax systems and social spending from both private and public sources into account, the United States is seen to be devoting more resources toward social purposes than is generally acknowledged. In fact, only the French spend more than Americans, while the alleged welfare-addicted Scandinavians and Europeans spend less on average.
Figure 6: Gross public social expenditures in OECD countries, 2011
Source: POLICY BRIEF 15-4: The True Levels of Government and Social Expenditures in Advanced Economies.
Via The US welfare state and safety net are bigger than you think. But who are they helping? – AEI | Pethokoukis Blog » AEIdeas and POLICY BRIEF 15-4: The True Levels of Government and Social Expenditures in Advanced Economies
Putting U.S. Labor Force Participation in Context
02 Apr 2015 Leave a comment
in gender, labour economics, labour supply, politics - USA Tags: cross-country comparisons, female labour force participation, labour force participation, male labour force dissipation
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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