Ýêîíîìè÷åñêèå íàóêè / Ðåãèîíàëüíàÿ ýêîíîìèêà
Ph.D. Avanesova N.E.
Kharkov National university of Building and
Architecture, Ukraine
EARLY RESEARCHES OF IMPORTANCE OF MANPOWER
FACTOR AND LOCATION OF PEOPLE IN FOREING COUNTRIES
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The importance of manpower supply as a location
factor is suggested by the sheer magnitude of labor costs as an element in
the total outlays of productive enterprises. In the United States, wage and salary payments, and supplements thereto, account for
about three-fourths of the national income, and this does not include the
earnings of self-employed people and business proprietors (for example,
farmers, store owners, and free-lance professionals), which mainly represent
a return to their labor. Accordingly, we should expect to find many kinds of
activities locationally sensitive to the differentials in the availability,
price, and quality of labor [1]. Labor’s role as a purchased input, however, is only
one aspect of the locational interdependence of people and their economic
activities. People in their role as consumers of the final output of goods
and services affect the locational choices of market-oriented activities.
They play still another role as users of residential land; and in urban
areas, residence is by far the largest land use. Finally, and most important,
the purpose of the whole economic system is to provide a livelihood for
people. Regional economics is vitally concerned with regional income
differences, the opportunities found in different types of communities, and
regional population growth and migration. The present chapter is devoted to integrating and
exploring these various aspects of "the location of people." We
begin by considering the locational differences in the rewards or
"price" of labor. The differentials among regions are not entirely
erratic. Some evidence of an underlying pattern appears in Table 1.1, in
which the labor markets are classified by broad region and by size [3]. In
each of the three broad occupational categories, the
South shows up as the region with the lowest pay levels. The West and North
Central regions pay generally higher rates. In addition, with the exception
of two occupational categories in the North Central region, there is a
tendency for rates to be higher in the larger metropolitan areas. Finally, it
can be noted that the interregional disparities are wider for unskilled
workers than for the other groups. This feature of the
pattern will be explained later. Table 1.1 – Relative Pay Levels by Region and Size
of Metropolitan Area, 1978 ( 262 – area average pay Level for each occupational
group = 100
Comparing wages or incomes among different areas is
not as straightforward a matter as it might appear, even when appropriate
data are at hand. It is a question of what comparison is relevant to the
question we have in mind. For example, if we want to gauge the relative
opulence of two communities (perhaps as an indication of how rich a market
each would provide for consumer goods and services), then average personal income in dollars
per family or per person would be appropriate to compare. But an individual
looking for an area where his work will be well rewarded would do better to
compare real earnings in
his or her occupational category; that is, monetary earnings deflated by a
cost-of-living index. Finally, an employer looking for a good labor supply
location would be most interested in comparisons of labor cost, based on monetary
wage-and-salary rates adjusted for labor productivity and fringe benefits.
The relevance of such different measures should be kept in mind as we look at
the data. Although the figures cited are based on careful
comparisons of the standard earnings rate in (as nearly as possible)
identical jobs, they do not give a complete picture of relative advantages
for either the employee or the employer. No account is taken of the
increasingly important fringe benefits (vacations, overtime pay, sick leave,
pensions, and so on) or of differences in the cost of living. Nor do these
comparisons give us any indication of differentials in the productivity of
workers, which also play a part in determining the employer’s labor cost per
unit of output. Income differentials also show a discernible pattern
according to region and size of urban place. But the difference in per capita
or per family incomes between two areas is, of course, determined not only by
relative earnings levels in specific occupations but also by differences in
the occupational and industry mix of the areas, the degree of labor force
participation, and unemployment rates. [2, 3 ]For example, regional per capita
personal income in 1981 varied as shown in Table 1.2 Table 1.2 – Per Capita Personal Income, by Region,
1981
The relation of income level to type of urban or
rural place of residence is shown in
table 1.3. We observe there that in 1980, incomes were higher in
metropolitan areas than in nonmetropolitan areas; higher in larger
metropolitan areas than in smaller metropolitan areas; higher outside central
cities than inside of central cities; and higher in nonfarm rural areas than
on farms [4] . Table 1.3 – Per Capita Personal Income, of Persons by Type of Metropolitan or
Nonmetropolitan Residence, 1980
From the standpoint of the worker, the possible
advantage of working in a high-wage or high-income area depends partly on how
expensive it is to live there. Most of us are aware that there are
considerable differences in the cost of living in different parts of the country
and different sizes of community. Although it is impossible to measure relative living
costs comprehensively so as to take into account all the needs and
preferences of an individual, a useful indication is provided by surveys of the
comparative cost, in different locations, of securing a specific
"standard family budget" of goods and services. Table 1.4 [4]summarizes the findings of a survey of this type.
A fairly distinct pattern of differentials appears. With few exceptions,
living costs are higher in metropolitan areas than in nonmetropolitan areas
for major kinds of expenditure. When one looks at total family consumption,
living costs in the South are clearly lower than elsewhere in both
metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas. This is attributable to the
comparatively low cost of housing and food in the South. Also, examination of
the indices for individual SMSAs reported in the survey suggests that high
housing costs are associated with large city size, rapid recent growth, and
rigorous climate. Table 1.4 – Indices of Comparative Living Costss
Based on an Intermediate Budgest for a Four-Person Family, Autumn 1980
A study of SMSA characteristics associated with
living cost for low-, moderate-, and high-income families in 38 SMSAs, using
regression analysis, found that 64 percent of the total variance in living
costs for moderate- and high-income families could be explained in terms of
three significant variables: population, location in the Southeast or
elsewhere, and the degree to which spatial expansion of the urban area was
subject to "topological and physical constraints" (for example,
water or mountain barriers) on its periphery. This last factor could be
expected to influence travel distances and costs and also land cost. Climate
did not show up as a significantly correlated characteristic, nor did size of
place in the case of low-income families [2]. A crude picture of differentials in real incomes among
metropolitan areas can be obtained by dividing the per capita personal income
for each area by the index of consumer budget costs for the same area [3]. For
the sample of metropolitan areas on which Table 10-4 is based, the real
income index so obtained is rather well correlated with per capita personal
money income, while per capita personal money income is somewhat less
strongly correlated with the index of consumer budget costs. Thus living costs tend to be high where money
incomes are high (not surprisingly, in view of the important impact of
service costs and other local labor costs on the consumer budget). But the
interbred differentials seem to be wider for money incomes than for budget costs;
so real income thus estimated is a little higher in places where money income
is high. By the same token, interbreed differentials in real income are much
smaller than those in money income. There is evidence that similar relationships prevail
also when we compare different size classes of places, [4] though it is
impossible to compare adequately the psychic satisfactions and costs that
come from living in large cities as against smaller places. References 1. U.S. Department of Labor,
Bureau of Labor Statistics, Handbook of Labor Statistics, Bulletin 2070 (Washington,
D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1980), Table 120, pp. 292-293. 2. C. T. Haworth and C. W.
Rasmussen, "Determinants of Metropolitan Cost of Living
Variations," Southern Economic Journal, 40, 2 (October 1973),
183-192. See also Richard J. Cebula, "A Note on the Impact of
Right-to-Work Laws on the Cost of Living in the United States," Urban Studies, 19,
2 (May 1982), 193-195. 3. Department of
Commerce, Regional Economic Measurement Division, "Revised County and
Metropolitan Area Personal Income," Survey of Current Business, 64,
4 (April 1982), Table 1, pp. 51-52. 3. In Julius Caesar’s Rome,
vehicles were excluded from the continuously built-up area during the
daylight hours in an effort to cope with traffic jams. Faded photographs of
Fifth Avenue in horse-and-buggy days show it crammed from curb to curb in the
rush hour. 4. For a suggested
"hierarchy of CBD land uses and land values," identifying
a series of specific business activities and the ranges of land values that
they can support, see Larry Smith, "Space for the CBD’s Functions,"
Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 27, 1 (February 1961), Table
4, p. 38. |
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