The selectivity of immigrants largely depends on economic returns to skills. Since the 1970s the rising income inequality in the US relative to Israel, an indicator of greater returns to skills in the former, implies the intensification of the positive selectivity of Israeli immigrants in the US in recent decades, especially among the highly skilled. To test this hypothesis, we compared the education and income of four successive cohorts of Israeli immigrants relative to two benchmark groups-the Israeli population from which immigrants were drawn and the US population they joined. The results, based on analyzing Israeli Labor Force Surveys and US Census and ACS data from 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2015, support the hypothesis: the gaps in educational levels between successive cohorts of 'recent' Israeli-born Jewish immigrants (those who resided in the US for no more than 5 years) and the Israel-born Jewish population from which they were drawn, grew larger over time. Income analyses relative to US benchmark groups, both income ratios and quintile regressions, suggest that the labor market skills of successive cohorts of Israeli immigrants in the US have improved, not only on education, but also on some unobserved traits enhancing income. Moreover, as expected by the theory, the rise in the selectivity of successive cohorts of Israeli immigrants was the greatest among the most skilled immigrants-those located at the 90th percentile of their cohort's income distribution and aspiring to join the very top of income receivers in the US.

Based on a unique longitudinal survey conducted between April 2020 and April 2021 in Israel, this study estimated the effect of labor market status during the outbreak of COVID-19 on continuity of employment, worktime and earnings throughout the crisis. Labor market status has both an individual dimension (the type of employment contract) and a collective one (membership in a trade union or coverage by a collective agreement). Findings from curvilinear growth models show that those whose labor market status was more precarious, characterized by deviations from the standard employment relationship and the absence of collective representation and voice, fared less well than those whose labor market status was more secure. At the same time, evidence suggests a negotiated compromise whereby workers with collective representation enjoyed greater employment security but also experienced greater earnings reductions than their counterparts who remained employed but had no collective representation.

This article aims to explain why inequality in fringe benefits has grown faster than wage inequality over the past four decades. We depart from previous income inequality research by studying benefits in addition to wages, but also by focusing on workplaces as the main drivers of benefit determination. We advance the argument that benefits determination is more organizationally embedded than wages mainly because workplaces have greater ability and incentive to alter benefits. Consequently, workplace compensation practices, including type of employment relations, are more important for benefits than for wages. Longitudinal linked employer–job administrative data on wages and voluntary benefits costs from the Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (ECEC) allow us to test these arguments, as well as examine why benefit inequality has dramatically increased. Results from variance decomposition reveal that between- and within-establishment inequality is higher in benefits than in wages, indicating that workplaces affect benefits more than wages. Regression results show that, as expected, establishment-level pay-settings affect benefits more than wages, and the decline in labor unions along with the liberalization of employment practices partly account for why benefit inequality increased at more than twice the rate of wage inequality.

This paper analyzes gaps in rates of obtaining higher educational degrees (B.A or higher) between third generation Ashkenazim and Mizrahim (the two major ethnic groups among Israeli Jews), in comparison to the same gaps among members of the second generation. The empirical analyses were performed using the 7th and 8th rounds of the European Social Survey (ESS). The data include information on the country of birth of parents and grandparents of respondents, thereby allowing identification of the ethnicity of the second and third generation (including the identification of persons of mixed ethnicity) for a representative sample of 775 men and women, 26–42 years of age in 2015-2017. The results suggest that the educational gaps between the two major ethnic groups are smaller in the third generation than in the second generation, especially among women. Academic education of persons of mixed ethnicity are in between Mizrahim and Ashkenazim, but closer to Ashkenazim, especially in the third generation. Multivariate analyses suggest that parental background has a large effect on the probability of obtaining higher educational degrees, yet even when controlling for parental characteristics, Mizrahi men of either the second or third generation, are less likely to hold academic degrees than second generation Ashkenazim. We discuss the implications of these results for the future of ethnic based stratification in Israel.

The paper addresses the multifaceted quality of ethnicity in the Jewish population of Israel by probing into the ethnic categories and their subjective meaning. The analyses utilise data collected during 2015-2016 on a representative sample of Israelis age 15 and older, as part of the seventh and eighth rounds of the European Social Survey (ESS). Hypotheses are developed concerning the relationship between demographically based ethnic origin and national identity, as well as the effect of ethnically mixed marriages on ethnic and national identities. The analyses reveal a strong preference among Jews in Israel to portray their ancestry in inclusive national categories - Israeli and Jewish - rather than more particularistic, ethno-cultural, categories (e.g. Mizrahim, Moroccan, Ashkenazim, Polish, etc). Yet, whether Israeli or Jewish receives primacy differs by migration generation, socioeconomic standing, religion, and political dispositions. While the findings clearly add to our understanding of Israeli society, they are also telling with regard to immigrant societies more generally. First, they reveal a multi-layered structure of ethnic identification. Second, they suggest that ethnic identities are quite resistant to change. Third, ethnically mixed marriages appear to erode ethnic identities and are likely to replace them with national identities.

Using Israel's land-grabbing practices alongside its demographic classifications as a conceptual lens, this article advances two claims: one about biospatial strategies, including the construction of space as a racialized category, and the other historical. The article shows that the particular biospatial scaffolding underlying Israel's colonial project has deployed similar strategies of dispossession and settling across the entire territory located between the Jordan Valley and the Mediterranean Sea. Simultaneously, it draws a connection between these strategies and statistical classifications and techniques of enumeration to delineate Israel's efforts to racialize the appropriated space. Historically, the article identifies a boomerang trajectory, beginning with the massive confiscation and Judaization of Palestinian land in the wake of the 1948 war, then extending and duplicating many of the practices originally developed inside Israel to the West Bank in 1967, and finally turning back inward to solidify the racialization of land within Israel.

Gender, racial, and ethnic gaps in wages are well known, but group disparities in employer-provided benefits, which account for one-quarter of total compensation, are not. We use benefit costs data to study levels and trends in gender, racial, and ethnic gaps in voluntary employer-provided benefits. Analyzing Employer Costs for Employee Compensation microdata on wages and benefit costs for the years 1982 to 2015, matched to Current Population Survey files by wage decile in the industrial sector, we find that (1) benefit gaps were wider than wage gaps for minorities but were narrower for gender, (2) racial and ethnic gaps in benefits increased faster than wage gaps, and (3) the gender gap in benefits decreased faster than the wage gap. We show that these findings reflect the types of jobs women, blacks, and Hispanics have held for the past three decades.

Many inequality scholars view skill-biased technological change—the computerization of workplaces that favours high-skilled workers—as the main cause of rising wage inequality in America, while institutional factors are generally relegated to a secondary role. The evidence presented in this article, however, does not support this widely held view. Using direct measures for computers and pay-setting institutions at the industry level, this article provides the first rigorous analysis of the independent effect of technological and institutional factors on rising wage inequality. Analysing data on 43 US industries between 1968 and 2012, we find that declining unions and the fall in the real value of the minimum wage explain about half of rising inequality, while computerization explains about one-quarter. This suggests that much of rising inequality in the USA is driven by worker disempowerment rather than by market forces—a finding that can resolve the puzzle on the diverging inequality trends in USA and Europe.

Israel is a deeply divided society along ethno-national lines, separating the Jewish and the Arab (Palestinian) populations, and distinguishing sub-groups within each population. The ethnic-national cleavage separating Jews and Arabs is at the heart of repeated conflicts spanning more than a century. While the Jewish-Arab rift is generally taken for granted in light of the unresolved national conflict, the ethnic cleavage within the Jewish population is typically viewed as a failure of the Jewish State to diminish cultural markers and socioeconomic features that distinguished Jewish communities from one another. Almost 70 years after the establishment of the state of Israel the ethnic cleavage within the Jewish population is still salient. One reason for this is the persistent socioeconomic inequality between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim even among those whose parents were born in Israel.

In this paper we advance the argument that the widespread assumption that computerization and institutional changes are independent explanations for the resurgence of wage inequality is inaccurate. Instead we posit for complex dynamics between computerization and fading pay-setting institutions, arguing that the latter is a mechanism by which the former operates. To test our argument that computerization increases wage inequality not only via the mechanisms specified by skill-biased Technological Change, but also indirectly through structural processes, we utilize longitudinal industrial-level data on computerization, pay-setting institutions, and wage inequality. Estimating ECMs, we find a stronger longitudinal association between computerization and wage inequality in industries where labor processes were subject to both computerization and the breakup of pay-setting institutions (such as labor unions) than in industries where these institutions never had much of a presence. These findings provide some evidence that computerization operates also through the mechanism of weakening labor market institutions.

In this paper we advance the argument that the widespread assumption that computerization and institutional changes are independent explanations for the resurgence of wage inequality is inaccurate. Instead we posit for complex dynamics between computerization and fading pay-setting institutions, arguing that the latter is a mechanism by which the former operates. To test our argument that computerization increases wage inequality not only via the mechanisms specified by skill-biased Technological Change, but also indirectly through structural processes, we utilize longitudinal U.S. industrial-level data on computerization, pay-setting institutions, and wage inequality. Estimating Error Correction Models, we find a stronger longitudinal association between computerization and wage inequality in industries where labor processes were subject to both computerization and the breakup of pay-setting institutions (such as labor unions) than in industries where these institutions never had much of a presence. These findings provide some evidence that computerization operates also through the mechanism of weakening labor market institutions. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

In the past the Israeli industrial relations system was corporatist, characterized by high levels of membership in trade unions and employers' associations, as well as broad coverage of collective agreements. The corporatist system gradually eroded from the mid‐1980s, but its major transformation came with the removal of the Ghent‐like system in 1995. The article observes data collected since the transformation, distinguishing between membership and coverage trends. These distinctions aid in revealing that a hybrid of two distinct industrial relations subsystems has developed. The notion of hybridization suggests that unlike past accounts, which described the substitution of the corporatist industrial relations system by a liberal‐pluralist system, what actually emerges is their coexistence. Despite the path‐determined nature of the Israeli hybrid, the interaction between coverage and membership is instructive for understanding strategic choices made in other European countries in which a similar gap emerged. The article notes the potential for synergy between the two subsystems and notes the actual development of rivalry and friction.

This essay analyzes the impact of Israeli unilateralism-specifically that of its settlement project-on the two-state solution. After exploring the relationship between unilateralism and power, the authors show, inter alia, that in-migration has accounted for about half the settlement growth since the international embrace of the land-for-peace formula in 1991, that the level of in-migration does not fluctuate according to government composition (right or left), and that Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have spurred rather than inhibited settlement expansion. The essay is framed by a contrast with the Palestinian bid for full UN membership, rejected as unilateralism by the Western powers but in fact aimed at undercutting Israeli unilateralism and creating the conditions for meaningful negotiations.

This article addresses two issues regarding Israeli emigrants. First, it focuses on their number and distribution in various destination countries; second, it deals with patterns of self-selection among emigrants, namely, the skill level of Israelis who select themselves to leave Israel for various destination countries. The findings suggest that Israeli emigration has increased in the past two decades, but that most of the increase was in the 1990s, and was due to the emigration of foreign-born Israelis, rather than the emigration of native-born Israelis. Based on the DIOC (Database on immigrants in OECD countries) about 164,000 Israeli-born emigrants, aged 15 years and over, resided in 25 OECD countries in 2000, suggesting that relative to other countries, the share of Israeli-born residing outside Israel is not high. Two-thirds of Israeli-born emigrants were in the US, and 85 percent in the Anglo-Saxon countries. The selectivity of Israeli emigrants, measured by education and occupation, is most positive in the Anglo-Saxon countries, especially the US, where the returns on skills are the highest. By contrast, the least skilled Israeli emigrants choose Scandinavian countries, where the labor markets are relatively rigid, and returns on skills tend to be the lowest. These findings are consistent with migration selectivity theory, which anticipates that high-skilled immigrants will choose destinations where their skills will be generously compensated. Finally, the results suggests that the educational selectivity of Israeli emigrants to the Anglo-Saxon countries (but not to Scandinavian countries) has improved in the late 1990s compared to the early 1990s.

In this paper, we analyze the distribution of fringe benefits among workers and underline its implications for income inequality. To this end, we develop a positional approach to inequality based on the concept of rent as a potential link between positions and their rewards. We hypothesize that workers extract rent in the form of benefits in industries with worker leverage (in the form of unioniziation, internal labor market, and public employment) or share rent with firms in highly profitable industries that endure for efficiency wage reasons. On the basis of a unique dataset from Israel, we test these hypotheses by estimating the probabilities of obtaining benefits according to industries’ structural features while controlling for cross-industrial differences in workers’ demographic and human capital characteristics. The analyses reveal that benefits are determined by structural factors, representing a separate dimension of the rewards attached to positions, different from earnings. We further stress the importance of incorporating fringe benefits into inequality research, given that benefits together with earnings stratify workers and evidently signify structured positions in the economy.