Publications
Rania Antonopoulos
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One-Pager No. 71 | December 2023In comparison to the policy responses in the aftermath of the 2008–9 global financial crisis, the reactions of EU policymakers to the combined shocks of the COVID-19 crisis and Ukraine-Russia conflict reveal a greater willingness to deploy public finance in support of the population. Yet, while this display of renewed solidarity is commendable, policymakers have a long way to go in building a more resilient and sustainable EU. A confrontation with long-standing “business as usual” EU rules and policies is necessary, and it is in this context that the job guarantee deserves serious consideration. Acting for the common purpose of reducing and eventually eliminating long-term unemployment would send a clear message that a Social Europe is possible.Download:Associated Program:Author(s):Related Topic(s):
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Working Paper No. 1022 | July 2023As country after country in the European Union is called to respond to the current challenge of our time—high inflation and declining real wages—governments must engage in a transformative agenda and go beyond emergency energy vouchers and income support cash-transfers. And if the goal is to lead the way to a resilient and sustainable European Union, business as usual will not do. The share of wages to GDP has been declining since the late 1970s, deregulation of labor markets has increased insecurity and precariousness, and, among ordinary working people, a sense of uncertainty, disenfranchisement, and mistrust in governing institutions is prevalent. A thorough re-evaluation of policies is needed. In response to the deterioration of living standards, a guarantee of minimum wages adequate to secure a decent living standard should be a starting point; a permanent policy of automatic adjustment of wages to inflation rates in all member states should be promoted; and strengthening collective bargaining agreements ought to be re-invigorated for a fair sharing of productivity between wages and profits. An EU Job Guarantee should be at the center of this policy transformation. This bold agenda, advocated in this paper, can mobilize people to regain trust that a Social Europe is possible.Download:Associated Program:Author(s):Related Topic(s):
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Research Project Reports | June 2022
Time Use, Employment, and Poverty
There is broad consensus in both research and policy circles that one of the key reasons for a lack of progress in reducing gender gaps in employment and wages is the persistent gender imbalance in unpaid work, three-quarters of which is performed by women. Universal access to quality care services enables the reduction of this unpaid care work through its redistribution from the domestic sphere to the public sphere, with empirical studies from different regions and countries demonstrating that access to services (in particular, childcare services) substantially increases female labor force participation and labor market attachment. Furthermore, a series of recent empirical studies show that access to care also creates new demand for female employment: increasing public spending on care is found to generate two-to-three times the number of new jobs per dollar than spending on sectors such as construction.
This research project report focuses on Mexico and builds on previous studies for Turkey, Ghana, and Tanzania by constructing a combined time-use and income-employment dataset for Mexico to evaluate the net effects a proposed childcare expansion could have on earnings and work hours and their concomitant impact on time and income poverty by gender, with results indicating that the employment creation achieved through increased social care spending reduces gender employment gaps while also helping to alleviate the twin deprivations of time and income poverty.Download:Associated Program(s):The Distribution of Income and Wealth Gender Equality and the Economy The Levy Institute Measure of Time and Income PovertyAuthor(s): -
Working Paper No. 865 | May 2016
Why Time Deficits Matter
We describe the production of estimates of the Levy Institute Measure of Time and Income Poverty (LIMTIP) for Buenos Aires, Argentina, and use it to analyze the incidence of time and income poverty. We find high numbers of hidden poor—those who are not poor according to the official measure but are found to be poor when using our time-adjusted poverty line. Large time deficits for those living just above the official poverty line are the reason for this hidden poverty. Time deficits are unevenly distributed by employment status, family type, and especially gender. Simulations of the impact of full-time employment on those households with nonworking (for pay) adults indicate that reductions in income poverty can be achieved, but at the cost of increased time poverty. Policy interventions that address the lack of both income and time are discussed.
Download:Associated Program(s):The Distribution of Income and Wealth Gender Equality and the Economy The Levy Institute Measure of Time and Income PovertyAuthor(s):Related Topic(s): -
In the Media | July 2015
By Robert Peston
BBC News, July 13, 2015. All Rights Reserved.
Greece's economy will contract a further 3%, Athens minister Rania Antonopoulos has told me in a BBC interview.
The alternate minister for combating unemployment, who was a professional economist, said that the combination of the closure of the banks and austerity measures being forced on the country by eurozone and IMF creditors will tip Greece back into serious recession....
Full video of the interview is available here.
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In the Media | July 2015Bloomberg Business, July 10, 2015. All Rights Reserved.
Ahead of Greek PM Alex Tsipras's meeting with eurozone finance ministers on July 11, Syriza MP and Levy Institute economist Rania Antonopoulos expressed confidence that a "mutually beneficial" agreement between Greece and its creditors would be put in place within the week, and stated that the government's commitment to remaining in the eurozone "is as strong as ever."
Full video of the interview is available here. -
Research Project Reports | May 2015
Responding to the Unemployment Challenge: A Job Guarantee Proposal for Greece—An Addendum
View More View LessThis addendum to our June 2014 report, “Responding to the Unemployment Challenge: A Job Guarantee Proposal for Greece,” updates labor market data through 2014Q3 and identifies emerging employment and unemployment trends. The overarching aim of the report, the outcome of a study undertaken in 2013 by the Levy Institute in collaboration with the Observatory of Economic and Social Developments of the Labour Institute of the Greek General Confederation of Labour, is to provide policymakers and the general public research-based evidence of the macroeconomic and employment effects of a large-scale direct job creation program in Greece, and to invite critical rethinking of the austerity-driven macro policy instituted in 2010 as a condition of the loans made to Greece by its eurozone partners.Download:Associated Program(s):Author(s):Related Topic(s): -
Public Policy Brief No. 138 | October 2014To mobilize Greece’s severely underemployed labor potential and confront the social and economic dangers of persistent unemployment, we propose the immediate implementation of a direct public benefit job creation program—a Greek “New Deal.” The Job Guarantee (JG) program would offer the unemployed jobs, at a minimum wage, on work projects providing public goods and services. This policy would have substantial positive economic impacts in terms of output and employment, and when newly accrued tax revenue is taken into account, which substantially reduces the net cost of the program, it makes for a comparatively modest fiscal stimulus. At a net cost of roughly 1 percent to 1.2 percent of GDP (depending on the wage level offered), a midrange JG program featuring the direct creation of 300,000 jobs has the potential to reduce the unemployed population by a third or more, once indirect employment effects are taken into account. And our research indicates that the policy would do all this while reducing Greece’s debt-to-GDP ratio—which leaves little room for excuses.Download:Associated Program(s):Author(s):Related Topic(s):
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Research Project Reports | June 2014
This report presents the findings from a study undertaken by the Levy Institute in 2013 in collaboration with the Observatory of Economic and Social Developments of the Labour Institute of the Greek General Confederation of Labour. It uses as background the 2011 Levy Institute study “Direct Job Creation for Turbulent Times in Greece,” which focused on the need for direct job creation to address rising unemployment. The focus in this report, however, is different. Here, the aim is to make available to policymakers and the broader public research-based evidence of the macroeconomic and employment effects of a large-scale program of direct job creation program—a cost-effective and proven policy response. The ultimate goal of this undertaking is to draw urgently needed attention to the worsening levels of unemployment in Greece, and to invite critical rethinking of the austerity-driven macro policy instituted in 2010.
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In the Media | January 2014
Rania Antonopoulos
Kathimerini, January 31, 2014. All Rights Reserved.
The responses to unemployment by the last three governments [in Greece] have been characterized by sloppy proposals and an insignificant amount of funds in relation to the size of the problem. Regardless of whether there were political considerations behind it (or not), the recent announcement of the Prime Minister highlights, unfortunately, a relentless continuation of lack of understanding of reality.
The Prime Minister recently, on January 29, told us that unemployment is a "sneaky enemy" and proceeded to announce measures to tackle the problem. He also indicated that "we do not promise things we cannot do, and we say no to populism and fine words." The goal of the proposed measures, we heard, is to create 440,000 "work opportunities" of which 240,000 will target the unemployed 15–24 years of age, with no prior work experience. The announced measures totaling 1.4 billion Euro, will be financed by funds from the National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF), social funds from the EU, and are classified into three pillars.
Specifically, the first pillar sets a target to recruit 114,000 unemployed for the private sector, an initiative that essentially subsidizes wages and social security contributions for businesses that hire unemployed who are up to 29 years old and some who are unemployed between the ages of 30 to 60 years of age. The second pillar concerns 240,000 young persons. This program will provide work experience and training for all unemployed up to 24 years old, who have no prior work experience. These unemployed, will also go to private companies for some time, or participate in vocational training centers (VTC) to improve their skills in order to find their first job, or both. The third pillar concentrates in hiring 90,000 unemployed from households who have no employed person, who will work in community service projects in the public sector and local government.
Assuming that strict rules are in place, with dedicated control mechanisms that will guarantee nonreplacement of existing positions in the private and public sector (really, is there a sufficient number of public sector inspectors for this task?), prima facie, it all sounds positive and leads to the conclusion that at last the Prime Minister himself has publicly accepted his responsibility towards the citizens that have been left without a job. But, appearances can be deceiving.
Let's start with the obvious. If we divide the 1.4 billion euros with 440,000 job opportunities to be created in the next two years, we arrive at an average of 220,000, now unemployed, future employed per year, who will receive a total of 3,182 euros during one year. Namely, 265 euros per month. So these jobs offer underemployment, or starvation wages or both. Job opportunities? These interventions in reality provide employment for four to five months. Then what?
But, also, there was nothing new proposed. The present government, on January 10, 2013 had presented us with a National Action Plan for Youth Employment. The "Action Plan" consisted essentially of a compilation of already existing interventions, which, it should be noted, had already received miserably failing grades by ELIAMEP, through a study that they produced at the request of the National Bank of Greece. Mr. Samaras suggested the same and identical measures. If these “actions” have not worked in the past, why should we expect them to help now? This is important, because at this difficult hour it would be wise not to throw out the window EU funds. At the end, if the aim is to provide income support, let’s expand unemployment coverage, and not pretend we are creating jobs.
But the essential problem is that the proposed action plan is based on the wrong diagnosis. First, its focus is on the young unemployed, and secondly, it mistakenly identifies the causes of youth unemployment in "employability"–namely, inthe absence of knowledge, experience, and seniority.
Let's start with the second question first. The proposal carries a message that youth unemployment will fought through the acquisition and improvement of knowledge on the one hand (through VTC), and practical experience in temporary jobs in private sector companies. Success should be evaluated by the ability of participants to find a permanent job after termination of participation in these programs. Do we then expect the young graduates to find a job? how many new jobs were announced in 2013? What has changed since 2008 is demand for labor due to the tremendous reduction of GDP and not the quality of the labor supply of young people. Unemployment has sky rocketed [from 7.7 to over 27%] due to austerity, lack of liquidity SMEs face, and the rapid, albeit legal, reduction of salaries and pensions. These are more or less commonly accepted facts. 2008 employees aged 15–24 included approximately 270,300 young aged workers, when in 2013 there were only 125,300 (a 145,000 reduction). Similarly, today the total number of unemployed people aged 15–24 is approximately 178,500—in 2008 there were 72,300 (an increase of 106,200). The numbers speak for themselves.
Measures of "improving knowledge" will not do, not when our well-educated graduates migrate abroad massively. These "solutions" are of European origin and are ineffective because the main problem we face is that the private sector has shrunk and this has produced a plummeting of demand of the existing workforce due to the depth and duration of the recession—the problem is not lack of quality and skills of the labor force.
Let us now consider the first issue, the problem of youth unemployment. Indeed, the unemployment rate is very high among the youth and especially for 15–24 years, from 22.1% in 2008 to 57.2% today. But among the 1.3 billion unemployed (average of the first three quarter of 2013) the 1,186,000 are over 25 years old. According to the Hellenic Statistical Authority, all unemployed aged 15–24 amounted to 178,500. Recall that the second pillar consists of 240,000 unemployed young people aged up to 24 years! All the newcomers put together, among the 15–24 years of age, are less than 130.00. Even if we include new entrants ages 25–29, we reach 225,000 persons. The numbers are not consistent, at least not for the youth category of 15–24. Unless the same young person who participates one month in a training program and is then engaged in the private sector represents two “jobs.”
The age targeted measures are ill conceived, as is the focus on employability. Most tragic of all is that long-term unemployed by now hits approximately 900,000 unemployed, of which 844,000 are not in the category of “youth.” Among them, 224,100 have been out of paid work for more than 48 months (4 years) and an additional 317.00 unemployed, for 24–47 months. For all these long-term unemployed, including those who have exhausted their resources and cannot pay even their electricity bill, for the 777, 000 unemployed who have a high school education level or lower, the announcement of Mr. Samaras highlights that there will be some lucky 200,000 young and more mature workers (440,000 minus 240, 000 people) that will be offered an “employment opportunity” for a few months out of a year in the private or public sector, receiving the meager earnings mentioned earlier.
What must be urgently understood is that although the economy is now approaching the area of balancing the internal and external balance of payments and the pressure on further depressing the economy gradually slows down, this does not automatically lead to recovery. The economy can remain at frighteningly low production levels, high unemployment and income inequality of catastrophic dimensions. Recovery needs high and sustained private and public investment rates, and certainly gradual relief from the austerity measures. But let us remember that the decade before the crisis, with on average GDP growth about 4%, the economy created each year, on average, 55–60 thousand new jobs. Even if the growth rate returns to precrisis levels, at 4%, generating even 50–60 thousand new jobs per year, to reach the employment levels of 1998 to 2008 will be impossible in the near future; the figures for unemployment are so high, that the next decade will be 'lost', including for people sent to educational training centers.
It is reasonable to ask, What can the poor government do when it has to deal with the Troika "requirements" of the one hand and the NSRF European Unon funds on the other, which are focused on these specific "actions"? Negotiate hard and convince their "partners" that the yardstick for introducing or maintaining conditionality measures, structural and otherwise, at this time is whether they increase unemployed or not; and point out to other partners that these "actions" against unemployment are incompatible with the Greek reality—that the "Youth Guarantee" and the rest should be channeled to other types of interventions.
The time has come to stop recycling the same distorted views. This crisis requires urgently a custom tailored Greek New Deal, which should last for at least the next three years. That is, the extension of a radically reorganized job guarantee program*, a community-based program of "koinofelis ergasia" not for five months but for 11 months per year, not for the 50,000–90,000 jobs for the unemployed but 440,000 real year-round jobs. As for what it will cost and where will we find the money, I reserve the right to provide relevant information next month through a study of the Levy Institute in cooperation with INE / GSEE [General Confederation of Trade Unions]. There is a solution, but it requires getting rid of current obsessions and to not follow the beaten track. Whether the political will of the current government to do so exists, is another matter.
*The Levy Institute was instrumental in proposing a Job Guarantee policy for Greece, which was adopted by the Ministry of Labor in 2011, as a pilot program for 55,000 unemployed. It was rolled out in 2012 and was run through the NGO sector in collaboration with local and community governing bodies. For a background document that includes guidance notes on how best to design and implement such an initiative see http://www.levyinstitute.org/publications/?docid=1458.Associated Program(s):Author(s): -
Book Series | December 2013
Edited by Rania Antonopoulos
With the full effects of the Great Recession still unfolding, this collection of essays analyzes the gendered economic impacts of the crisis. The volume, from an international set of contributors, argues that gender-differentiated economic roles and responsibilities within households and markets can potentially influence the ways in which men and women are affected in times of economic crisis.
Looking at the economy through a gender lens, the contributors investigate the antecedents and consequences of the ongoing crisis as well as the recovery policies adopted in selected countries. There are case studies devoted to Latin America, transition economies, China, India, South Africa, Turkey, and the United States. Topics examined include unemployment, the job-creation potential of fiscal expansion, the behavioral response of individuals whose households have experienced loss of income, social protection initiatives, food security and the environment, shedding of jobs in export-led sectors, and lessons learned thus far. From these timely contributions, students, scholars, and policymakers are certain to better understand the theoretical and empirical linkages between gender equality and macroeconomic policy in times of crisis.
Published by: Routledge
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In the Media | May 2013
Rania Antonopoulos: In Greece, 173,000 Persons among the 950,000 Registered Unemployed Are Less Than 24 years old
View More View LessInterview by Kostas Kalloniatis
Eleftheritypia, May 19, 2013. All Rights Reserved.
Youth unemployment is just one part of the wider problem of unemployment and of course requires specialized interventions to tackle it, according to Rania Antonopoulou, professor at Bard College, director of the research division for gender equality of the Levy Economics Institute, and associate researcher with the Labour Institute of the GSEE.
Antonopoulos considers largely inadequate, if not hypocritical, the recent interest of the European political leadership in youth unemployment and considers the motivation to be in part fear of the risk of social explosion (recent media statements by Draghi, Barroso Leta, etc., provide support for this claim).
She informs us that in the eurozone in 2012 there were 3.4 million unemployed young people aged 15–24, but roughly four times more unemployed were between 25 and 54 years old (12.6 million), with the result that young people constitute 27 percent of this total unemployed (up to 54 years old). In Greece, respectively, young unemployed stood at 173,000 persons in 2012, as compared to 950,000 unemployed aged 25–54 years, comprising a mere 18.2 percent.
Antonopoulos underlines a crucial difference, especially for policy, between:
A. the unemployment rate: for youth it was 55.3 percent in Greece in 2012; namely, for every 100 employed and unemployed young people, 55.3 were unemployed, when for the 24–54 age working age population group this rate was 23.4 percent;
B. the ratio of unemployment to the total population of a certain age group, which includes everyone (the employed, the unemployed, and those not looking for work): for the young in Greece was only 16.2 percent in 2012 due to the fact that the vast majority are students, soldiers, etc. (i.e, a rate that is much less than the rate of unemployment) when the comparable number for ages 24–54 years was 20 percent ( much closer to their corresponding unemployment rate above); and
C. the share of the unemployed by age group among the total number of persons that are unemployed, which for the young unemployed in Greece amounted in 2012 to 14.4 percent, which means that the remaining 85.6 percent of the unemployed were 25 years of age or older.
Now, for Mr. Barroso and Co. the most important criterion is the unemployment rate. But for Ms. Antonopoulos the most important measure for guiding policy is the last measure, the share by age composition of the unemployed.
With all this, Antonopoulos does not claim that there is no need to pay attention to youth unemployment or university graduates seeking their first job. Instead, she proposes that equal attention, perhaps more attention, needs to be directed to those who lost their jobs and are not as young.
Therefore, she believes that the issue of unemployment in general needs to be addressed with anti-austerity pro-growth policies based on domestic demand stimulus, and that a focus in this particular period exclusively on youth unemployment based on erroneous calculations or political considerations (supposedly in response to the lost generation) is misguided. Priority should be given to the creation of an employer-of-last-resort policy—like the New Deal—capable of designing employment programs that match the capabilities of the unemployed to social needs, with the assistance of the trade unions, local communities and their elected governments, and the unemployed themselves.
For youth unemployment, she indicated that specialized interventions along the lines of current interventions in Sweden and Finland are appropriate.Associated Program(s):Author(s): -
In the Media | April 2013
Rania Antonopoulos: The Value Added of the Levy Institute Measure of Time and Income Poverty (LIMTIP)
View More View LessLatin America and Gender Equality Bulletin (UNDP), April 2013. All Rights Reserved.
In this interview, Rania Antonopoulos, a senior scholar and co-author of the research project report “Why Time Deficits Matter: Implications for the Measurement of Poverty,” discusses the importance of combining income and time poverty measurements in order to reach an effective reduction of poverty and promote more egalitarian societies.Associated Program:Author(s): -
Public Policy Brief No. 128 | April 2013
Is There Space to Promote Gender Equality in the Evolution of Social Protection?
Social protection systems comprise public policies designed to prevent or alleviate economic insecurity and poverty. Throughout the developing world, social protection strategies and the dialogue surrounding them have recently been undergoing an important evolution. In this policy brief, Senior Scholar and Director of the Gender Equality and the Economy program Rania Antonopoulos highlights the opportunities and challenges for promoting gender equality and empowerment within this shifting policy landscape. Developed with financial support from the United Nations Development Programme, this brief is intended as an advocacy tool in the service of amplifying gender-informed policy considerations in country-level social protection debates.Download:Associated Program:Author(s):Related Topic(s): -
Working Paper No. 757 | March 2013
A Gender Perspective
This paper discusses social protection initiatives in the context of developing countries and explores the opportunities they present for promoting a gender-equality agenda and women’s empowerment. The paper begins with a brief introduction on the emergence of social protection (SP) and how it is linked to economic and social policy. Next, it reviews the context, concepts, and definitions relevant to SP policies and identifies gender-specific social and economic risks and corresponding SP instruments, drawing on country-level experiences. The thrust of the paper is to explore how SP instruments can help or hinder the process of altering rigid gendered roles, and offers a critical evaluation of SP interventions from the standpoint of women’s inclusion in economic life. Conditional cash transfers and employment guarantee programs are discussed in detail. An extensive annotated bibliography accompanies this paper as a resource for researchers and practitioners.
An extensive annotated bibliography accompanies this paper as a resource for researchers and practitioners.
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Research Project Reports | December 2012
Revisiting Poverty Measurement, Informing Policy Responses
This report is published as part of the “Undoing Knots, Innovating for Change” series, issued by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Regional Centre for Latin America and the Caribbean through its Gender Practice Area. It includes findings from a UNDP-supported research project undertaken in 2011 by the Levy Economics Institute with the objective of proposing an alternative to official income poverty measures, one that takes into account household production (unpaid work) requirements—an issue still largely ignored by official poverty estimates. This has significant consequences for policymaking. The resulting Levy Institute Measure of Time and Income Poverty is a two-dimensional measure that jointly tracks income gaps and time deficits. Using this alternative measure, the authors present selected results of empirical estimates of poverty and compare them with official income poverty rates for Argentina, Chile, and Mexico, with a focus on the study's policy implications.
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Public Policy Brief No. 126 | November 2012
Why Time Deficits Matter for Poverty
We cannot adequately assess how much or how little progress we have made in addressing the condition of the most vulnerable in our societies, or provide accurate guidance to policymakers intent on improving each individual’s and household’s ability to reach a basic standard of living, if we do not have a reliable means of measuring who is being left behind. With the support of the United Nations Development Programme and the International Labour Organization, Senior Scholars Rania Antonopoulos and Ajit Zacharias and Research Scholar Thomas Masterson have constructed an alternative measure of poverty that, when applied to the cases of Argentina, Chile, and Mexico, reveals significant blind spots in the official numbers.
Download:Associated Program(s):The Levy Institute Measure of Time and Income Poverty The Distribution of Income and Wealth Gender Equality and the EconomyAuthor(s):Related Topic(s): -
One-Pager No. 34 | October 2012
The Importance of Time Deficits
Standard poverty measurements assume that all households and individuals have enough time to engage in the unpaid cooking, cleaning, and caregiving that are essential to attaining a bare-bones standard of living. But this assumption is false. With the support of the United Nations Development Programme and the International Labour Organization, Senior Scholars Rania Antonopoulos and Ajit Zacharias and Research Scholar Thomas Masterson have constructed an alternative measure of poverty that, when applied to the cases of Argentina, Chile, and Mexico, reveals significant blind spots in the official numbers.
Download:Associated Program(s):The Levy Institute Measure of Time and Income Poverty The Distribution of Income and Wealth Gender Equality and the EconomyAuthor(s):Related Topic(s): -
Research Project Reports | August 2012
Implications for the Measurement of Poverty
Customarily, income poverty incidence is judged by the ability of individuals and households to gain access to some level of minimum income based on the premise that such access ensures the fulfillment of basic material needs. However, this approach neglects to take into account the necessary (unpaid) household production requirements without which basic needs cannot be fulfilled. In fact, the two are interdependent and evaluation of standards of living ought to consider both dimensions.
This report provides an analytical and empirical framework that includes unpaid household production work in the very conceptualization and calculations of poverty: the Levy Institute Measure of Time and Income Poverty (LIMTIP). Based on this new analytical framework, empirical estimates of poverty are presented and compared with those calculated according to the official income poverty lines for Argentina, Chile, and Mexico. In addition, an employment-generating poverty-reduction policy is simulated in each country, and the results are assessed using the official and LIMTIP poverty lines.
The undertaking of this work was initiated as a result of joint discussions and collaboration between the Levy Economics Institute and United Nations Development Programme Regional Service Centre for Latin America and the Caribbean, particularly the Gender Practice, Poverty, and Millennium Development Goals areas. It addresses an identified need to expand the knowledge base, conceptually, analytically, and empirically, on the links between (official) income poverty and the time allocation of households between paid and unpaid work.
Supporting documents:
Executive Summary
Appendices
Excel Tables for Chapters 2, 3, 4, and 5Download:Associated Program(s):The Levy Institute Measure of Time and Income Poverty The Distribution of Income and Wealth Gender Equality and the EconomyAuthor(s):Related Topic(s): -
Research Project Reports | November 2011
Countries in crisis round the world face the daunting task of dealing with abrupt increases in unemployment and associated deepening poverty. Greece, in the face of her sovereign debt crisis, has been hit the hardest. Remediating employment policies, including workweek reductions and employment subsidies, abound but have failed to answer the call satisfactorily. Direct public-service job creation, instead, enables communities to mitigate risks and vulnerabilities that rise especially in turbulent times by actively transforming their own economic and social environment.
With underwriting from the Labour Institute of the Greek General Confederation of Workers, the Levy Economics Institute was instrumental in the design and implementation of a social works program of direct job creation throughout Greece. Two-year projects, funded from European Structural Funds, have begun.
This report traces the economic trends preceding and surrounding the economic crisis in Greece, with particular emphasis on recent labor market trends and emerging gaps in social safety net coverage. While its primary focus is identifying the needs in Greece, broader lessons for direct job creation are highlighted, and could be applied to countries entertaining targeted employment creation as a means to alleviate social strains during crisis periods.
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Working Paper No. 691 | October 2011
The Effects of Child Care and Elder Care on the Standard of Living
Transforming care for children and the elderly from a private to a public domain engenders a series of benefits to the economy that improve our standard of living. We assess the positive impacts of social care from both receivers’ and providers’ points of view. The benefits to care receivers are various, ranging from private, higher returns to education to enhancing subjective well-being and health outcomes. The economy-wide spillovers of the benefits are noteworthy. Early childhood education reduces costs of law enforcement and generates higher long-term economic growth. Home-based health care lowers absenteeism and job losses that otherwise undermine labor productivity, providing adequate care at a lower cost and delaying admission into high-cost institutional care. Social care improves mothers’ labor-market attachment with higher lifetime income; it also lowers physical and psychological burdens of elder care that are becoming more prevalent with an aging population. Social care investment creates more job opportunities than other public spending, especially for workers from poor households and with low levels of educational attainment. The broad contributions of social care to our standard of living should be recognized in the public discourse, particularly in this era of fiscal austerity.
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One-Pager No. 11 | August 2011There is little mystery to explaining our current high levels of unemployment. The Bureau of Economic Analysis recently revised its figures on GDP growth, and revealed that not only was the recession worse than we realized, but recent growth rates have been overstated as well. The hole, in other words, was deeper than we thought, and we have been climbing out of it at a slower pace. Simply put, the economy has failed to recover to the point where it can be expected to generate sufficient job growth. In the event that Congress should turn its attention away from the (so far) purely notional dangers of rising debt levels and back toward the immediate and tangible jobs crisis, it might consider a solution that has been overlooked so far: job creation through social care investment.
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Working Paper No. 671 | May 2011
Case Studies in South Africa and the United States
This paper demonstrates the strong impacts that public job creation in social care provisioning has on employment creation. Furthermore, it shows that mobilizing underutilized domestic labor resources and targeting them to bridge gaps in community-based services yield strong pro-poor income growth patterns that extend throughout the economy. Social care provision also contributes to promoting gender equality, as women—especially from low-income households—constitute a major workforce in the care sector. We present the ex-ante policy simulation results from two country case studies: South Africa and the United States. Both social accounting matrix–based multiplier analysis and propensity ranking–based microsimulation provide evidence of the pro-poor impacts of the social care expansion.
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Working Paper No. 610 | August 2010
A Strategy for Effective and Equitable Job Creation
Massive job losses in the United States, over eight million since the onset of the “Great Recession,” call for job creation measures through fiscal expansion. In this paper we analyze the job creation potential of social service–delivery sectors—early childhood development and home-based health care—as compared to other proposed alternatives in infrastructure construction and energy. Our microsimulation results suggest that investing in the care sector creates more jobs in total, at double the rate of infrastructure investment. The second finding is that these jobs are more effective in reaching disadvantaged workers—those from poor households and with lower levels of educational attainment. Job creation in these sectors can easily be rolled out. States already have mechanisms and implementation capacity in place. All that is required is policy recalibration to allow funds to be channeled into sectors that deliver jobs both more efficiently and more equitably.Download:Associated Program(s):Employment Policy and Labor Markets The Distribution of Income and Wealth Gender Equality and the EconomyAuthor(s):Related Topic(s): -
Working Paper No. 600 | May 2010This study is concerned with the measurement of poverty in the context of developing countries. We argue that poverty rankings must take into account time use dimensions of paid and unpaid work jointly. Reviewing the current state of the literature on this topic, our methodology introduces a critical but missing analytical distinction between time poverty and time deprivation. On this basis, we proceed to provide empirical evidence by using South African time use survey data compiled in 2000. Our findings show that existing methods that work well for advanced countries require modification when adopted in the case of a developing country. The results identify a group of adults who previously were inadvertently missing, as they were considered "time wealthy."Download:Associated Program(s):Author(s):Related Topic(s):
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Public Policy Brief Highlights No. 108A | April 2010
Why President Obama Should Care About “Care”: An Effective and Equitable Investment Strategy for Job Creation
View More View LessIn his State of the Union address President Obama acknowledged that “our most urgent task is job creation”—that a move toward full employment will lay the foundation for long-term economic growth and ensure that the federal government creates the necessary conditions for businesses to expand and hire more workers. According to a new study by Levy scholars Rania Antonopoulos, Kijong Kim, Thomas Masterson, and Ajit Zacharias, the government needs to identify and invest in projects that have the potential for massive, and immediate, public job creation. They conclude that social sector investment, such as early childhood education and home-based care, would generate twice as many jobs as infrastructure spending and nearly 1.5 times the number created by investment in green energy, while catering to the most vulnerable segments of the workforce.
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Public Policy Brief No. 108 | February 2010
Why President Obama Should Care About “Care”: An Effective and Equitable Investment Strategy for Job Creation
View More View LessIn his State of the Union address President Obama acknowledged that “our most urgent task is job creation”—that a move toward full employment will lay the foundation for long-term economic growth and ensure that the federal government creates the necessary conditions for businesses to expand and hire more workers. According to a new study by Levy scholars Rania Antonopoulos, Kijong Kim, Thomas Masterson, and Ajit Zacharias, the government needs to identify and invest in projects that have the potential for massive, and immediate, public job creation. They conclude that social sector investment, such as early childhood education and home-based care, would generate twice as many jobs as infrastructure spending and nearly 1.5 times the number created by investment in green energy, while catering to the most vulnerable segments of the workforce.Download:Associated Program(s):Author(s):Related Topic(s): -
Book Series | January 2010
Gender, Time Use and Poverty in Developing Countries
This volume offers both theoretical and policy-oriented examinations of the value of unpaid work, usually unacknowledged but increasingly recognized as an organic component of the economy. Particularly in developing countries, much of the provisioning of basic needs occurs beyond the boundaries of market transactions. This book reveals a need to incorporate unpaid work in economic analysis—specifically, in the context of poverty and gender equality.
The research focuses on three significant regions: Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Contributors investigate the intersections of income poverty, unpaid work, and women's overtaxed time, building upon the existing literature and synthesizing diverse strands of time-use survey data to make concrete policy recommendations for development strategies. Individual chapters assess established measures of time use, propose new ones, and analyze and compare possible alternates. Conceptual and empirical studies identifying key issues related to the measurement and evaluation of time distribution are also included, as are estimates and their significance.
This collection resulted from a project undertaken by the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College in collaboration with members of the International Working Group on Gender, Macroeconomics, and International Economics (GEM-IWG) to analyze the many economic implications of nonmarket activities disproportionately carried out by women worldwide—willingly or not.
Published By:Palgrave MacmillanAssociated Program:Author(s): -
Public Policy Brief Highlights No. 101A | August 2009
Lessons Learned from South Africa’s Expanded Public Works Programme
Beyond loss of income, joblessness is associated with greater poverty, marginalization, and social exclusion; the current global crisis is clearly not helping. In this new Public Policy Brief, Research Scholar Rania Antonopoulos explores the impact of both joblessness and employment expansion on poverty, paying particular attention to the gender aspects of poverty and poverty-reducing public employment schemes targeting poor women.
The author presents the results of a Levy Institute study that examines the macroeconomic consequences of scaling up South Africa’s Expanded Public Works Programme by adding to it a new sector for social service delivery in health and education. She notes that gaps in such services for households that cannot afford to pay for them are mostly filled by long hours of invisible, unpaid work performed by women and children. Her proposed employment creation program addresses several policy objectives: income and job generation, provisioning of communities’ unmet needs, skill enhancement for a new cadre of workers, and promotion of gender equality by addressing the overtaxed time of women.Download:Associated Program(s):Author(s): -
Working Paper No. 570 | July 2009
The Macroeconomic Implications of HIV and AIDS on Women's Time-tax Burdens
This paper considers public employment guarantee programs in the context of South Africa as a means to address the nexus of poverty, unemployment, and unpaid work burdens—all factors exacerbated by HIV/AIDS. It further discusses the need for genderinformed public job creation in areas that mitigate the “time-tax” burdens of women, and examines a South African initiative to address social sector service delivery deficits within the government’s Expanded Public Works Programme. The authors highlight the need for well-designed employment guarantee programs—specifically, programs centered on community and home-based care—as a potential way to help offset the destabilizing effects of HIV/AIDS and endemic poverty. The paper concludes with results from macroeconomic simulations of such a program, using a social accounting matrix framework, and sets out implications for both participants and policymakers.
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Public Policy Brief No. 101 | June 2009
Lessons Learned from South Africa’s Expanded Public Works Programme
Beyond loss of income, joblessness is associated with greater poverty, marginalization, and social exclusion; the current global crisis is clearly not helping. In this new Public Policy Brief, Research Scholar Rania Antonopoulos explores the impact of both joblessness and employment expansion on poverty, paying particular attention to the gender aspects of poverty and poverty-reducing public employment schemes targeting poor women.
The author presents the results of a Levy Institute study that examines the macroeconomic consequences of scaling up South Africa’s Expanded Public Works Programme by adding to it a new sector for social service delivery in health and education. She notes that gaps in such services for households that cannot afford to pay for them are mostly filled by long hours of invisible, unpaid work performed by women and children. Her proposed employment creation program addresses several policy objectives: income and job generation, provisioning of communities’ unmet needs, skill enhancement for a new cadre of workers, and promotion of gender equality by addressing the overtaxed time of women.
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Working Paper No. 562 | May 2009
A Gender Perspective
Widespread economic recessions and protracted financial crises have been documented as setting back gender equality and other development goals in the past. In the midst of the current global crisis—often referred to as “the Great Recession”—there is grave concern that progress made in poverty reduction and women’s equality will be reversed. Indeed, for many developing countries it is particularly worrisome that, through no fault of their own, the global economic downturn has exacerbated effects from other crises manifest in food insecurity, poverty, and increasing inequality. This paper explores both well-known and less discussed paths of transmission through which crises affect women’s world of work and overall wellbeing. As demand for textile and agricultural exports decline, along with tourism, job losses are expected to rise in these female-intensive industries. In addition, the gendered nature of the world of work suggests that women will see an increase in their share among informal and vulnerable workers worldwide, and will also supply more of their labor under unpaid conditions. The latter is particularly important in the context of developing countries, where many production activities take place outside the strict boundaries of the market. The paper also makes this point: examined through the prism of gender equality, the ability of the state to implement countercyclical policies matters greatly. If policy responses at the national and international levels end up aggravating inequities, gender equality processes face many more barriers, especially among the poor.
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Working Paper No. 541 | July 2008
In order to provide a coherent perspective of gender differences in the world of work, the many intersections of paid and unpaid work must be brought to light. It is well documented that gender-based wage differentials and occupational segregation continue to characterize the division of labor among men and women in paid work; yet unpaid work in social reproduction, subsistence production, family businesses, and the community is often ignored. When it is taken into account, it is usually done in a very limited manner, equating unpaid work with the traditional roles women play in raising children and performing maintenance chores. Beyond the obvious gender inequalities characterizing the latter, unpaid work constitutes an integral part of any functioning economy, and as such is linked to economic growth, government policy, migration, and many development issues. This paper concludes that the “world of work” cannot be treated in complete disregard to unpaid forms of labor, and gender equality must be understood through the lens of the paid–unpaid work continuum.
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Research Project Reports No. 34 | January 2008
South Africa and India
Documents relating to the South Africa and India case studies are available below.
SOUTH AFRICA
INDIA - Appendix A. SAM–SA Technical Report
- Appendix B. Statistical Analysis
- Appendix C. Job Identification Tables
- Appendix D. SAM Reformulation
Annotated Bibliography Associated Program:Author(s):Related Topic(s): -
Working Paper No. 516 | September 2007
Employment Guarantee Policies from a Gender Perspective
There is now widespread recognition that in most countries, private-sector investment has not been able to absorb surplus labor. This is all the more the case for poor unskilled people. Public works programs and employment guarantee schemes in South Africa, India, and other countries provide jobs while creating public assets. In addition to physical infrastructure, an area that has immense potential to create much-needed jobs is that of social service delivery and social infrastructure. While unemployment and enforced “idleness” persist, existing time-use survey data reveal that people around the world—especially women and children—spend long hours performing unpaid work. This work includes not only household maintenance and care provisioning for family members and communities, but also time spent that helps fill public infrastructural gaps—for example, in the energy, health, and education sectors. This paper suggests that, by bringing together public job creation, on the one hand, and unpaid work, on the other, well-designed employment guarantee policies can promote job creation, gender equality, and pro-poor development.
Download:Associated Program(s):Gender Equality and the Economy Employment Policy and Labor Markets Economic Policy for the 21st CenturyAuthor(s):Related Topic(s): -
Policy Note 2007 | May 2007
Toward a Path of Expanded Democracy and Gender Equality
The centrality of the state in promoting gender equality is generally acknowledged, but a perplexing and complex issue confronts us: should the state treat men and women in identical ways, or should it legislate and enforce policies that are aware of gender differences? In other words, should the state be gender-blind or gender-sensitive? Gender, ethnic, religious, sexual orientation, ideological, economic, political, and cultural dimensions represent diversity among citizens. This paper argues that if the goal of the state is to promote democratic participation for all, a distinction must be drawn between socioeconomic characteristics that signify difference and those that manifest inequalities. The former require a politics of acceptance and recognition and policies to match, leading to equal treatment for all despite differences, while the latter necessitate interventions that remedy or remove structural elements that result in inequalities. The authors suggest that such a framework is useful in that it lends itself to a better understanding of gender-based asymmetries.
Published By:Associated Program(s):Gender Equality and the Economy Employment Policy and Labor Markets Economic Policy for the 21st CenturyAuthor(s):Rania Antonopoulos Francisco Cos-Montiel -
Working Paper No. 493 | March 2007
Toward a Path of Expanded Democracy and Gender Equality
Should the state treat men and women in identical ways, or should it legislate and enforce policies that are aware of gender differences? In other words, should the state be gender-blind or gender-sensitive? Gender, ethnic, religious, sexual orientation, ideological, economic, political, and cultural dimensions represent diversity among citizens. This paper argues that if the goal of the state is to promote democratic participation for all, a distinction must be drawn between socioeconomic characteristics that signify difference and those that manifest inequalities. The former require a politics of acceptance and recognition and policies to match, while the latter necessitate interventions that remedy or remove structural elements that result in inequalities. The authors suggest that such a framework is useful in that it lends itself to a better understanding of gender-based asymmetries.
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Working Paper No. 418 | February 2005
Evidence from Thailand
Gender differences have long been documented in earnings, employment opportunities, and time spent within the unpaid care economy. This paper joins the recent efforts in the economics literature on gender differences in asset ownership. Specifically, it investigates whether a gender-specific composition in asset ownership between heads of households and spouses can be detected among low-income, urban households in Bangkok, Thailand. The present case study explores this issue empirically, using a sample of 134 couples from a 2002 survey that collected data at the level of the individual respondent on accumulated physical and financial assets. Both husband and wife were interviewed separately and the data gathered from the interviews include pertinent household and individual information on employment, credit and household decision-making issues. The findings suggest that asset composition varies by gender, indicating that further investigation is warranted on this topic. Tobit and Probit tests are used to examine the factors that may affect this gendered pattern.
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Working Paper No. 250 | September 1998
Conventional exchange rate models are based on the fundamental hypothesis that, in the long run, real exchange rates will move in such a way as to make countries equally competitive. Thus they assume that, in the long run, trade between countries will be roughly balanced. The difficulty in assessing expectations about the consequences of trade arrangements (such as NAFTA or the EEC) is that these models perform quite poorly at an empirical level, making them an unreliable guide to economic policy. To have a sound foundation for economic policy requires operating from a theoretically grounded explanation of exchange rates that works well across a spectrum of developed and developing countries. This paper applies the theoretical and empirical foundation developed in Shaikh (1980, 1991, 1995), and previously applied to Spain, Mexico, and Greece (Roman 1997; Ruiz-Napoles 1996; Antonopoulos 1997), to the explanation of the exchange rates of the United States and Japan. Such a framework implies that it is a country's competitive position, as measured by the real unit costs of its tradables, that determines its real exchange rate. This determination of real exchange rates through real unit costs provides a possible explanation for why trade imbalances remain persistent and a policy rule-of-thumb for sustainable exchange rates. The aim is to show that a theoretically grounded, empirically robust, explanation of real exchange rate movements can be constructed that also can be of practical use to researchers and policymakers.
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