First Impression of the Category

## What policies other governments are implementing to support workers well being
1. Reducing hours of work in Korea and Japan - Legislated reductions in standard working hours (or corresponding increases in overtime penalties) in Japan and Korea. 2. Gender disaggregated wage statistics - The gender pay gap declines by approximately two percentage points, or a 13% reduction relative to the pre-legislation mean.

## If we were not constained by data, what would we measure in this category to assess policy across countries (what other indicators) - Maximum working hours - Do workers get paid overtime hours - Gender wage gap

Literature Review 1

Research Paper 1: Well-being and reduction of hours ## What policies do countries actually pursue, what are their limitation, successes, failures and or unintended consequences Policies: - In Japan, the standard workweek was reduced from 48 to 40 hours, and overtime penalties were extended - In Korea, the standard workweek was cut from 44 to 40 hours over a period of time (starting with large firms, then gradually applying to more firms), with overtime penalties increased Successes: - There are cases in developed economies in which workers’ well-being may be improved by interventions in the labor market that provide incentives to reduce hours of work. - Working hours fell, especially for those more exposed to the legislation - Life satisfaction (well-being) tended to increase, particularly among those most affected Failures/Unintended consequences: - Results may vary by country, gender, and race - Did not evaluate how it affected its economy ## What are the scholarly debates - They should give an option to workers whether they want to opt in. Low-income people might struggle with this if not given other opportunities, like higher wages - In their conclusion, they state that they have only presented two examples. Their results do not imply that these regulations improved the overall economy. ## What data is being used to measure policy and its effects? How is it being quantitatively analyzed? Data: - For Japan are the National Surveys of Lifestyle Preferences (Kokumin Seikatsu Senkoudo Chosa), a series of cross-sectional household surveys querying one adult per household - For Korea, they used data from the General Social Surveys (Sahwe Chosa), 2003 and 2009, the former to represent the Pre-legislation period and the latter to represent the Post-legislation period. One of their advantages is that the Korean GSS has a large sample size, with the number of respondents varying from about 40,000 to 80,000 - They also used the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study (KLIPS) which is panel data

      How is it being quantitatively analyzed: 
          - They used cross-sectional OLS regression to estimate the probability of working 41-48 hours (in Japan) or 41-44 hours (in Korea) and to compare average outcomes across groups before and after the law was in place
          - They estimated models relating current (2009) satisfaction to satisfaction in the base period (1999).

Literature Review 2

Great resource for more indicators, Page 28 Research Paper 2: Do Firms Respond to Gender Gap Transparency? ## What policies do countries actually pursue, what are their limitation, successes, failures and or unintended consequences Policies - This paper exploits a 2006 legislation change in Denmark that requires firms to provide gender disaggregated wage statistics Successes: - The average wage per employee (log-transformed) is reduced by 2.8% - They found a positive and statistically significant coefficient at the 1% level on female employees joining - Firms are able to attract more female employees because they offer relatively fair compensation Failures/unintended consequences: - They observed that, on average, productivity, which was measured as the log-transformed sales per employee, drops by 2.7% in treated firms following the regulation as compared to control firms. - Found a negative and significant effect on male employees joining the firm

## What are the scholarly debates - Although the regulation had the effect of reducing the gender wage gap, it also had the unintended consequence of reducing the average employee wage at the firm. ## What data is being used to measure policy and its effects? How is it being quantitatively analyzed? Data: - Main dataset is the matched employer-employee dataset from the Integrated Database for Labor Market Research (IDA database) at Statistics Denmark. In addition to the employer’s identification number (CVR), and employee identification number (CPR). How is it being quantitatively analyzed: - They performed a difference-in-difference-in-differences analysis where we compared the effect of the regulation on male wages. - They defined a treated and a control group based on the 35-employee threshold. - Used a multivariate regression analysis and estimate the effect of disclosing gender pay disparities on individual wages

Looking at the SSPI

## How does the SSPI attempt to measure policies in workers well being and what are its shortcoming and strengths? - I like how the SSPI already took into account maternity leave - I also like how they take into account the fatal injuries. However, there aren’t any indicators that measure whether the workers receive care after those injuries.

## Based on lit review what policies seem measurable that we are not currently measuring? - Maximum number of hours/regulation of hours - Paid overtime - Access to health insurance - Minimum wage - Paid sick leave - Workplace accommodations for people with disabilities - Gradual return-to-work mechanisms for people who are returning from recovering from illness - Monitoring employee health - Prohibiting smoking during work hours - Limiting alcohol consumption during work hours

## Questions: - How can we measure whether a country protects sex workers from trafficking - How can we measure whether a country protects its people who work for international private factories