Comparing Job Quality Across Countries & Over Time Ekaterina Kalugina University of Evry and Center on Employment Studies Ekaterina.Kalugina@univ-evry.fr This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration under Grant Agreement No 312691
Overview 1. Operationalizing the concept of quality of working life 2. Comparing quality of working life across countries 3. Comparing quality of working life over time 4. Empirical cross-country studies of change in quality of working life using EWCS www.inclusivegrowth.be www.inclusivegrowth.be Across countries & over time/10.05.2016 2
Introduction • « One major obstacle to foster concrete policy actions on job quality has been the challenge of defining and measuring job quality in ways that are amenable to comparisons over time and across countries and socio-demographic groups » (OECD, 2015) www.inclusivegrowth.be www.inclusivegrowth.be Across countries & over time/10.05.2016 3
Introduction • « Another obstacle is that job quality is inherently a multi-dimensional concept that can be measured in many different ways, and which does not have the same meaning for different individuals in different countries » (OECD, 2015) • “ Comparability is ensured when concepts and definitions follow internationally agreed standards and the surveys/instruments from which data are collected are based on a harmonised questionnaire and similar implementation design. • However, comparability can also be achieved by putting together broadly comparable instruments ex post ” (OECD, 2015) www.inclusivegrowth.be www.inclusivegrowth.be Across countries & over time/10.05.2016 4
Operationalizing the concept of quality of working life • Comparisons over time and across countries: – Defining quality of work: • Creation of indicator(s) of quality of work that can be used to compare job quality across countries and over time – Objective measures versus subjective measures – Data collection www.inclusivegrowth.be www.inclusivegrowth.be Across countries & over time/10.05.2016 5
Operationalizing the concept of quality of work Objectivist versus Subjectivist approach • Objectivist approach – Objective indicators • Job attributes that can be observed by a third party (OECD, 2015) – Number of fatal and serious accidents; Number of days lost due to sickness (UNECE – Business Europe, 2001) – Individuals’ self-assessment of their own situations • Green et al. (2013): “ Objective concept of job quality: a set of features that help to meet jobholders’ needs from work. This approach means that we include only variables characterizing jobs, leaving out those applying to individuals’ lives or their preferences .” • Workplace relationships, for example www.inclusivegrowth.be www.inclusivegrowth.be Title/date 6
Operationalizing the concept of quality of work Objectivist approach • Multidimensional concept • Choice of relevant dimensions – Theoretical and conceptual considerations • For work organization – Job demands-job resources theory (Demerouti et al. 2013) � Resources : workplace relationships, work autonomy � Demands : time pressure, physical health risk factors, workload – Job demands – job controls model (Karasek, 1979; Karasek and Theorell, 1990) � Job demands : psychological demands (work load, work intensity), � Job controls : Job discretion, social support , learning opportunities • Sen capability concept (Sen, 1985) – Functionnings : “are beings and doings that people value and have reason to value” – Capabilities : “are a set of vectors of functionings, reflecting the person’s freedom to lead one type of life or another (…) to choose from possible livings” – Could include subjective measures – This approach doesn’t provide the list or the hierarchy of relevant dimensions www.inclusivegrowth.be www.inclusivegrowth.be Across countries & over time/10.05.2016 7
Operationalizing the concept of quality of work Objectivist approach – Example of OECD (and not only OECD) response – “Focusing on those aspects of a job that have been shown to be particularly important for workers’ well-being ” (also Green et al. 2013; Clark, 2015) – Focus on individual workers – For each dimension to choose a limited set of indicators (comparable across countries and over time) – Simplicity of indicators is privileged for better comparability across countries and over time www.inclusivegrowth.be www.inclusivegrowth.be Across countries & over time/10.05.2016 8
Operationalizing the concept of quality of work Objectivist approach • Aggregation problem within dimensions and between dimensions – If a dimension contains multiple items: how to aggregate them? – Overall index of quality of work: how to aggregate different dimensions? – The weighting structure • Equal weighting and/or averaging • Use of more sophisticated statistical tools – PCA : Principal Component Analysis – MCA : Multiple Correspondence Analysis – More recently: Fuzzy logic • Use of satisfaction equation www.inclusivegrowth.be www.inclusivegrowth.be Across countries & over time/10.05.2016 9
Operationalizing the concept of quality of work • Subjectivist approach – Purely subjective measures • Job satisfaction questions or satisfaction of different aspects of working life (working conditions, for example) • Objectivist approach is considered to be better for the comparability across countries and over time (OECD, 2015) www.inclusivegrowth.be www.inclusivegrowth.be Across countries & over time/10.05.2016 10
Operationalizing the concept of quality of work • The data – OECD Inventory: stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=JOBQ • Three main international sources that are currently available – EWCS (European Working Conditions Survey) of Eurofound: http://eurofound.europa.eu/surveys/ewcs/index � 1991, 1996, 2000/2001, 2005, 2010, 2015* � EU 28, Norway, Turkey, FYROM, Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro – International Social Survey Programme ( ISSP Work Orientations Module, 2005): http://www.gesis.org/issp/home � 1989, 1997, 2005, 2015/2016 � Numerous countries – European Social Survey ( ESS ): http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org � 2004, 2010 � EU28, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey, Israel, Russian Federation, Ukraine www.inclusivegrowth.be www.inclusivegrowth.be Across countries & over time/10.05.2016 11
Comparing Quality of Working Life across Countries How to uncover the “country effects” ? I.e. to identify how different policy environments and institutions affect socio- economic outcomes? Institutional theories - Varieties of Capitalism (Production Regime Theory): � Soskice (1999), Hall and Soskice (2001) � Crucial difference between societies is the level of employer coordination: coordinated market economies (Germany, the Scandinavian countries) versus liberal market economies (Britain, US and Ireland) - Power Resource (Employment Regime Theory): � Korpi (1983 and 2006), Esping-Andersen (1990), Gallie (2007) � Crucial difference between societies is the relative power resources of employers and employees: distinction between inclusive systems (Nordic) of employment regulation, dualist systems (Continental) and liberal systems (UK, Ireland) www.inclusivegrowth.be www.inclusivegrowth.be Across countries & over time/10.05.2016 12
Comparing Quality of Working Life across Countries How to uncover the “country effects” ? I.e. to identify how different policy environments and institutions affect socio- economic outcomes? Empirical (regression based) methods - If country effects exist it induces correlations across observations within the countries: the standard errors (SE) estimates are downwardly biased - Pooling the data for all countries and using cluster-robust standard errors: � This approach just controls for the multilevel (individual + country) structure of the data by using country-cluster-robust SEs but does not uncover the country effect - Making analysis by country - Create dummy variable for each country or group of countries - Multilevel analysis - Other methods (Bryan&Jenkins, 2015) www.inclusivegrowth.be www.inclusivegrowth.be Across countries & over time/10.05.2016 13
Comparing Quality of Working Life across Countries Basic linear model: • � �� � � �� � � � � � � � � � � �� with � � �� � � � � ; � � �� � � � – � �� �� outcome variable (quality of working life index, for example) for each person � – � �� ��� variables that summarise individual-level characteristics (age, education etc.) – � � �� variables that summarise country-level features (for example, unemployment rate, trade-union coverage) – � � - country effects – � �� - individual effects – � � and � �� are each assumed to be normally distributed and uncorrelated with � �� and � � www.inclusivegrowth.be www.inclusivegrowth.be Across countries & over time/10.05.2016 14
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