Tyler Cowen: belief

Transcript context

…A large number of people in Ethiopia were taking these jobs. The factory jobs were their social safety net. They were able to make more money doing their own business or working for a firm or working even in temporary wage labor, but all of these things were risky and volatile. So when that business went south, when the wage labor temporarily went away, with those three months of your life, you’d go work for the factory if you happen to need cash. Then you would go, and you would be looking for something better, and you would find it, and after a few months, you would leave. This was the social safety net — it was working in factories. The fieldwork I once did in Mexico, I also found that most people didn’t want these jobs. Two factors I found that drove some people to take them. The first was just extreme boredom with rural life. The other was women being quite unhappy with all of their options where they were — in some cases, possibly even being hit or abused and just wanting a way out. This was one possible ticket. Are those possible motives for Ethiopians? Those were possible motives. I wouldn’t say they were the most common motives in this group. Most of these firms weren’t in really rural areas. A lot of the women — it was 80 percent women in our sample — had a lot of other options. The thing I updated on most of all was the high quality of people’s options. I had a very low opinion of their options. The thing that I learned as a result of this was mostly that the options for these young women were much better than I expected.…

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