Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

8-1975

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Agricultural Economics

Major Professor

James G. Snell

Abstract

The State of Tennessee has generally lagged behind the national standard of economic growth and prosperity. However, the gap has narrowed during the decade of the 50's and 60's. The labor force has been a dominant factor behind the state economic growth during this period. In spite of this fact, studies on the subject of quantitative measurement of underemployment of labor force at the county level of the state, particularly on a periodic basis, are rare in the available literature. The main concern of this study has been an attempt to define, and isolate underemployment as a specific dimension of manpower study, quantifying it in terms of man labor work units unutilized and specify-ing the number of factors affecting this aspect of labor force utiliza-tion in the State of Tennessee in two time period 1960 and 1970. More specifically, the objective has been a two-stage estimation of the state male and female labor force underemployment by county in the above two time periods. The data used in this study were obtained entirely from the secondary sources. In the first stage, underemployment of the state male and female labor force by county were estimated mathematically for the year 1970. This was based on Williams and Glasgow's technique used by U.S.D.A. in estimating underemployment of the male and female labor force by county for the entire United States for the year 1960. In the second stage, a regression model was applied where the mathematical estimate of underemployment for the year 1960 and 1970 were used as the dependent variable and an alternative set of variables were selected as the estimating or independent variables. The mathematical estimate showed that female labor force underemployment has increased in all 95 counties of the state from the year 1960 to 1970 compared to the increase in 35 counties for male labor force. This was due to the fact that female labor force income earning capacity attributed to the factors such as age-color mix, educational status, labor force participation status and employment status has increased in more counties of the state than the increase for male labor force income earning capacity. The outcome of the second stage estimate confirms the result of the first stage which was an increase in underemployment rate for female labor force from 1960 to 1970. This was reflected in the changes in size and magnitude of the coefficients of the first group of independent variables. However, in general the statistical model for male labor force performed very respectably in terms of R2, and standard error of estimate and overall level of significance. The statistical test for any structural change between the pairs of the regression equations of the second-stage estimate model shows that there was no structural difference between the year 1960 and 1970 least square estimate of the male labor force, while the structure of the least square estimate of underemployment for the female labor force has changed during this period. The test also shows that there was no structural difference between the male and female labor force underemployment estimate in 1960> while the structure of the least square estimate of underemployment was different between male and female labor force in 1970.

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