Barth, Erling;
Bryson, Alexander;
Dale-Olsen, Harald;
(2025)
Turning non-members into members: Do public subsidies to union membership matter?
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization
, 229
, Article 106855. 10.1016/j.jebo.2024.106855.
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Abstract
Using linked employer-employee data for Norway's private sector we estimate the impact of changes in tax subsidies for union membership on individuals’ membership probabilities. Increased subsidisation of the union members increases union take-up, while increased union fees reduce the demand for membership. The subsidy elasticity of demand for union membership was 0.29 in 2012, though effects are heterogeneous across workers. In the absence of the hikes in tax subsidies and holding workforce composition constant aggregate private sector union membership density would have fallen by 5 percentage points between 2001 and 2012. The elasticity of union membership with respect to subsidies is higher in segments of the labour market where unions have low representation in the first place, such as among temporary workers, youth, immigrants, and among workers in low-wage firms.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Turning non-members into members: Do public subsidies to union membership matter? |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.jebo.2024.106855 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2024.106855 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © The Author(s), 2025. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
| Keywords: | Trade unions, Union membership, Wages, Tax subsidies |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Social Research Institute |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10201063 |
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