Small Differences That Matter
Small Differences That Matter

Author: David Card

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2009-02-15

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0226092895

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This volume, the first in a new series by the National Bureau of Economic Research that compares labor markets in different countries, examines social and labor market policies in Canada and the United States during the 1980s. It shows that subtle differences in unemployment compensation, unionization, immigration policies, and income maintenance programs have significantly affected economic outcomes in the two countries. For example: -Canada's social safety net, more generous than the American one, produced markedly lower poverty rates in the 1980s. -Canada saw a smaller increase in earnings inequality than the United States did, in part because of the strength of Canadian unions, which have twice the participation that U.S. unions do. -Canada's unemployment figures were much higher than those in the United States, not because the Canadian economy failed to create jobs but because a higher percentage of nonworking time was reported as unemployment. These disparities have become noteworthy as policy makers cite the experiences of the other country to support or oppose particular initiatives.

What Does the Minimum Wage Do?
What Does the Minimum Wage Do?

Author: Dale Belman

Publisher: W.E. Upjohn Institute

Published: 2014-07-07

Total Pages: 489

ISBN-13: 0880994568

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Belman and Wolfson perform a meta-analysis on scores of published studies on the effects of the minimum wage to determine its impacts on employment, wages, poverty, and more.

Differences That Matter
Differences That Matter

Author: Dan Zuberi

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2018-07-05

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 1501711253

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This book shines a spotlight on the causes and consequences of working poverty, revealing how the lives of low-wage workers are affected by differences in health care, labor, and social welfare policy in the United States and Canada. Dan Zuberi's conclusions are based on survey data, eighteen months of participant observation fieldwork, and in-depth interviews with seventy-seven hotel employees working in parallel jobs on both sides of the border. Two hotel chains, each with one union and one non-union hotel in Seattle and Vancouver, provide a vivid crossnational comparison because they are similar in so many regards, the one major exception being government policy.Zuberi demonstrates how labor, health, social welfare, and public investment policy affect these hotel workers and their families. His book challenges the myth that globalization necessarily means hospitality jobs must be insecure and pay poverty wages and makes clear the critical role played by government policy in the reduction of poverty and creation of economic equality. Zuberi shows exactly where and how the social policies that distinguish the Canadian welfare state from the U.S. version make a difference in protecting Canadian workers from the hardships that burden low-wage workers in the United States. Differences That Matter, which is filled with first-person accounts, ends with policy recommendations and a call for grassroots community organizing.