The evolution of employment in Mexico: 1895-1980

Employment figures from the Mexican national census are the basis for this analysis of employment changes in Mexico between 1895-1980. The work identifies longterm trends in the volume and composition of employment and distinguishes 3 main periods in the evolution of employment. The first period, from 1895-1930, marked the end of a stage of development lasting until about 1907 in which sufficient internal stability was achieved to support Mexico's entrance into the world market. Export of agricultural products and metals was the principal focus of economic growth. Construction of roads and railroads was a central element of progress. But economic and social problems manifested in regional disparities, concentration of wealth, conflicts between economic sectors, low pay for agricultural workers, and fierce social and political control characterized the period and culminated in the Mexican Revolution. After the first decade of the 20th century the ability of the economy to absorb new workers began to decline, and the falling of crude activity rates was not reversed until the 1940s. During the 1920s, total employment increased less than 6%, reflecting a net increase of 403,000 male workers and a decrease of 110,000 female workers. The second major period of employment from 1930-1970 saw the change from an economy based on export of primary products to one based on manufacturing for the internal market. There were 2 subperiods, a stage of transition from 1930-50, the economy registered marked fluctuations, but by the 1940s the consolidation of state power and important reforms permitting expansion of the internal market were factors in an accelerated growth of employment relative to the preceding intercensal period. Despite considerable increases in agricultural employment, the relative share of the agricultural sector in total employment was beginning a decline. Employment registered the highest growth rates of the century in the 1940s and exceeded population growth. The increased employment was explained by accelerated growth and accumulation in manufacturing along with increases in commerce, services, construction, and agriculture. From 1950-70, industrial development was consolidated, and there was a generalized expansion in employment in manufacturing as well as in the secondary and tertiary sectors. The economy was less able to absorb new labor, primarily because the agricultural sector had reached the limits of expansion in both the commercial and peasant sector by 1965, at just the time that population growth was most rapid. During the 1970s, manufacturing employment grew less rapidly because of modernization, almost exclusive orientation to the internal market which limited expansion, and scarcity of funds for importing capital goods. A new model of growth will be needed if Mexico is to escape its present stagnation, and a significant share of economic activity will need to be oriented to export. Until this process is consolidated, the national economy is unlikely to show signs of sustained recuperation.     

Policymaking by partnership: Reshaping youth employment policy

One of the common problems of advanced industrialized countries is that of youth unemployment. While the policies which a nation implements are culture-bound, deeply rooted in its history and institutions, at times nations have successfully borrowed from one another. An investigation of policymaking affecting youth unemployment in six advanced industrialized countries indicates differences and similarities. Policies and programs in this area seemed most successful in those countries in which business and labor departed from the familiar role of special interest group and instead cooperated actively on policy formulation and execution.     

Government employment and pay: the global and regional evidence

Against the background of paucity of complete and reliable data as the basis for sound policy, this article reports on the results of a major international survey of government employment and wages in about 100 countries. Key findings are that: in developing countries as a whole, relative government employment is now less than half the level of OECD countries; the reduction in the role of the state in the ‘decade of adjustment’ is striking, and so is the erosion in real government wages in the poorest countries—particularly in anglophone Africa; decentralization in Latin America is visible in the substantial shift of employment from central to subnational government levels; and the lean and well-paid civil service of East Asia is one possible reason why rapid economic growth could coexist for so long with the governance weaknesses that have surfaced in the form of the Asian crisis. The article then undertakes an aggregate cross-sectional analysis of the determinants of government employment. In Africa and Latin America, relative government employment is positively associated with per capita income and the fiscal deficit, and negatively associated with relative wages and population. Clearly, the tendency for government to expand as the economy grows—the so-called ‘Wagner law’—is still operative in developing countries. However, it seems no longer at work in OECD countries, suggesting that Wagner's law ceases to operate beyond certain per capita income level. The article concludes, nevertheless, with a reminder of the limits of cross-sectional analysis: even ‘good facts’ prove little by themselves—good analysis and policy must rest on country-specific quantitative and qualitative evidence. Copyright © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On tolerating policy and organizational termination: Some design considerations

This essay explores some factors that have led us to expect perpetuity rather than termination as normal in dealing with policies and organizations. After suggesting that this is a dangerous assumption where change and uncertainty are sufficient to require substantial adaptive capacity, it is proposed that a model tolerant of acting to make termination either more or less likely is preferred. Given that we already know how to invest to make termination less likely, the next two sections explore some strategies that may allow termination to be more easily tolerated, and the learning incident to its existence increased. The first explores the use of matrix models of organization to institutionalize the capacity for initiating and terminating temporary projects within organizations. The second section suggests several external mechanisms (savings banks, insurance policies, receivership referees, trust officers, salvage specialists, and marriage/divorce/ escrow brokerages) that could operate to make termination of policies and organizations less difficult.I wish to express my appreciation especially to Arnold Meltsner, a colleague in no way responsible for either the obvious or subtle flaws of this essay. Several years ago we undertook an empirical investigation of several score terminated organizations, and I know my thinking has greatly benefited from his effort in setting both me and the subject straight. His comments on this essay have been very helpful. Eugene Bardach and Aaron Wildavsky also provided helpful comments in the drafting of this paper.     

Black employment problems: New evidence,old questions

This article attempts to review and synthesize some new evidence on the employment problems of young blacks, especially relating to the issues of skill and spatial mismatch, racial discrimination, crime, and immigration. I also discuss various interpretations of these phenomena and highlight the fact that both shifts in demand (that is, employers and jobs) and the characteristics and responses of supply (that is, workers) in the labor market appear to be responsible for recent trends in employment and earnings among young blacks. This implies that government policy should focus directly on demand-side issues (such as job availability) in the short term, and especially on improving the adjustment of the black labor force to these shifts in demand over time.     

Reimagining instrument constituencies: the case of conservation policy in Mexico

Policy Sciences - Throughout the developing world, payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs are popular policy instruments that allow those who rely on such amenities as drinking water and...     

Mortality in Mexico. Some considerations on rural-urban differentials

"In this essay, certain aspects related to rural-urban mortality differentials in Mexico are analyzed....[These include] the availability, advantages, and limitations of different sources of information and the disparity of levels and tendencies according to particular indicators of acceptable reliability, especially those deriving from recent demographic surveys conducted in Mexico. The findings confirm an inverse ratio between size of settlement and mortality, and reveal a widening of the differentials over time." (SUMMARY IN ENG)     

Women with high fertility in Mexico: orientations for a population policy

The characteristics and correlates of high fertility women in Mexico were assessed for different age and residential groups with data from the National Demographic Survey of 1982. This survey included information on rural, urban and metropolitan Mexican women aged 15-49 years who had ever been in union. Rural areas were defined as those with fewer than 20,000 inhabitants. Metropolitan areas were Guadalajara, Monterrey, and Mexico City. High fertility was defined for the purpose of this study as at least 2 live births for women 15-19, 3 for women 20-24, 4 for those 25-29, 5 for those 30-34, 6 for those 35-39, and 7 for those 40-49. According to this definition about 40% of Mexican women are high fertility, with proportions ranging from about 1/3 of those 20-29 to half of those 35-49 years old. High fertility is about twice as common in women 15-19 in rural areas as in urban and metropolitan areas of Mexico. 10% of rural women aged 20-24 already have 5 children, compared to less than 1% of metropolitan women and under 3% of women in other urban areas. By age 45-49, 31% of rural women, 20% of other urban women, and 15% of metropolitan women have 10 or more children. 13% in all areas have 2 or 3. Large proportions of rural women in all age groups are high fertility, with the difference especially marked at young ages. The data on contraceptive usage indicate that high fertility women are among the increasing numbers of Mexican women attempting to control their family size. 10% of high fertility women in rural areas are sterilized and another 10% use oral contraceptives. Injectables and traditional methods share 3rd place. IUDs are almost nonexistent in rural areas. In urban and metropolitan zones about 1/4 of high fertility women have been sterilized. About 10% use pills. Traditional methods and IUDs are in 3rd place for urban women while injectables occupy 3rd place for metropolitan women. Except among women 30-34, about 70% of sterilizations in rural areas are in high fertility women. The data demonstrate the growing acceptance of family planning in rural as well as in urban areas. In 1969, only 10% of rural women in union had ever used a contraceptive method. The 43.1% of Mexican women with little or no schooling contribute 63% of the high fertility. High fertility women are overrepresented in the lowest educational stratum in all age groups. Methodological difficulties arise in comparing the fertility performance of different social groups. It appears however that agricultural workers and unsalaried self-employed workers contribute a disproportionate share of high fertility.     

Flexible specialization versus post-Fordism: theory,evidence and policy implications

There is widespread agreement that something dramatic has been happening to the international economy over the past two decades: rapid and radical changes in production technology and industrial organization, a major restructuring of world markets, and consequent large-scale changes in the policies of economic management at the internahonal, national and regional levels. At the same time there is a great deal of confusion about how to characterize these changes, the mechanisms at work, and the policy implications for different groups of economic and political actors. One way of accomplishing these tasks is to postulate a change of basic manufacturing organization from a ‘Fordist’ pattern that prevailed in the years of the long post-1945 boom to a ‘post-Fordist’ successor in the later 1970s and 1980s. Many people habitually conflate three approaches to industrial change under this heading: flexible specialization, regulation theory, and a more diverse body of explicitly ‘post-Fordiit’ analyses. The resulting problem is that significant differences of approach are concealed bv a suerficial similaritv between the proponents of flezble specialization and a sit of adparently similar bbt underlyingly divergent ideas. The purpose of this paper is to examine systematically the differences between flexible specialization, regulation theory, and other variants of ‘post-Fordism’ with respect to their fundamental assumptions and theoretical architecture, their methodological approach and use of evidence, and their policy implications.     

Child support enforcement policy and unmarried fathers' employment in the underground and regular economies

Some scholars have suggested that a negative consequence of strengthening child support enforcement is to encourage fathers to shift from regular sector to underground employment. We employ data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to investigate the relationship between the strength of child support enforcement (CSE) and levels of underground and regular sector employment among unmarried fathers. We find that, in general, living in a city with stricter CSE is associated with fewer hours of underground employment. We find little evidence that stronger enforcement is associated with employment or hours in the regular sector. © 2007 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Quality of care assessment: policy relevant issues

This paper reviews the quality assessment literature, presents a study which compares five different methods of assessing quality of care, and proposes policy recommendations. Results are: (1) Most quality assessment issues are a century old. (2) The results of assessment of quality of care are dependent on the method used; therefore, more methodologic research is needed. (3) The use of lists of criteria, concerning what a physician does, to assess quality of care could result in decreased efficiency in the health system by requiring the performance of ineffective procedures. (4) It is not certain that examination of the level of care rendered will increase the health level of the population; therefore, any national program which assesses quality of care must be prospectively evaluated. (5) A quality assessment system must be concerned with both the population who received services at the institution, and the population who did not but for whom the institution is responsible.From the Carnegie-Commonwealth Clinical Scholar Program of the Johns Hopkins University.Supported in part by grants 5R01HS00110 and 5T01HS00112 from the National Center for Health Services Research and Development and by the Carnegie Corporation and Commonwealth Fund. Dr. Brook was a Carnegie-Commonwealth Clinical Scholar and is now a Commissioned Officer in the U.S. Public Health Service stationed at the National Center for Health Services Research and Development. This paper does not represent the official position of this agency.     

Toward a national youth employment policy: Mapping the route from problems to programs

The United States has not had a consistent, comprehensive youth employment policy. Program objectives are not clear and are often in conflict with the objectives of other programs aimed at the same target population. The primary needs at this juncture are a clearly specified policy objective and a method for identifying the ways in which potential interventions can help attain that objective.The authors argue that the genesis of public concern with youth employment problems lies in the general acceptance of greater equality of opportunity as a national goal. The appropriate objective of youth employment policy is conceptualized as the reduction of certain inequalities in economic opportunity that confront the young.Equality of economic opportunity is a long-run concept. The relations between actions at a point in time and opportunity over time are developed within a model of youth behavior. The analysis focuses on the notions of career paths, employment success, and economic oportunity.The Research reported here was supported by the Office of Economic Opportunity. The authors owe much to the deliberations and suggestions of: K. Arrow, A. Carlin, J. Coleman, A. Cook, Jr., R. Dorfman, G. Fishman, T. Glennan, Jr., D. Greenberg, P. Katsky, S. M. Lipset, L. Rapping, T. Schelling, E. Sheldon, R. Summers, T. Tomlinson, B. Williams, W. Williams, and A. Wohlstetter. Sole responsibility for any errors or omissions, of course, resides with the authors.     

Time inconsistency of monetary policy: Empirical evidence from polls

While the basic model of time inconsistency, put forward by Barro and Gordon (Barro, R. J., & Gordon, D. B. (1983). Journal of Political Economy, 91, 589–610) is widely accepted now, several authors have expressed serious doubts about the empirical relevance of the model in explaining inflation. Interestingly enough, few attempts have been made so far to test for the existence of inflationary biases empirically. Theory predicts a positive correlation between a monetary authority's relative preference for the high employment goal and inflation. Using polling data from six countries as a proxy for public preferences we provide empirical evidence in favor of the Barro-Gordon-model.     

Female in-migration,employment, and family in a parish of Mexico City: Santa Catarina, 1775-1790

"The purpose of this article is to identify and evaluate the impacts of growing female in-migration to Mexico City at the close of the eighteenth century, analyzing for the case of the parish of Santa Catarina the proportion of men/women in the certificates of baptisms and burials...." Consideration is given to family formation, government policy, urbanization, and employment opportunities and their impact on family life. (SUMMARY IN ENG)     

Can child care assistance in welfare and employment programs support the employment of low‐income families?

Policymakers have long recognized child care as a key ingredient in low‐income parents' employability. We examine the effects of expansions in child care policies that were bundled with a mix of employment‐related policies and implemented as part of several random assignment studies on families' child care access and cost. Almost all of these welfare and employment programs increased employment and led to concomitant increases in the use of child care, especially paid child care. Only the programs that also expanded access or affordability of child care consistently increased the use of child care subsidies and reduced out‐of‐pocket costs to parents, allowing parents to purchase center‐based care. With one exception, such programs had small effects on employment‐related child care problems, suggesting that broader and more generous targeting of child care assistance may be important for achieving the goal of enhancing the stability of employment among low‐income families. © 2004 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Between morality and rationality: framing end-of-life care policy through narratives

This paper analyzes the nature of the debate generated prior to the implementation of the Act Respecting End-of-Life Care in 2015 in Québec (Canada). Including medical assistance in dying (MAID) along existing palliative care services, the act is an important policy change on a very sensitive issue. As such, MAID could be categorized as a morality policy issue, the latter being defined as a particular category of policy because of its specific features (issues of first principle, technical simplicity, high salience, public interest, and public participation). In line with Mucciaroni’s proposition, we rather analyze this issue by understanding morality policy as one of two framing strategies (moral and/or rational-instrumental frame). Our research reconstructs four public opinion framings as advanced and transmitted through the media between 2005 and 2015. It shows that although opponents to the bill unsurprisingly framed the debate in deontological terms, mostly referring to sanctity of life as one of the most important values in society, they also framed it on rational-instrumental grounds in a similar proportion, alleging the danger of a slippery slope and potential abuse. As well, if some of the proponents favored a moral framing centered on the argument that dignity and individual autonomy take precedence over all other values, others put forward a rational-instrumental one, where the slippery slope/abuse argument is used as a cautionary statement against the artificial prolongation of life. Our analysis reinforces Mucciaroni’s and Ferraiolo’s assertions that sensitive issues classified as morality policy cannot be apprehended solely through the unidimensional frame of morality.     

Vetoing and inaugurating policy like others do: evidence on spatial interactions in voter initiatives

A sizeable literature studies strategic interactions between governments. In this paper, we ask whether, in the presence of direct democratic institutions, voters’ actions in vetoing a decision or inaugurating a policy by a binding initiative in their jurisdiction have spillover effects on the actions of voters in neighboring jurisdictions. We collect (and make available) data on 3300 initiatives in German towns from 2002 to 2014 and match these to panel data on the towns’ sociodemographic and fiscal characteristics. We apply an instrumental variables approach and find that a jurisdiction’s probability of hosting an initiative is positively driven by the neighbors’ direct democratic activity. The size of the estimated average effect peaks around a 20 km neighborhood—where a standard deviation change of neighbors’ activity increases the probability of hosting an initiative by 5 percentage points—then gradually declines and fades away after around 60 km. This effect is driven by spillovers in similar policy areas and by successful initiatives, and is stronger in towns with relatively more information flows (measured by newspaper consumption and commuter flows).