Search Results

In Asia, aging countries with slow population growth worry about a lack of workers in the future and see older people's labor as a potential solution. However, this leaves out the work that many older people already do-unpaid care work. Drawing on data from Bangladesh, India, Mongolia, and Thailand, the estimates in this paper show that older people, especially older women, are doing a great deal of work caring for others. In this case, policies that aim to increase overall market labor force effort by increasing the market labor of older people may underachieve their goals if they do not account for the older people's unpaid care work responsibilities. Finally, we use the estimates of the older people's unpaid care work to think about investments in the paid care economy that might be needed to replace unpaid care work of the older people if they increase labor market effort but not total work. These simple calculations indicate that the scale of investment required is manageable.

Published abstract. Show less

Online job fairs are a new labor market intervention. This paper provides the first experimental evidence on their impact by evaluating an online fair for information and communication technology jobs in Bangladesh. The fair generated a non-negligible number of job offers; however, over 90 per cent of them were rejected, so no effect on employment probability or type was found. Interestingly, jobseekers lowered their reservation wages, kept their jobs longer, and ended up in worse skill-matched jobs. The reason is that jobseekers initially had overoptimistic expectations, but learned about market conditions at the fair, lowered their expectations, and became discouraged from job search. As a result, those who had already been employed kept their jobs longer, even if the jobs did not match their skills, and those who had initially been unemployed ended up with lower employment probabilities and lower skill-match quality.

Published abstract. Show less

This paper examines the impact of technological change on the wage share of older workers, using data from 30 countries experiencing population aging. It finds that recent technological developments centered on information and communication technology, software, and robots do not adversely affect older workers. This suggests that older workers may be more open to learning and adopting new technologies than widely presumed.

Published abstract. Show less

In cities with conservative norms or high crime, female workers may face greater restrictions on their physical mobility. This limits women's labor market opportunities and the pool of workers that firms can attract. In this study, we experimentally vary access to a transport service in Lahore, Pakistan, to quantify the overall impact of transport to work on men, women, and the differential impact of transport exclusively for women. We show that reducing physical mobility constraints has a large impact on job searching for women, including women who are not searching at baseline. Women's response is driven by a women-only transport treatment arm, suggesting that safety and social acceptability, rather than simply cost, are key constraints.

Published abstract. Show less

Income growth in rural areas is a considerable challenge to further poverty reduction and economic development. Using a survey of rural Bhutanese households [the authors] investigate the impacts of a vocational skills training program that was intended to diversify incomes outside of agriculture. [The authors] find that the program had limited positive impacts along various economic and psychosocial dimensions, but that it diversified household incomes into these skill areas. Notably, the program did raise incomes for trainees in non-competitive labor markets where trainees accounted for only a small percentage of the overall population. The results and anecdotal evidence suggests that: (1) a greater emphasis on creating a mechanism to connect the training program to income generating opportunities via job placement services, entrepreneurship or mentoring services is needed - especially in competitive labor markets where there are too many trainees in relation to the population; (2) refining the curriculum and extending the training time to allow trainees to develop their skills may be important; (3) encouraging greater equality in the skill development process may require providing more female-friendly training that has flexibility in training time and venues and focuses on other skill areas.

Published abstract. Show less

This paper examines the empirical implications of technological changes for skill demand and wage inequality in Indonesia. According to the National Labor Force Survey of Indonesia, the share of educated workers and wage skill premium increased significantly over 2003-2009 for overall industry and across the region. An analysis based on demand-supply framework suggests that demand shifts [favored] skilled workers during the period. The decomposition of labor demand shifts shows that they were driven not only by reallocation of labor forces between industries but also by change within industries, particularly among formal workers, suggesting evidence of skill-biased technological changes. The empirical evidence from the data of manufacturing firms suggest that diffusion of new technologies through imported materials and foreign direct investment caused greater demand for skilled labor and higher wage inequality in the manufacturing sector.

Published abstract. Show less

This paper examines the extent to which various factors explain talent misallocation in the form of qualification mismatches across six urban developing Asian economies using the World Bank's Skills towards Employability and Productivity (STEP) Skills Measurement Survey. The paper empirically tests the role of search frictions in driving qualification mismatches in the labor market. Using new data from several low-income economies in urban Asia, the authors find that overeducation in less developed labor markets are more pervasive than in more developed economies.

The STEP Skills Measurement Program collects data on skills in low- and middle-income country contexts. This includes information on educational attainment, job characteristics, and socioeconomic background. The samples per country comprise approximately 3,000 adults between the age of 15 and 64. In this paper, the focus is on a subset of countries for which there is data available: Armenia, the People's Republic of China (PRC) (Yunnan), Georgia, the Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao PDR), Sri Lanka, and Viet Nam. The years of data collection are 2012 for the PRC (Yunnan), the Lao PDR, Sri Lanka, and Viet Nam, and 2013 for Armenia and Georgia.

Abstract from publisher's website with additional information. Show less

Global supply chain (GSC) trade has been a driving force underlying economic transformation, urbanization, and social change in the People's Republic of China (PRC). Female migrants account for a large share of the labor force in the country's GSC production base. Using province-level panel data, this study employs regression analysis to examine how the country's rapid integration into the supply chain has affected women's welfare outcomes captured by occupational status. The analysis shows mixed results. On the one hand, global integration through trade expansion improved the concentration of men and women equally in professional and skilled occupations and in management positions. On the other hand, female employment in manufacturing for GSC trade increased faster than male employment. This trend decreased in turn the male-female sex ratio among those aged 0-4 years. This finding is consistent with other studies on the PRC that confirm the beneficial effect of a relative rise in women's income in reducing the sex imbalance. Gender-specific policies should support female migrants in moving up the job ladder in GSC trade through higher education and skills training for professional and leadership positions. This should be complemented with incentives for the private sector, the biggest source of employment in the PRC, to promote gender equality by harnessing the advancement in technology and opportunities offered by the rapid growth of GSC trade.

Published abstract. Show less

International migration is an essential element of economic integration. Yet, the intraregional movement of people and labor in Asia and the Pacific has stagnated in recent years even as the flow of goods, services, and investment have steadily risen. This paper examines key factors driving the movement of people from and within the region using bilateral international migrant stock data. Our analysis shows that commonly known determinants such as income differences; population size; and political, geographical, and cultural proximities between the migrant source and destination countries are associated with greater movement, along with the growing share of older population in destination economies and the similarities in the level of educational attainment. The paper also finds that cross-border migration is affected, in varied directions, by the degree of economic integration between the source and destination economies, especially through bilateral trade and value chain links. The offshoring of production - and hence jobs and other economic opportunities - to migrant source countries suppresses outmigration, but the expected rise in the source country income will eventually promote migration by relaxing financial constraints.

Published abstract. Show less

This paper examines the trends in skill and activity upgrading in global value chains (GVCs) and the drivers of upgrading in Asian economies. It uses the newly constructed [Asian Development Bank] ADB Multi-Region Input-Output Tables as well as occupation data on jobs by educational attainment and business activities, namely: research and development; production; logistics, sales, and marketing; administration and back-office; and headquarter activities. [The authors'] results suggest an ongoing specialization process in high-income Asian countries and in developing member countries (DMCs) toward high-skilled knowledge-intensive activities. The pace of upgrading differs across Asian countries, being more rapid and encompassing in the People's Republic of China in comparison to other DMCs. [The authors] use a structural decomposition method to account for the drivers of the trends observed. In particular, technological change in GVCs that is biased toward knowledge-intensive activities is important in accounting for the trends observed.

Published abstract. Show less