The Cannibalization of the Young: An Analysis of Labor Exploitation
Abstract
In an employee-employer relationship, an employee typically cannot fulfill all of his or her biological needs without working. This provides an advantage to the employer in setting the price of employment. Since biological needs are highly price- and income-inelastic, an employer can reduce the price of employment by negotiating a lower wage, requiring longer or worse working hours, or requiring work to be done under worse conditions than the employee would otherwise accept had he or she already fulfilled his or her biological needs. The resulting change in the slope of the demand curve for these needs results in value extracted by the employer from the employee due solely to the employee's inability to fulfill his or her biological needs without working. The rapidly intensifying exploitation of young workers by predominately older corporate shareholders via this mechanism--in addition to a high tax burden on the young to subsidize predominately older government beneficiaries while the young themselves are faced with a deteriorating safety net and declining labor protections--has resulted in a decreased real median income per unit output for young male workers, a calamitous decline in fertility in "developed" and "developing" countries alike, and an alarming decline in youth physical and mental health in the United States. Solutions to these issues are highly cost-effective but must be implemented rapidly to mitigate increasingly severe catastrophe.
Elasticity
Elasticity is a measure of the change in one variable in response to a change in another, taking into account the initial values of each variable. Specifically, it is the ratio of the percentage change in one variable to a percentage change in another. For a discrete function, the \(x\) elasticity of \(y\) is defined as:
where:
\(x_0\) and \(x_1\) are the initial and final values of \(x\), respectively, and
\(y_0\) and \(y_1\) are the initial and final values of \(y\), respectively.
For a continuous function, the \(x\) elasticity of \(y\) at \((x_0, y_0)\) is defined as:
Price Elasticity of Demand
The price elasticity of demand is a measure of the change in demand for a good or service in response to a change in price, taking into account the initial demand for the good or service (\(q_0\)) and the initial price (\(p_0\)). Specifically, it is the ratio of the percentage change in demand for a good or service to a percentage change in price. For a discrete demand function, the price elasticity of demand is defined as:
where:
\(q\) is the demand for the good or service and
\(p\) is the price of the good or service.
For a continuous demand function, the price elasticity of demand is defined as:
Income Elasticity of Demand
The income elasticity of demand is a measure of the change in demand for a good or service in response to a change in income, taking into account the initial demand for the good or service (\(q_0\)) and the initial income (\(m_0\)). Specifically, it is the ratio of the percentage change in demand for a good or service to a percentage change in income. For a discrete demand function, the income elasticity of demand is defined as:
where:
\(q\) is the demand for the good or service and
\(m\) is income.
For a continuous demand function, the income elasticity of demand is defined as:
Elastic, Unit Elastic, and Inelastic Demand
For \(|\epsilon| < 1\), demand is said to be inelastic; for \(|\epsilon| = 1\), demand is said to be unit elastic; and for \(|\epsilon| > 1\), demand is said to be elastic. Demand is said to be perfectly inelastic if \(\epsilon = 0\) and perfectly elastic if \(\epsilon \to -\infty\) or \(\epsilon \to \infty\). This is summarized in the table below:
| \(\epsilon\) | Label |
|---|---|
| \(\lvert\epsilon\rvert < 1\) | Inelastic |
| \(\lvert\epsilon\rvert = 1\) | Unit elastic |
| \(\lvert\epsilon\rvert > 1\) | Elastic |
| \(\epsilon = 0\) | Perfectly inelastic |
| \(\lvert\epsilon\rvert \to \infty\) | Perfectly elastic |
Net Benefit and Opportunity Cost
Net Benefit
Let \(f(x)\) be an individual's net benefit function that takes as input an action \(x\) and produces as output the net benefit--or value--of that action for the individual, accounting for the cost, if any, of choosing that action. The net benefit function is defined as:
where:
\(b_x\) is the benefit obtained from choosing action \(x\) (without accounting for the cost of choosing action \(x\)), and
\(c_x\) is the cost incurred from choosing action \(x\).
Opportunity Cost
Suppose that an individual is faced with choosing one of two actions, action A or action B. Then, the opportunity cost of choosing action B instead of action A is \(f(A) = b_A - c_A\)--that is, the net benefit of choosing action A that is given up when choosing B instead. Thus, when an individual is faced with choosing to purchase one of two goods, good A or good B, the opportunity cost of purchasing good B instead of good A is:
where:
\(b_A\) is the benefit (value) to the individual from choosing good A, and
\(p_A\) is the cost (price) of good A.
The benefit \(b_x\) of choosing action X in the individual's net benefit function will fluctuate in accordance with increasing or decreasing quantities of goods that an individual is faced with purchasing. Suppose an individual is faced with choosing between purchasing a combination \((x, y)\) of two common consumer goods, good A and good B, with \(x\) being the amount of good A the individual will purchase and \(y\) the amount of good B. For an individual to accept a very small quantity of A--that is, very small \(x\)--the individual will typically require a disproportionately larger quantity of B--that is, very large \(y\)--to achieve the same utility (value), such that \(\Delta y > \Delta x\). That is, as \(x \to 0\), \(y \to \infty\).
Stone-Geary Utility and Utility Maximization Subject to the Budget Constraint
Stone-Geary Utility
An individual's utility function \(U(x_1, \ldots, x_n)\) takes as input \(n\) quantities \(x_1, \ldots, x_n\) of \(n\) goods, respectively, and outputs a utility--that is, a value--to the individual of possessing those goods. The Stone-Geary utility function is a standard utility function that accounts for minimum levels of consumption of goods due to subsistence (that is, the minimum level of goods that the individual must consume in order to survive). It has the form:
where:
\(z_j \geq 0\) is the minimum quantity of good \(x_j\) demanded by the individual for subsistence, and
\(a_j\) is a nonnegative weight such that \(\sum_{i=1}^n a_j = 1\).
Since Stone-Geary utility functions are well-suited to model the utility of goods that require a certain quantity for subsistence (such as water or food, for example), in this paper we will deal only with Stone-Geary utility functions. For simplicity, we will deal only with Stone-Geary utility functions of two variables \(x\) and \(y\) representing the quantities of two goods A and B, respectively:
In the Stone-Geary utility function, \(\alpha\) and \(1 - \alpha\) indicate preference for goods A and B, respectively, with increasing values indicating increasing preference and decreasing values indicating decreasing preference. Specifically, as will be shown later, \(\alpha\) is the proportion of leftover income that will be spent on good A after all susbistence expenditures have been met:
Similarly, \(1 - \alpha\) is the proportion of leftover income that will be spent on good B after all susbistence expenditures have been met:
Note that the graph of \(U(x, y)\) is a three-dimensional surface. An indifference curve is a countour line of the graph of the utility function defined by \(U(x, y) = c\) for some constant \(c\). At any point along an indifference curve, the individual is indifferent to possessing either \(x\) of good A or \(y\) of good B.
Marginal Utility
The marginal utility with respect to \(x\) (the quantity of some good X) is defined as:
As just described, typically the marginal utility of a good will decrease as the quantity possessed of that good increases and will increase as the quantity of that good decreases. That is, typically as \(x \to \infty\), \(\frac{\delta U}{\delta x} \to 0\), and as \(x \to 0^+\), \(\frac{\delta U}{\delta x} \to \infty\). When using a Stone-Geary utility function, we will assume that consumption of a good necessary for subsistence is always equal to or greater than the amount required for subsistence.
The Marginal Rate of Substitution
The marginal rate of substitution (MRS) is the slope of the indifference curve defined by the utility function and represents the rate at which an individual will trade one good for another. The MRS is defined as:
The Budget Constraint
An individual's budget constraint reflects the maximum quantity \(x\) and \(y\) of goods A and B at prices \(p_A\) and \(p_B\), respectively, that an individual can purchase given budget \(m\):
where:
\(p_A\) is the price of good A,
\(p_B\) is the price of good B, and
\(m\) is income.
Utility Maximization Subject to the Budget Constraint
The optimal bundle \((x_{\text{optimal}}, y_{\text{optimal}})\) is defined as the amounts \(x\) and \(y\) of goods A and B, respectively, that maximize utility subject to the individual's budget constraint:
When considering a Stone-Geary utility function, the MRS is:
The maximized utility subject to the budget constraint occurs when the slope of the MRS is equal to the slope of the budget constraint:
Demand Functions under Stone-Geary Utility
From the previous equation and the budget constraint, we can obtain the demand functions satisfying \(\max U(x, y) \text{\ subject to\ } p_Ax + p_By = m\):
and
As mentioned earlier, we note that from these demand functions we can derive \(p_A x\) and \(p_B y\).
These demand functions therefore determine the individual's demand for goods A and B when goods A and B are at the optimal bundle \((x_{\text{optimal}}, y_{\text{optimal}})\) for constant \(m\), \(p_A\), \(p_B\), \(z_A\), and \(z_B\).
The Effect of a Change in Price on the Price Elasticity of Demand
Monotonicity of the Price Elasticity of Demand
Suppose the opportunity cost of purchasing good B suddenly increases because the net benefit to an individual of purchasing good A increases from \(f_0(A)\) to \(f_1(A)\), such that \(f_1(A) > f_0(A)\). We can model this by increasing the price of good B from \(p_{B0}\) prior to the net benefit increase of purchasing good A to \(p_{B1}\) after the net benefit increase of purchasing good A. Let the individual's utility function be a Stone-Geary utility function. Then, the individual's demand function for good B before the increase in net benefit is
and the individual's demand function for good B after the increase in net benefit is
So above, we have defined \(p_{B0} < p_{B1}\), since the opportunity cost of purchasing good B, modeled as an increase in the price of good B, is increasing. Then, from the equations for \(y_0\) and \(y_1\), we get:
and
The price elasticities of demand \(\epsilon_{p_{B0}, y_0}\) and \(\epsilon_{p_{B1}, y_1}\) for good B prior to and after the price increase, respectively, are:
and
where \(y = g(p)\) is the demand for good B at price \(p\).
Letting \(\epsilon_{p_{B0}, y_0} < \epsilon_{p_{B1}, y_1}\), we get:
which simplifies to
Therefore, under a Stone-Geary utility function the price elasticity of demand is monotonically increasing (that is, \(x \leq y \implies f(x) \leq f(y)\)) and thus an increase in the price of good B will increase the price elasticity of demand for good B. This holds true for any good under a Stone-Geary utility function.
Limits of Price Elasticity of Demand
Next, note that \(\epsilon_{p, y} \to -1\) as \(p \to 0^+\) and \(\epsilon_{p, y} \to 0\) as \(p \to \infty\):
and
Therefore, \(\epsilon_{p, y} \in (-1, 0)\) and \(|\epsilon_{p, y}| < 1\) (note that, because \(p \neq 0\), \(\epsilon_{p, y} \neq -1\) and \(|\epsilon_{p, y}| \neq 1\)).
Concerning \(|\epsilon_{p, y}|\), note that \(|\epsilon_{p, y}| \to 1\) as \(p \to 0^+\) and \(|\epsilon_{p, y}| \to 0\) as \(p \to \infty\). That is:
and
Therefore, under a Stone-Geary utility function the price elasticity of demand for a good (with a nonzero price) will always be inelastic and will become more inelastic with increasing price.
The Effect of a Change in Income on the Income Elasticity of Demand
Causes of Increasing Income Elasticity of Demand
Now consider the income elasticity of demand for good B:
where \(y = h(m)\) is the demand for good B at income \(m\).
Let:
where again \(y = h(m)\) is the demand for good B at income \(m\).
Then we get:
which simplifies to
The result is then:
Therefore, under a Stone-Geary utility function the income elasticity of demand for a good increases due to an increase in income when the proportion of subsistence expenditures (that is, income spent on subsistence levels of goods A and B) spent on subsistence levels of that good is greater than the proportion of leftover income spent on non-subsistence levels of that good.
Similarly, under a Stone-Geary utility function the income elasticity of demand for a good increases due to a decrease in income when the proportion of subsistence expenditures spent on subsistence levels of that good is less than the proportion of leftover income spent on non-subsistence levels of that good.
Causes of Decreasing Income Elasticity of Demand
Now let:
which simplifies to
The result is then:
Therefore, under a Stone-Geary utility function the income elasticity of demand for a good decreases due to an increase in income when the proportion of subsistence expenditures spent on subsistence levels of that good is less than the proportion of leftover income spent on non-subsistence levels of that good.
Similarly, under a Stone-Geary utility function the income elasticity of demand for a good decreases due to a decrease in income when the proportion of subsistence expenditures spent on subsistence levels of that good is greater than the proportion of leftover income spent on non-subsistence levels of that good.
Summary of Causes of Increasing and Decreasing Income Elasticity of Demand
These results are summarized in the following table, letting \(s_B = \frac{p_B z_B}{p_B z_B + p_A z_A}\) (note that the choice of good is arbitrary--if good A were used, then we would look at the relationship between \(\alpha\) and \(s_A\)):
| Relationship of \(1 - \alpha\) to \(s_B\) | \(\Delta m\) | \(\Delta \epsilon_{m, q}\) |
|---|---|---|
| \(1 - \alpha\) < \(s_B\) | \(\Delta m > 0\) | \(\Delta \epsilon_{m, q} > 0\) |
| \(1 - \alpha\) > \(s_B\) | \(\Delta m < 0\) | \(\Delta \epsilon_{m, q} > 0\) |
| \(1 - \alpha\) > \(s_B\) | \(\Delta m > 0\) | \(\Delta \epsilon_{m, q} < 0\) |
| \(1 - \alpha\) < \(s_B\) | \(\Delta m < 0\) | \(\Delta \epsilon_{m, q} < 0\) |
Limits of Income Elasticity of Demand
Next, note that \(\epsilon_{m, q} \to 0\) as \(m \to 0^+\) and \(\epsilon_{m, q} \to 1\) as \(m \to \infty\). That is:
and
The same holds true for \(|\epsilon_{m, q}|\):
and
Therefore, under a Stone-Geary utility function the income elasticity of demand for a good is always inelastic and may become either more elastic or more inelastic depending on the proportion of subsistence expenditures spent on subsistence levels of that good and the proportion of leftover income spent on non-subsistence levels of that good. However, as income becomes sufficiently small, the income elasticity of demand becomes more inelastic, and as income becomes sufficiently large, the income elasticity of demand becomes more elastic.
Biological Needs
Biological needs are those needs required for the survival of an organism. Increasing access to these biological needs increases an organism's probability of survival by decreasing its risk of disability and premature mortality. Naturally, by increasing the probability of an organism's survival, these needs also increase the period of time during which an organism can reproduce, thus increasing the reproductive fitness of the organism. Therefore, the motivation to acquire these needs is naturally selected for.
This paper will focus on the biological needs of humans. Those biological needs required for basic physiological processes include:
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Clean water
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Nutritious food
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Clean air
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Adequate sleep
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Physical and psychological safety
An individual requires sufficient water, food, air, sleep, and physical and psychological safety to survive. By increasing the individual's health, each of these increases reproductive fitness as well. Note that the terms "clean," "nutritious," and "adequate" above are not optional. Contaminants in water, food, or air harm the individual's health and thus increase the risk of disability and premature mortality, decreasing the probability of survival and thus decreasing the probability of reproducing. Inadequate sleep--in terms of both quantity (sufficient hours slept) and quality (sleep occurring in a safe, quiet, dark, and temperature-controlled environment)--damages the individual's health, decreases productivity, and increases the risk of harm from external sources, all of which increase the risk of disability and premature mortality and therefore threaten survival and reproduction. Obviously, increased risk of physical or psychological harm also threatens the individual's survival and reproduction as well.
Biological needs do not end there, however, as several other requirements exist for survival, including:
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Education
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Medical care
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Safe, spacious housing
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Reproduction
Each of these are essential for survival. Education is required to ensure that an individual can work to acquire other biological needs such as food and housing for himself or herself, his or her partner, and their children. Education is also required to avoid danger, attract a partner, and raise children. Medical care is obviously required to prevent disability and premature mortality. Safe, spacious housing is required for numerous reasons, including for the individual to sleep safely (obtaining adequate sleep in the absence of physical or psychological harm from threats in the environment) and raise children.
As a result of natural selection, a healthy individual will typically be motivated to reproduce to pass on his or her genes to offspring. Of course, some individuals do not reproduce and this does not appear to impact their survival. However, because reproduction is essential for life it is a biological need on a population level and the naturally-selected drive to reproduce is a biological need on both the individual (for the majority of heterosexual individuals) and the population levels.
The opportunity cost of forgoing a biological need is extremely large because the result of forgoing such a need significantly increases the risk of disability and premature mortality, thus signficantly decreasing the probability of survival and reproduction. Except for the opportunity cost of forgoing other biological needs, there are very few actions for which the opportunity cost of forgoing such an action would rival the large cost of forgoing a biological need. Thus, from the previous discussion, if we assume that any given individual has a Stone-Geary utlity function then it must be the case that the price elasticity of demand for biological needs is extremely inelastic. As expected, existing research supports the inelasticity of biological needs such as food,1 water,2 and housing3.
Exchange of Labor for Biological Needs
In an employee-employer relationship, an employee and employer enter into an agreement in which the employee agrees to exchange his or her labor for a wage. As part of this transaction, the employee accepts not only the benefit that is the wage but also, if applicable, the cost of poor working conditions or long working hours. In addition, the employee forgoes other actions and thus must take into account the opportunity cost of their employment. Most employees cannot afford to meet all of their biological needs without work, while employers typically have more resources to obtain these needs due to the capital they possess. This imbalance gives employers a major advantage over employees in the negotiation of a wage, hours worked, and working conditions.
Suppose that an employee has a Stone-Geary utility function. As the previous discussion shows, since demand for biological needs is highly inelastic a worker will pay a higher price in order to obtain them. As the resources that an employee has access to in order to obtain their biological needs without work decreases, he or she will be able to satisfy fewer of these needs. Therefore, the opportunity cost of forgoing work to acquire the resources (money) necessary to obtain these needs--equivalent to forgoing the biological needs the employee lacks without work--increases.
From the previous discussion, since the price elasticity of demand for biological needs is extremely inelastic, decreasing resources (money) to acquire these needs without work will result in the employee paying increasing prices for these needs. In an employee-employer relationship, this higher price is reflected in an employee's acceptance of a lower wage, worse working hours, and worse working conditions than he or she would otherwise accept. Once again, the fewer resources an employee has available to him or her to fulfill his or her biological needs without work, the more the employee will offer up to the employer during the negotiation over wage, hours worked, and working conditions.
A similar effect is seen from the previous discussion of income elasticity of demand. If the proportion of subsistence income an employee spends on biological needs is greater than the proportion of leftover income he or she spends on those needs, then as the employee's income decreases the income elasticity of demand for those biological needs becomes more inelastic. Furthermore, as an employee's income becomes sufficiently small, the income elasticity of demand for his or her biological needs becomes more inelastic.
The value an employer extracts from an employee in these negotiations due to the employee's lack of resources to satisfy his or her biological needs without work is equivalent to the difference between the area under the more inelastic demand curve that results from scarcity and the area under the more elastic demand curve that would result if the employee had the resources necessary to fulfill all of his or her biological needs without needing to work. Let \(y_0 = f_0(p)\) be the more elastic demand curve due to sufficient resources and \(y_1 = f_1(p)\) be the more inelastic demand curve due to scarcity. Then, the value extracted by an employer from an employee during the negotiation of a wage, hours worked, and working conditions is:
where:
\(p_E\) is the equilibrium price (the price at which the supply and demand curves intersect), and
\(p\) is the price.
When \(v_{extracted} > 0\), the employer has extracted value from the employee through the employee's need to accept a lower wage, worse working hours, or worse working conditions than he or she otherwise would in order to survive and reproduce due to his or her lack of resources to obtain biological needs without work.
A lower wage can take the form of decreased hourly pay for a given job, such as in the case that one employee with means is paid more for the same job than another employee who has access to fewer resources. A lower wage can also take the form of an equal or decreased hourly wage in a job that requires more hours to be worked. Finally, a lower wage can also take the form of underemployment, a situation in which an employee qualified for a higher paying job requiring higher skill is forced to work a lower paying job requiring lower skill. Worse working hours can include working during holidays or overnight, working long shifts, working a fixed schedule of disparate shifts (such as working mornings some days and evenings other days), working on-call (without a fixed schedule), and working mandatory overtime. Poor working conditions can include conditions that are hazardous to physical or psychological health, such as conditions that are cramped, poorly ventilated, or lack enough sunlight. Working conditions that specifically harm psychological health also include those in which the employee is not treated with the dignity deserved (and required for psychological health) by a human, such as sex work that is coerced or underpaid.
Labor Exploitation and the "Cannibalization of the Young"
In a capitalist system in which shareholders own corporations that hire employees, shareholders (the employers) extract wealth produced by the company's employees without themselves having to work for this wealth. If there are not regulatory mechanisms in place to ensure that employees are guaranteed their basic biological needs, shareholders, in the absence of morality, will tend to extract as much wealth as possible from the value of their employees' labor. This can create a vicious cycle in which shareholders extract increasing amounts of value from employees, decreasing the ability of employees to increase their own wealth and thus escape the cycle by being able to afford more of their biological needs without work and therefore being able to negotiate better wages, working hours, and working conditions.
All the while, the shareholders--who are disproportionately older, since they have had more time to accumulate wealth than younger people--increase the risk of harm and premature mortality to employees--who will be disproportionately younger--by extracting increasing amounts of wealth from them. As more wealth is extracted from the young by the old, the young will see decreasing health and increasing premature mortality. Signs of decreasing youth health include increasing burden of physical disease and mental illness, an increasing rate of substance abuse, an increasing rate of lonliness (due to a decreasing rate of socialization), and an increasing rate of suicide within this population. Just as alarmingly, another sign of decreasing youth health is decreasing fertility. That is, increasing extraction of wealth from the young by the old prevents the births of future children. Collectively, these processes may be described as the "cannibalization of the young."
Disturbingly, this process is playing out in developed countries on a global scale. The wealth of those older than 60 continues to accelerate at a rapid pace while the wealth of those younger than 40 continues to decline or remain stagnant. This is despite the fact that young people today are more educated--especially in highly economically productive fields such as science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM)--and more productive than older people were when they were young employees themselves. As such, the real median wage of young males would be expected to increase. Instead, largely due to the siphoning of wealth by the older population, it has actually decreased (young males are used for comparison, since during the past century it was common for young females to work part-time or not at all instead of seeking employment). When compared to output, this decline is even more striking.
Let output be defined as:
where:
\(\phi\) is the total factor productivity, and
\(t\) is the time worked.
Then, the real median wage (RMI) per unit output indicates real compensation for some unit of output, allowing for comparison across years while taking into account inflation and fluctuations in productivity and the number of hours worked in a year. RMI per unit output is defined as:
where \(\bar{w}_\text{real}\) is the real median wage.
As shown by Figure 1, RMI per unit output for males aged 25 to 34 rose from 1960 to 1973 and remained elevated until 1979 before plummetting. Although small recoveries were made in the 1990s and 2010s, RMI per unit output for males is drastically below even its value in 1960 and continues to decline. This is despite the fact that productivity has drastically increased and hours worked have fallen only slightly, yielding a large increase in output.4 The real median wage has not kept up, thus much of the value of the increased output must be going elsewhere--specifically, to shareholders.
Figure 1: RMI per Unit Output Ages 25 to 34, Scaled. RMI per unit output has decreased for males aged 25 to 34 since 1960, despite increased total factor productivity and only slightly decreased working hours. Overall RMI per unit output has slightly increased due to increased female full-time employment and increased female attainment of higher education.
Moreover, RMI per unit output demonstrates the flaws of overreliance on RMI as an indicator of economic prosperity. As shown in Figure 1, RMI may change when a large demographic changes the way in which it engages with the labor market. In this example, RMI increased as women increasingly transitioned from part-time work or no work to full-time work and from jobs requiring a high school degree or less to jobs requiring more advanced education.5 Therefore, over the past several decades, RMI has largely captured increasing engagement of women with the labor force rather than broadly increasing economic prosperity for most workers. In fact, as the declining RMI per output for young males shows, the economic benefits reaped over the past several decades have largely been captured by corporate shareholders via labor exploitation. This has, in combination with increasing child care costs and high taxes on the youth to subsidize the elderly, drastically reduced fertility in the United States.6 The same mechanism has drastically reduced the fertility rate in most "developed" nations as well as many "developing" nations.7 In this way, the human race is being extinguished for the benefit of predominately older corporate shareholders and government beneficiaries. Notably, in the United States this crisis has been accompanied by markedly increased youth morbidity and mortality.8 Humanity is "cannibalizing" its young, to its own demise.
Solutions to this crisis exist and are highly cost-effective. These solutions have been proposed in a separate article.9 The implementation of these solutions is extremely urgent in order to mitigate the catastrophic damage to the human population and the planet that has already been initiated and will severely worsen without appropriate and swift action.
References
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Andreyeva et al., 2010 ↩
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Bruno & Jessoe, 2021 ↩
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Albouy et al., 2016 ↩
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University of Groningen, n.d.-a; University of Groningen, n.d.-b ↩
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U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2022 ↩
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Lino et al., 2017; Madgavkar et al., 2025; United Nations, 2025 ↩
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United Nations, 2025 ↩
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Van Hout, 2025 ↩