Employmentweb_low

labour Markets and welfare states: a country perspective
In other words, labour institutions are the means by which the
state regulates the labour market (e.g., provisions for collective
bargaining). Informal labour markets, on the other hand, emerge in
the absence of state regulation of the labour market (majid, 2001).
Equality in the labour market typically increases as state
intervention erodes the de facto authority of the informal labour
markets, replacing it with a regulating, legitimate authority.
map 2. countries of different labour market clusters.
core
semi-periphery
periphery
without data
social democratic
corporatist conservative
liberal
residual
emerging
informal
post-comunist
less successful informal labour Market
insecure
source: prepared by the authors
In the labour markets of peripheral countries however, this
process is difficult, as the majority of workers are in the informal
sector (majid, 2001). across the board, very low wages force workers
to sell their labour for less-than-subsistence income. moreover,
insufficient family wages force children to venture into the labour
market at extremely young ages. The result is a vast proportion of
the population that is not only underpaid but is also excluded from
social security benefits. While labour institution characteristics
(such as union density) are scarcely recorded thanks to the
informality of labour, low- and middle-income countries indicate a
large informal sector. The deteriorating working conditions that this
implies were corroborated by our and others' empirical
investigations. This implies that social security factors and income
level should be taken into account in order to predict population
health status with more accuracy in analytical studies.
a second conclusion pertains to the labour markets in semiperipheral
countries. union density and coverage are still important
in those countries, as some have emergent or residual welfare
states (e.g., Eastern block), but their effects could not be analysed
due to the small sample size.
57