PAID AND UNPAID LABOR ACROSS SECTORS, A THREE PAPER DISSERTATION

This dissertation is comprised of three independent papers connected by a focus on individuals that provide paid and unpaid labor in nonprofit, public and for-profit organizations. All three projects examine and expand existing research on how people engage with different sectors of the economy and the resulting implications this holds for society. To ground this case, the first article systematically analyzes extant literature that asks whether similar workers performing similar tasks receive varied pay between nonprofits and for-profits (i.e., a nonprofit wage differential). This chapter concludes that prior research is dominated by a focus on social service industries within the U.S. and analyses are limited by cross-sectional data. The second and third paper utilize ideas and methods from this literature review to analyze the life cycle of an individual and their decision to work in certain sectors. Specifically, the second paper considers early-career volunteering as a pathway to mid-career sector of employment. It finds a significant and positive relationship between early-career volunteering and mid-career nonprofit employment while failing to observe similar results for mid-career public employment. The last paper builds on this research to investigate the importance of gender in one’s rate of first entry and exit of nonprofit and public organizations. It finds a significant relationship between the identity of female, relative to male, and the rate of entry into such work, but fails to find similar patterns for one’s exit from the public and nonprofit sector. These pieces provide novel insight into individuals and their behaviors that lead into and out of well-known cross-sectional statistics of the market. They also contribute to dialogue on the recruitment and retention of individuals in organizations that do not solely profit maximize. Taken together, this research provides a fuller understanding of paid and unpaid labor across sectors and the individuals that opt into this behavior.

Author dc:creator

• Marrese, Tiana

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Handy, Femida

• Political Science
• Economics

Language dc:language.iso

en

Repository record dc:identifier.uri

https://repository.upenn.edu/handle/20.500.14332/61285

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:repository.upenn.edu:20.500.14332/61285