Thanks for sharing! Strongly upvoted. I like the study randomised people to receiving job offers instead of being placed into jobs. The opportunity to reject the offer makes it more like the real world.
Here is how the authors describe the effects on income.
On balance the factory job offer seems to have no significant effect on income by any of the three measures, and a family index of the three increases only 0.014 standard deviations.37 These income measures tend to be skewed and highly variable, however, and so our estimates are imprecise. Thus while the average effect is close to zero, the confidence interval on income includes moderate increases and decreases in income from the industrial job offer.
I guess the effect was slightly positive, but that the study was underpowered to detect it. The authors also note the workers think the increased health risks are worth it.
Naturally, workers were probably not perfectly informed about job risks and quality of these jobs, and there is some evidence that they underestimated the risk. Nonetheless, our data suggest that workers understood the health risks, at least in part, did not update their assessment of the risks as a result of spending more time in industry, and that they were willing to bear these risks to cope with temporary unemployment spells.
workers who got jobs in sweatshops were not necessarily better off than those who did
Thanks for sharing! Strongly upvoted. I like the study randomised people to receiving job offers instead of being placed into jobs. The opportunity to reject the offer makes it more like the real world.
Here is how the authors describe the effects on income.
I guess the effect was slightly positive, but that the study was underpowered to detect it. The authors also note the workers think the increased health risks are worth it.
Nitpick. There is a “not” missing at the end.
Thanks for the nitpick, I’ve fixed it in my post. Agree that the randomisation element is very useful.