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1. Childhood Welfare Exposure and Economic Outcomes for Adult Daughters and Sons

Author:
Robert Paul Hartley, Carlos Lamarche, and James P. Ziliak
Publication Date:
01-2025
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies (CEDLAS)
Abstract:
We investigate how length of time on welfare during childhood affects economic outcomes in early adulthood. Using intergenerationally linked mother-child pairs from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we adopt a nonlinear difference-in-differences framework using the 1990s welfare reform to estimate average and quantile treatment effects on intensity of welfare use and earnings in adulthood. The causal estimates indicate that additional childhood welfare exposure leads to more adulthood years on the broader safety net for both daughters and sons, yet this positive relationship only applies below moderate levels of adult welfare participation and reverses at greater levels of dependence. Increasing childhood welfare exposure implies lower earnings in adulthood for daughters, however we find no evidence that it depresses adult sons’ earnings. Both daughters and sons exhibit some wage penalty from childhood welfare exposure, yet only daughters are penalized through hours worked in the labor market.
Topic:
Economics, Income Inequality, Welfare, Labor Market, Gender, and Intergenerational
Political Geography:
Global Focus

2. Local Economic Development Through Export-Led Growth: The Chilean Case

Author:
Andrés César and Guillermo Falcone
Publication Date:
04-2024
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies (CEDLAS)
Abstract:
We study the causal impact of export growth on Chilean local economic development during 2000–2006 by exploiting spatial and temporal variations in local exposure stemming from the interaction of past differences in industry specialization across local labor markets and the evolution of tariffs cuts and exports across industries. We find that growing exports implied a significant reduction in labor informality and labor income gains in more exposed local markets, driven by job creation and wage growth in the formal sector. These effects concentrate on senior skilled workers. Exposed locations also exhibit a greater relative decline in the poverty rate.
Topic:
Poverty, Employment, Economic Growth, Tariffs, Exports, Economic Development, Labor Market, Wages, and Informality
Political Geography:
South America and Chile

3. Children living with disabilities and mother’s labor supply in developing countries: evidence from Argentina

Author:
Laura Carella, Rafael-Andrés Velázquez-Pérez, Natalia Porto, and Ana Clara Rucci
Publication Date:
03-2024
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies (CEDLAS)
Abstract:
A child’s disability increases childcare demands causing two opposing effects on the mother’s labor supply: while some types of disability require additional time spent reducing labor supply, othersrequire additional expenses increasing labor supply. This paper studies the effect of a child’s disability on mothers’ labor supply using data from the 2019-20 IPUMS MICS of Argentina. Four measures of disability are used: children with a functional disability (based on Washington Group criteria); children with functional difficulties for seeing, hearing, or walking; children with difficulties in the remaining functional domains; and children with a disability certificate or pension. The results suggest that having a child with disability certificate or pension reduces a mother’s probability of participating in the labor force. No significant effect is found for mothers of a child with a functional disability. However, this arises from two opposing effects: a negative effect on mother’s labor supply of children with difficulties for seeing, hearing, or walking and a positive effect on mothers of children with difficulties in the remaining functional domains. The evidence also shows heterogeneous effects depending on the mother’s education. The (dis)incentive to participate is present for non-graduated mothers, while the effect is not statistically significant for graduated ones.
Topic:
Children, Disability, Labor Market, Workforce, and Motherhood
Political Geography:
Argentina and South America

4. Beyond Traditional Wage Premium. An Analysis of Wage Greenium in Latin America

Author:
Manuela Cerimelo, Pablo de la Vega, Natalia Porto, and Franco Vazquez
Publication Date:
02-2024
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies (CEDLAS)
Abstract:
This paper estimates wage differentials between green and non-green jobs (wage greenium) in nine major Latin American countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay), which account for 81% of the region’s GDP. We contribute to the recent literature highlighting a positive wage gap for those working in green jobs in developed countries. A positive wage gap for green jobs may be a virtuous market feature, as it means that in the future workers might be encouraged to switch to greener occupations. To do so, we define green jobs as those occupations with high greenness scores using the occupational approach as in Vona et al. (2018), Vona (2021) and de la Vega et al. (2024). Our results suggest that the wage greenium for the period 2012-2019 in Latin America was between 18% to 22%. Moreover, this wage gap has remained relatively stable over the years.
Topic:
Labor Market, Wages, and Green Jobs
Political Geography:
Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Uruguay, Latin America, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia

5. Generative Artificial Intelligence and Its Implications for Labor Markets in Developing Countries: A Review Essay

Author:
Guillermo Cruces, Verónica Amarante, and Estefanía Lotitto
Publication Date:
12-2024
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies (CEDLAS)
Abstract:
The unprecedented developments in artificial intelligence technology and its recent widespread availability hold transformative potential to reshape global economic dynamics and labor markets, though opinions on its effects vary greatly. Transformative or not, the irruption of AI has sparked ample public discussion as well as the rapid development of theoretical and empirical approaches to understand it. This review essay discusses recent perspectives, theories, and empirical evidence on the matter, and adds a perspective of the implications of this technology and of the policy discussion it has sparked, from the perspective of developing countries’ economies. The latter is motivated by the relative scarcity of such perspectives in the current public debate, which seems to have minimized the potential effects on the interaction of labor markets between developing and developed countries, and on the potentially different within-country effects at different levels of development.
Topic:
Economic Development, Artificial Intelligence, Literature Review, Labor Market, and Work
Political Geography:
Global Focus

6. Effects of Hiring Credits on the Argentine Labor Market

Author:
Octavio Bertín, Guillermo Cruces, Diego Chaves-González, Ignacio Lunghi, and Azul Menduiña
Publication Date:
12-2024
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies (CEDLAS)
Abstract:
This study assesses the impact of a hiring credit policy introduced in Argentina in 2014 on various labor outcomes of firms. The reform established differentiated labor cost reductions in the employers contributions to be paid for their new employees, according to the size that firms had at a date prior to the announcement of the policy. Using a differences-in-differences approach and employer-employee administrative data, we analyze the intervention’s effects. Our results show a significant 4.1 percentage point increase in employment growth rates for small firms compared to medium-sized ones, persisting for several years post-reform. This paper also explores the relationship between the intervention’s effects and sector labor informality; we find a significant 6.2 percentage point increase in employment growth rates for firms in high-informality sector, whereas no significant effect is found for firms in lowinformality sectors.
Topic:
Employment, Labor Market, Wages, and Hiring Credits
Political Geography:
Argentina and South America

7. Youth Employment in Tourism: A Multidimensional Approach of Job Quality in Latin America

Author:
Malena Dolcet, Natalia Porto, and Joaqu´ın Zarrilli
Publication Date:
08-2024
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies (CEDLAS)
Abstract:
Young people entering the labor markets face several and important challenges. These issues deepen due to rooted structural barriers such as informality or precarity, low-paid jobs, and low economic growth in regions like Latin America and sectors such as tourism (Abramo, 2022). Tourism has great potential to employ many of these young people because it provides opportunities for skilled and unskilled workers, it has low barriers to entry and flexible conditions, and it provides critical skills for their professional life. However, the youth population needs to reduce the gap between their available skills and experienced gained and the future requirements of labor markets to avoid being socially excluded. We apply the multidimensional poverty methodology developed by Alkire and Foster (2011) to build a Quality of Employment index (QoE) for young workers employed in the tourism industry in Latin America for the period 2015-2019. Focusing on two groups of young workers -super young for those aged 15 to 24 and young those aged 25 to 35- we consider several aspects of working conditions and discuss some differences in job quality across countries by gender and education considering different levels of deprivation in the index. The results suggest a high level of deprivation in the young workers, specially in the super young group. However, employment quality increased in both groups for all countries in the region during the period 2015-2019.
Topic:
Tourism, Employment, Youth, and Labor Market
Political Geography:
Latin America

8. Buffer or Bottleneck? Employment Exposure to Generative AI and the Digital Divide in Latin America

Author:
Paweł Gmyrek, Hernan Winkler, and Santiago Garganta
Publication Date:
11-2024
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies (CEDLAS)
Abstract:
Empirical evidence on the potential impacts of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is mostly focused on high-income countries. In contrast, little is known about the role of this technology on the future economic pathways of developing economies. This paper contributes to fill this gap by estimating the exposure of the Latin American labor market to GenAI. It provides detailed statistics of GenAI exposure between and within countries by leveraging a rich set of harmonized household and labor force surveys. To account for the slower pace of technology adoption in developing economies, it adjusts the measures of exposure to GenAI by using the likelihood of accessing digital technologies at work. This is then used to assess the extent to which the digital divide across and within countries will be a barrier to maximize the productivity gains among occupations that could otherwise be augmented by GenAI tools. The findings show that certain characteristics are consistently correlated with higher exposure. Specifically, urban-based jobs that require higher education, are situated in the formal sector, and are held by individuals with higher incomes are more likely to come into interaction with this technology. Moreover, there is a pronounced tilt toward younger workers facing greater exposure, including the risk of job automation, particularly in the finance, insurance, and public administration sectors. When adjusting for access to digital technologies, the findings show that the digital divide is a major barrier to realizing the positive effects of GenAI on jobs in the region. In particular, nearly half of the positions that could potentially benefit from augmentation are hampered by lack of use of digital technologies. This negative effect of the digital divide is more pronounced in poorer countries.
Topic:
Employment, Digital Economy, Artificial Intelligence, and Labor Market
Political Geography:
Latin America

9. Gender Inequality in Latin America

Author:
Inés Berniell, Leonel Fernández, and Sonya Krutikova
Publication Date:
07-2024
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies (CEDLAS)
Abstract:
This paper examines gender inequality focusing on two critical spheres in which gender inequality is generated: education and work. Our objective is to provide a snapshot of gender inequality across key indicators as well as a dynamic perspective that highlights successes and failures. We also facilitate a cross-country comparison by grouping countries within Latin America by their level of economic development and drawing comparisons with countries outside the region. Finally, we reflect on differences in the ways that gender inequalities play out across different socio-economic groups, particularly those that highlight other sources of inequality
Topic:
Education, Inequality, Labor Market, Gender Wage Gap, and Gender Equality
Political Geography:
Latin America

10. Measuring Green Jobs: A New Database for Latin America and Other Regions

Author:
Hernan Winkler, Vincenzo Di Maro, Kelly Montoya, Sergio Olivieri, and Emmanuel Vazquez
Publication Date:
09-2024
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies (CEDLAS)
Abstract:
A growing body of literature investigates the labor market implications of scaling up “green” policies. Since most of this literature is focused on developed economies, little is known about the labor market consequences for developing countries. This paper contributes to filling this gap by providing new stylized facts on the prevalence of green occupations and sectors across countries at varying levels of economic development. Green occupations are defined using the Occupational Information Network, and green sectors are those with relatively lower greenhouse gas emissions per worker. The paper offers an initial assessment of how the implementation of green policies—aimed at expanding green sectors and strengthening the relative demand for green skills—may affect workers in developing economies. It finds that the share of green jobs is strongly correlated with the level of gross domestic product per capita across countries. When controlling for unobserved heterogeneity, a 1 percent increase in gross domestic product per capita is associated with 0.4 and 4.1 percentage point increases in the shares of new and emerging, and enhanced skills green jobs, respectively. The paper then focuses on Latin America and finds that only 9 percent of workers have a green job with respect to both occupation and sector. The findings show that within countries, workers with low levels of income and education are more likely to be employed in non-green sectors and occupations, and to lack the skills for a greener economy. This evidence suggests that complementary policies are needed to mitigate the potential role of green policiesin widening income inequality between and within countries.
Topic:
Climate Change, Employment, Labor Market, and Green Jobs
Political Geography:
Latin America