A dynamic counting approach to measure multidimensional deprivations in jobs

ABSTRACT

The adjusted headcount ratio from the multidimensional poverty measures has been used in cross-sectional research on the labour market to study the cumulative aspects of multiple job deprivations. This article takes advantage of the decomposition property of this method to develop a dynamic model for examining and understanding the transitions between precarious employment dimensions and index changes from a longitudinal perspective using panel data from Chile. Evidence produced by this method shows multidimensional precarious employment traps in women, while men suffer greater deprivations in the social protection dimension despite economic growth and the overall decrease in the multidimensional deprivation index. Both results would not be evident if only a cross-sectional analysis were used.

KEYWORDS:

• Labor markets
• longitudinal data
• precarious employment dynamics
• alkire/foster methods
• multi-dimensional index

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• J21
• J28
• J63
• J80

Acknowledgements

We thank Mauricio Apablaza and Gastón Yalonetzky for their comments. We would also like to acknowledge the feedback offered by the participants of the WEIPO seminar at the University of Alcalá and the HDCA Conference in Antwerp. We are grateful for the support of the British Academy Grant number (GP1\100170).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ The same approach could be applied to other multidimensional deprivations in job measures, such as quality of employment (e.g. Sehnbruch et al. 2020).

² The $M_{\mathit{PE}}$ is known as the Adjusted Headcount Ratio ($M_0$) in the family of poverty measures developed by Alkire and Foster (2011).

³ Sensitivity analyses for other K cut-offs and other weight distributions can be requested from the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the British Academy Grant [GP1\100170].