Abstract
Low-paid employment is a global challenge that has become more acute in recent years. While previous research has examined the micro and macro factors associated with low-paid work, the temporal dynamics of this phenomenon have received little attention. We address this gap in the literature by disentangling the effects of age, period, and cohort on low-paid work and documenting their demographic heterogeneity. Using repeated cross-sectional survey data derived from the 1986–2016 Population Census and By-census, we employ a novel age-period-cohort approach (HAPC-CCREM) to study the temporal patterns of low-paid work in Hong Kong. Our results reveal that the predicted probabilities of low-paid work follow a U-shaped curve over the career lifecycle of Hong Kong workers; show a continuous increase over the historical period of two decades and a slight decline in the last decade; and rise with cohort alternation for workers born in the second half of the twentieth century. Therefore, our findings suggest that a labor policy focusing on unemployment reduction is not sufficient to address the problem of low-paid employment in Hong Kong. Policymakers should consider promoting the diversification of existing industries and the accessibility of quality employment opportunities to reduce labour market segmentation in a service economy; and focus on protecting specific disadvantaged workers from falling into social marginalization and working poverty.
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Notes
Data were from the “Wage levels”, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (https://data.oecd.org/earnwage/wage-levels.htm).
Data were from the “Human Development Index”, United Nations Development Programme (https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/human-development-index#/indicies/HDI).
Data were from the “Hong Kong's Gini Coefficient”, World Economics (https://www.worldeconomics.com/Inequality/Gini-Coefficient/Hong%20Kong.aspx).
Positive non-interventionism is the guiding principle of Hong Kong’s economic policy. It holds that government interference in the market allocation of resources was usually futile and harmful to economic growth. Many researchers considered it as a close approximation of laissez-faire policy (Goodstadt, 2014; Lui, 2015).
Data were from the “Principal statistics for all manufacturing establishments by selected industry division”, Census and Statistics Department of Hong Kong (https://www.censtatd.gov.hk/en/web_table.html?id=100).
The Sino-British Joint Declaration stipulated that the Chinese Government would preserve Hong Kong’s existing social and economic systems. The Basic Law of Hong Kong also confirms that Hong Kong, as a Special Administrative Region, will retain its previous capitalist system and way of life for 50 years.
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Thanks are owed to the editors and anonymous referees for their constructive feedback on earlier drafts of this article.
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This study was funded by Humanities and Social Sciences Youth Foundation by Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China (21YJC840010), and Social Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (22SHC002).
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Lin, J., Hao, L. Bad Jobs on the Rise? Age, Period, and Cohort Effects on Low-Paid Work in Hong Kong, 1986–2016. Soc Indic Res 170, 1119–1140 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-023-03236-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-023-03236-0