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on Demographic Economics |
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Issue of 2011‒09‒05
eight papers chosen by Clarence Nkengne Tsimpo University of Montreal and World Bank Group |
| By: | Peter Haan; Victoria Prowse |
| Abstract: | How can public pension systems be reformed to ensure fiscal stability in the face of increasing life expectancy? To address this pressing open question in public finance, we estimate a life-cycle model in which the optimal employment, retirement and consumption decisions of forward-looking individuals depend, inter alia, on life expectancy and the design of the public pension system. We calculate that, in the case of Germany, the fiscal consequences of the 6.4 year increase in age 65 life expectancy anticipated to occur over the 40 years that separate the 1942 and 1982 birth cohorts can be offset by either an increase of 4.34 years in the full pensionable age or a cut of 37.7% in the per-year value of public pension benefits. Of these two distinct policy approaches to coping with the fiscal consequences of improving longevity, increasing the full pensionable age generates the largest responses in labor supply and retirement behavior. |
| Keywords: | Life expectancy, public pension reform, retirement, employment, life-cycle models, consumption, tax and transfer system |
| JEL: | D91 J11 J22 J26 J64 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp396&r=dem |
| By: | Anja Sautmann |
| Abstract: | If women marry younger than men, increased population growth causes a sur- plus of women in the marriage market. This paper introduces search frictions into a matching model with transferable utility and age-dependent match payos to study if this so-called marriage squeeze has caused a dowry \in ation" in India. Using data from Karnataka it is shown that the observed shifts in the age distributions and sex ratio of unmarried men and women during the marriage squeeze lead to higher dowries conditional on the partners' ages. A GMM estimate of the model parameters suggests that average dowries have increased as well. |
| Keywords: | # |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bro:econwp:2011-12&r=dem |
| By: | Valentina Calderón; Margarita Gáfaro; Ana María Ibáñez |
| Abstract: | Civilian displacement is a common phenomenon in developing countries confronted with internal conflict. While displacement directly affects forced migrants, it also contributes to deteriorating labor conditions of vulnerable groups in receiving communities. For the displaced population, the income losses are substantial, and as they migrate to cities, they usually end up joining the informal labor force. Qualitative evidence reveals that displaced women are better suited to compete in urban labor markets, as their labor experience is more relevant with respect to certain urban low-skilled occupations. Our study uses this exogenous change in female labor force participation to test how it affects female bargaining power within the household. Our results show that female displaced women work longer hours, earn similar wages and contribute in larger proportions to household earnings relative to rural women who remain in rural areas. However, as measured by several indicators, their greater contribution to households’ earnings does not strengthen their bargaining power. Most notably, domestic violence have increased among displaced women. The anger and frustration of displaced women also increases the level of violence directed at children. Because the children of displaced families have been the direct victims of conflict and domestic violence, the intra-generational transmission of violence is highly likely. |
| Date: | 2011–07–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000089:008912&r=dem |
| By: | Yukawa, Shiho |
| Abstract: | Using data from the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers (JPSC)1994-2006, we examine the effect of child birth on fathers’ wage rates and labor supply in Japan. We also compare effects of fatherhood among different cohorts by dividing the JPSC sample into two birth year cohorts (born in or before 1960 and born after 1960). We find that birth of child significantly increase hourly wage rates by 2.8 percents and annual work by 65 hours. Comparing with results in the U.S. (Lundberg and Rose 2002), the effect of child birth on labor supply is large but the effect on wage rates are relatively small in Japan. We also find that child birth have different impact on labor market outcome between the early and the later cohorts. In the early cohort, birth of child significantly increases wage rates but has no significant effect on labor supply. On the contrary, birth of child does not increases wage rates but significantly increases labor supply in the later cohort. Finally, we examine how gender difference of children matters. Although the impact of gender difference is not so large, the effect of birth of sons is larger than the effect of birth of daughters. |
| Keywords: | child birth; labor supply; wage premium |
| JEL: | J13 C23 J22 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:33049&r=dem |
| By: | Anna Baranowska (Institute of Statistics and Demography, Warsaw School of Economics.) |
| Abstract: | The share of out-of-wedlock births used to be small in Poland till the beginning of the nineties, but within the last two decades it has increased fourfold. So far, there have been no attempts to identify the mechanisms beyond this change. This paper presents the first systematic evidence on changes in proportion of out-of-wedlock births in rural and urban areas of Poland in 1985-2009. The increase of proportion of out-of-wedlock births may be driven by two different processes. First, it may be a consequence of changing balance between marital and premarital conceptions. Second, the share of out-of-wedlock births may rise due to a drop in incidence of shotgun weddings. The aim of this paper is to compare the contribution of these two processes based data from Birth Register. The decomposition of trends in non-marital childbearing is carried out for rural and urban areas separately because the local community context can be expected to affect both fertility and nuptiality behaviour. The results suggest that in the periods when the proportion out-of-wedlock births in Poland was increasing most rapidly, this increase was related mainly to a decline in the share of women marring in the event of premarital conception. Specifically, between 2000-2003, in towns the declining propensity for legitimation was responsible for 87% of the rise in nonmarital childbearing, whereas in rural areas only 77% of change in proportion of out-ofwedlock births could be ascribed to this factor. Since the probability that a premarital conception led to a shotgun marriages remained higher in villages than in the towns, out-ofwedlock births were spreading at higher pace in urban than in rural areas. |
| Keywords: | nonmarital childbearing, out-of-wedlock births, shotgun weddings, rural population |
| JEL: | J11 J13 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:isd:wpaper:27&r=dem |
| By: | Marta Styrc (Institute of Statistics and Demography, Warsaw School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | Marital stability is an important topic in studies on family because of its meaning for fertility and for the well-being of children and partners. The rise of the divorce rate observed in Poland since the second half of 1990s raises a question about factors correlated with the marital disruption risk. In relevant research one can distinguish between those factors which are related to partners’ characteristics, to features of union and to the context. The paper starts with some theoretical considerations on the divorce correlates. Some references to empirical findings regarding other countries are presented as well. Next, the event history regression of first marriages disruption is estimated. The model is specified as a piecewise constant exponential model with proportional relative risks. The data used comes from the Education, Family and Employment Survey from 2006. Most of the estimation results are consistent with findings for other countries: marriages with premarital children or contracted while expecting a child, marriages of women brought up in bigger cities and those of employed women were less stable. The change of the educational gradient of divorce is an important finding – in the studies pertaining to the period before the 1990s the women with higher education showed a higher risk of divorce. In the current study, which refers to the years since the mid-1980s to 2006, marriages of best educated women have the lowest risk of disruption. Surprisingly, marriages preceded by cohabitation do not have an elevated disruption risk compared to direct marriages. Children’s impact on the disruption risk is lower than expected – only marriages with very small children (0-2 years old) are more stable, parity and presence of older children does not make a difference as compared with couples without children. In conclusions, some suggestions have been formulated regarding the data sources for the future research on unions’ stability. |
| Keywords: | divorce, marital disruption, stability of marriage, first marriages, children. |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:isd:wpaper:36&r=dem |
| By: | Brilli, Ylenia (Catholic University Milan); Del Boca, Daniela (University of Turin); Pronzato, Chiara (University of Essex) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the effects of public childcare availability in Italy on mothers' working status and children's scholastic achievements. We use a newly available dataset containing individual standardized test scores of pupils attending second grade of primary school in 2008-09 in conjunction with data on public childcare availability. Public childcare coverage in Italy is scarce (12.7 percent versus the OECD average of 30 percent) and the service is “rationed”: each municipality allocates the available slots according to eligibility criteria. We contribute to the existing literature taking into account rationing in public childcare access and the functioning of the childcare market. Our estimates indicate that childcare availability has positive and significant effects on both mothers' working status and children's language test scores. The effects are stronger when the degree of rationing is high and for low educated mothers and children living in lower income areas of the country. |
| Keywords: | childcare, female employment, child cognitive outcomes |
| JEL: | J13 D1 H75 |
| Date: | 2011–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5918&r=dem |
| By: | Brian A. Jacob; Jens Ludwig; Douglas L. Miller |
| Abstract: | In this paper we estimate the causal effects on child mortality from moving into less distressed neighborhood environments. We match mortality data to information on every child in public housing that applied for a housing voucher in Chicago in 1997 (N=11,848). Families were randomly assigned to the voucher wait list, and only some families were offered vouchers. The odds ratio for the effects of being offered a housing voucher on overall mortality rates is equal to 1.11 for all children (95% CI 0.54 to 2.10), 1.50 for boys (95% CI 0.72 to 2.89) and 0.00 for girls – that is, the voucher offer is perfectly protective for mortality for girls (95% CI 0 to 0.79). Our paper also addresses a methodological issue that may arise in studies of low-probability outcomes – perfect prediction by key explanatory variables. |
| JEL: | H75 I12 R38 |
| Date: | 2011–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17369&r=dem |