<p> Intimately interwoven in American culture is the unquestioned notion of paid labor as a personally gratifying moral and civic responsibility. Yet, of the 46 million Americans living in poverty in 2010, 23% held jobs (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2012). The U.S. fast food industry employs 4 million workers (Statista, 2014) and &ldquo;pays the minimum wage to a higher portion of its workers than any other American industry&rdquo; (Schlosser, 2001). </p><p> The research methodology for this study was critical ethnography, which explores a cultural phenomenon and attempts to provoke social change by giving voice to marginalized communities (Thomas, 1993). A New York City&ndash;based nonprofit organization working to organize fast food workers was the field site for the study. The mining of empirical material involved multiple qualitative research methods, including observation, document and artifact analysis, and interviews with 25 fast food workers who participated at one or more strikes. This study addressed a single research question: What role does work ethic as a legitimizing myth play in the work lives of New York City fast food workers who live and work in New York City and who have participated in work actions or demonstrations? Sidanius (1999) defined legitimizing myths&mdash;an element of his social dominance theory&mdash;as &ldquo;values, attitudes, beliefs, causal attributions, and ideologies providing moral and intellectual justifications for social practices that either increase, maintain, or decrease levels of social inequality among social groups&rdquo; (p. 104). </p><p> The study found that the role of work ethic as a hierarchy-enhancing legitimizing myth appeared to depend upon what the individual was fighting to achieve when she or he joined the Fight for $15, i.e., emancipation, reciprocity, worker solidarity, or personal development. Stigma and stigmatization appeared to act as a mechanism to maintain group-based social hierarchy and thereby reinforce the legitimization of the work ethic myth. In addition, the research participants had low expectations of escaping poverty in the future and experienced anxiety about the temporal nature of a future positive financial situation, further legitimizing the work ethic narrative. Recommendations based on these findings are offered for theory and research, and policy and practice.</p><p>

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This study examines how South African labour markets changed during the first decade in the post-Apartheid era. The results show the emergence of a new form of racial inequality, as witnessed by sharply divergent patterns in the returns to education between Whites and Blacks. Moreover, while this has occurred, the incomes of Blacks are shown to have been far more stagnant over the first five years after democracy than typically thought to be the case, with chance events playing a major role in generating changes that are observed. Finally, chance appears to also be strongly related to changes in employment status, though in this case, its effect is mediated through access to parental resources and risk-sharing networks. These findings suggest that without active policy on a variety of fronts, dealing with persistent labour market discrimination, the poor quality of black schooling, and unemployment and social security provision, little change can be expected in the near future for the vast majority of South Africans. Indeed, the results suggest that emerging trends in South African labour markets could possibly even reverse gains made over the past decade in some areas of social service provision.

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This dissertation consists of three chapters investigating labor market trends, specifically of young workers (ages 18-24). In the United States, young workers decreased their labor market participation by more than 8\% from 1994-2014 and the first chapter of this research considers changing demographics and educational decisions to account for this decline. Using connected monthly Current Population Survey (CPS) data, an alternative definition of labor market attachment is considered, which accounts for attached, marginally attached, and not attached workers. Additionally, attending college is considered as a weak form of labor market participation. Accounting for demographic changes and varying levels of attachment by demographics, the decrease in the participation rate is decomposed into genuine and demographic changes. The finding is a genuine decrease of 1.5\% young workers out of the labor force over the twenty year period studied. A calculation of the impact of college major choice on participation is estimated by extending the decomposition, as well as estimating a logit model on participation by college major. For males certain majors (Agriculture and English and Foreign Language) correlate with lower labor force attachment, while others (Engineering, Mathematics, and Visual and Performing Arts) correspond with higher attachment. For females, graduate degrees are the strongest indicator of attachment to the labor force and being married correlates with non-attachment to the labor force. The second chapter of this research investigates the movement of young workers between labor market statuses. Rather than consider the stocks and percentages of workers in each state (i.e. charting the unemployment or participation rate), this paper analyzes the flows between statuses. A contribution of this research is to consider how labor market flows are impacted by education decisions by including schooling as a labor market status. Additionally, this chapter estimates the impact that labor market movements by young workers have on fluctuations of their unemployment rate; flows between unemployment and not-in-the-labor-force, account for over forty percent of the variation in unemployment for young workers. As young workers decide whether to participate in the labor force or continue their education, they must decide whether to forgo ``on-the-job” training and experience or attend college to acquire human capital through formal education. Following the work of John Robst (2007), the third chapter of this research considers three questions: To what extent do college graduates work in fields unrelated to their most recent degree field? Which degree fields lead to greater mismatch? What is the relationship between working outside a degree field and wages? This research first provides updated answers to these questions using data from the 2013 National Survey of College Graduates (NSCG). Additionally, this work includes new specifications of the wage penalty using parental education level, which was unavailable in Robst's data. The result indicates a wage correlation of complete mismatch between job and college major that is more than three times that of a partial mismatch. An important contribution of this paper is to address changes over time by comparing results from the NSCG data in 1993, 2003, 2010, and 2013. A significant result is that the negative association between mismatch and wages has increased by a factor of three for men and over four times for women from 1993 to 2013. The conclusions in this research describe both structural and cyclical trends in the young worker labor market. Despite the significant proportion of young workers in the labor force, little research has been conducted using data from individuals under the age of twenty-five. This dissertation focuses on young workers because of the importance they play in the labor market, but also to motivate future research. The decisions young people make impact the labor market as well as drive individual future labor market outcomes; policy should be informed by the structural and cyclical trends presented throughout this research. / Economics

Master of Science / Department of Agricultural Economics / Jeffrey M. Peterson / State and local economic development policies are often created with the goal of stimulating local economic activity through employment growth. The success of these policies is commonly measured by the number of jobs they create. Because labor markets are not bound by county lines, commuting and migration are important factors to consider when measuring employment growth in a region. This study used county-level data from the 2000 Census to predict labor force participation, unemployment, in-commuting, and out-commuting. The model was estimated using Ordinary Least Squares regression and was simulated to predict changes in labor force, unemployment and commuting as a result of a change in employment for all 105 Kansas counties. An increase in employment was found to increase the labor force participation, in-commuting, and unemployment, while decreasing the number of out-commuters. The increase in in-commuting causes many of the economic benefits expected to accrue to the county where the job growth occurred to be essentially exported to the county where the in-commuters live. Failure to account for the proportion of new jobs filled by in-commuters would lead to significant over estimations of local impacts of employment growth. These results suggest that regional coordination of economic development policies, through the use of tools such as tax-base sharing, would provide substantial gains to otherwise competing local governments.

<p>How households and individuals respond to adverse and unanticipated shocks is an important concern for both economists and policy makers. This is especially true in developing countries where poverty, weak infrastructure, and a lack of social safety nets often exacerbate the effects of adverse shocks on household welfare. My research addresses these issues in the context of three economic outcomes and behaviors - early life health and the accumulation of human capital, willingness to take on financial risk, and behavior in the labor market. The results of this research project both adds to our understanding of how life experiences shape individuals' well-being and behavior and how policy can help individuals achieve long-term improvements in the lives following adverse events.</p><p>My research focuses on households and individuals affected by a large-scale natural disaster, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. I utilize data from the Study of the Tsunami Aftermath and Recovery (STAR), a unique longitudinal survey of individuals and households living in coastal communities in Aceh and North Sumatra, Indonesia, at the time of the tsunami. The STAR surveys were conducted annually for five years after the disaster and include a wide range of demographic, economic, and health measures.</p><p>In the first chapter, Child Height after a Natural Disaster, co-authored with Elizabeth Frankenberg, Duncan Thomas, and Jed Friedman, we investigate the immediate and long-run impacts on child health of in utero exposure to stress induced by the tsunami. We investigate whether in utero exposure to stress, as measured by tsunami-induced maternal posttraumatic stress, affected the growth of children born in the aftermath of the tsunami in the critical first five years of their lives. Although previous studies suggest that in utero exposure to stress is related to a number of adverse birth outcomes such as prematurity and lower birth weight, there is little evidence of the impact on linear growth, a strong correlate of later life income. We find evidence that children exposed to high levels of stress beginning in the second trimester experienced reduced growth in the first two years of their lives. We also find evidence that growth reductions largely disappear by age five. This suggests that significant catch-up growth is possible, particularly in the context of pronounced post-disaster reconstruction and economic rehabilitation.</p><p>In the second chapter, The Impact of a Natural Disaster on Observed Risk Aversion, I investigate the short and long-term impacts of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami on attitudes toward risk. Attitudes toward risk are important determinants of economic, demographic, and health-related behaviors, but how these attitudes evolve after an event like a natural disaster remains unclear because past research has been confounded by issues of selective exposure, mortality, and migration. My study is the first to directly address these problems by utilizing exogenous variation in exposure to a disruptive event in a sample of individuals that is representative of the population as it existed at the time of the event. In addition, intensive efforts were made to track migrants in the sample population, which is important for this study because migration is common following events like natural disasters and is likely related to attitudes toward risk. I find that physical exposure to the tsunami (e.g., seeing or hearing the tsunami or being caught up in the tsunami) causes significant short-term decreases in observed aversion to risk, especially for the poor, but few longer-term differences. This finding has important implications for the design of effective post-disaster assistance policies. In particular, it implies that post-disaster assistance programs should include aid that is consistent with the observed risk attitudes of the survivors such as job training and capital to start-up businesses.</p><p>In the last chapter, Labor Market Outcomes following the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, I investigate how labor market outcomes changed in coastal communities in Aceh and North Sumatra following the tsunami and the post-disaster recovery efforts. Although restoring the livelihoods of survivors of adverse events is critical for their long-term recovery, there is little evidence from developing countries of how labor market outcomes change after such events. Using the STAR data, I find a significant and persistent increase in paid employment for younger women in urban communities. The increase occurred in communities that were heavily damaged by the tsunami and those that were not, suggesting that the impacts of the disaster on livelihoods are likely long-lasting and extend beyond the communities that were directly stuck by the disaster.</p> / Dissertation