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Title: The Use and Prevalence of Contingent Work Arrangements in the United States
Resulting in 1 citation.
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Surfield, Christopher James |
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The Use and Prevalence of Contingent Work Arrangements in the United States Ph.D. Dissertatiod, Department of Economics, University of South Carolina, 2003. DAI-A 64/07, p. 2603, Jan 2004 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: UMI - University Microfilms, Bell and Howell Information and Learning Keyword(s): Benefits, Insurance; Current Population Survey (CPS) / CPS-Fertility Supplement; Earnings; Employment, Part-Time; Health Care; Labor Economics; Modeling; Part-Time Work; Wage Effects; Wage Models This dissertation explores the earnings and employment experiences of American workers engaged in contingent work arrangements. Employment as a contract, consulting, or temporary worker has long been criticized as unstable and poorly-compensated when compared with open-ended employment. Using data from the Contingent and Alternative Employment Arrangement Supplement to the Current Population Survey and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 Cohort (NLSY79), I find little evidence to support these criticisms. The first contribution of this dissertation is to provide a profile of those engaged in contingent work. Next, I examine how current employment status affects the likelihood of being unemployed in the future. These results suggest that contingent workers are able to avoid future unemployment compared to those who are currently jobless. Furthermore, contingent work appears to lengthen spells of employment in the future. The empirical results are consistent with a theoretical model in which contingent arrangements serve as a possible matchmaker between firms and workers. Regressions using cross-sectional data suggest a significant and substantially negative impact of contingent employment status on worker compensation, both in terms of wages and access to employer-related health insurance. However, in the presence of omitted variables likely to appear in compensation models, such as a worker-specific ability component to the error term, this estimate may be biased and inconsistent. Using data from the NLSY79, panel-data techniques are used to control for ability. The results indicate that the usual cross-sectional results provide a substantial overstatement of the negative effect of contingent employment on compensation. In particular, the entire cross-sectional wage effect appears to be a reflection of lower ability levels among contingent workers relative to regular workers. |
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Bibliography Citation
Surfield, Christopher James. The Use and Prevalence of Contingent Work Arrangements in the United States. Ph.D. Dissertatiod, Department of Economics, University of South Carolina, 2003. DAI-A 64/07, p. 2603, Jan 2004. |