Ross McKenzie

@rmckenzie.bsky.social

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Econ Lecturer at University of Dundee | Applied Micro | Labour & Migration https://sites.google.com/view/rossmckenzie/home

Abstract This paper investigates how sibling gender composition affects women's educational attainment and occupational choice. Using data from the China Household Income Project survey, we estimate the impact, for first-born women, of having a second-born brother relative to those with a second-born sister. Given supportive evidence from the literature and our data, we identify a period (1963 to 1978) where the gender of the second child given the first child's gender is as good as random as it is not yet affected by selective abortion or other drivers of gender imbalance. The results show that having a second-born brother is beneficial to first-born women's educational attainment. However, other elements such as gender norms appear reinforced by having a brother: in the labour market, first-born women with a second-born brother are less likely to choose a male-dominated occupation, which on average carries a higher wage.
This article estimates the effect of immigration into an occupation on the wages of natives working in other, better-paid occupations. Using Annual Population Survey data from the UK we rank occupations by the Standard Occupation Classification provided by the ONS and find that increases in the migrant/native ratio raise average wages of natives working in the next higher ranked occupation by around 0.332%. Our findings have important implications for policy and public discourse. They suggest that debates over the economic impacts of migration often ignore the potential spill-over benefits that a migrant can bring to the outcomes for native workers elsewhere in the wage distribution, particularly in lower wage occupations.
A wide river with trees on each side