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on Demographic Economics |
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Issue of 2013‒05‒05
nineteen papers chosen by Clarence Nkengne Tsimpo University of Montreal and World Bank Group |
| By: | Konstantin Yanovsky (Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy); Daniel Shestakov (Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy) |
| Abstract: | Basic hypothesis tested in the paper: government interventions into traditional functions of the family became an important factor of the recent family crisis: lower marriage rates, higher divorce rates and lower birthrate in the highly qualified and civic responsible middle class taxpayers. The data for statistical test: the Panel of 17 old Democracies contains observations before pension reforms (since XIX century) till nowadays. Mandatory pension insurance in combination with the life expectancy growth turned pensions into budget liability to the growing share of the population and with considerable lag (15-20 years) could lead to the fertility reduction (because children are taxed for “general good” now and less able to serve as a “retirement saving” for their own parents – see Friedman). Universal suffrage and emergence of the left parties create and maintain a situation under which most of family functions come to be performed by Nanny State. That could reduce a demand for marriage. The governmental regulations and enforcement practices provoke wives to initiate conflicts with their husbands, poor spouse with rich. “Best interest of the child” concept incites children to initiate conflict with parents. As a result of the latter case analysis and statistical test the basic hypothesis has not be rejected. |
| Keywords: | Family, Family crisis, birthrate, divorce rate, mandatory pension insurance, best interest of the child, women, universal suffrage |
| JEL: | D72 J71 K36 N40 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gai:wpaper:0061&r=dem |
| By: | Angelov, Nikolay (IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy); Johansson, Per (IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy); Lindahl, Erica (IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy) |
| Abstract: | This study investigates possible reasons for the gender difference in sickness absence. We estimate both short- and long-term effects of parenthood in a within-couple analysis based on the timing of parenthood. We find that after entering parenthood, women increase their sickness absence by between 0.5 days per month (during the child's third year) and 0.85 days per month (during year 17) more than their spouse. By investigating possible explanations for the observed effect, we conclude that the effect mainly stems from higher home commitment, which reduces women's labour market attachment and, in turn, increases female sickness absence. |
| Keywords: | Double burden; health investment; household work; labour market work; moral hazard; parenthood; sickness insurance; work absence |
| JEL: | C23 D13 I19 J22 |
| Date: | 2013–04–17 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2013_009&r=dem |
| By: | Fatih Guvenen; Michelle Rendall |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we study the role of education as insurance against a bad marriage. Historically, due to disparities in earning power and education across genders, married women often found themselves in an economically vulnerable position, and had to suffer one of two fates in a bad marriage: either they get divorced (assuming it is available) and struggle as low-income single mothers, or they remain trapped in the marriage. In both cases, education can provide a route to emancipation for women. To investigate this idea, we build and estimate an equilibrium search model with education, marriage/divorce/remarriage, and household labor supply decisions. A key feature of the model is that women bear a larger share of the divorce burden, mainly because they are more closely tied to their children relative to men. Our focus on education is motivated by the fact that divorce laws typically allow spouses to keep the future returns from their human capital upon divorce (unlike their physical assets), making education a good insurance against divorce risk. However, as women further their education, the earnings gap between spouses shrinks, leading to more unstable marriages and, in turn, further increasing demand for education. The framework generates powerful amplification mechanisms, which lead to a large rise in divorce rates and a decline in marriage rates (similar to those observed in the US data) from relatively modest exogenous driving forces. Further, in the model, women overtake men in college attainment during the 1990s, a feature of the data that has proved challenging to explain. Our counterfactual experiments indicate that the divorce law reform of the 1970s played an important role in all of these trends, explaining more than one-quarter of college attainment rate of women post-1970s and one-half of the rise in labor supply for married women. |
| Keywords: | Marriage ; Women - Education |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedmwp:704&r=dem |
| By: | Elizabeth Ananat; Anna Gassman-Pines; Christina M. Gibson-Davis |
| Abstract: | We estimate the effects of economic downturns on the birth rates of 15- to 19-year-olds, using county-level business closings and layoffs in North Carolina over 1990-2010 as a plausibly exogenous source of variation in the strength of the local economy. We find little effect of job losses on the white teen birth rate. For black teens, however, job losses to 1% of the working-age population decrease the birth rate by around 2%. Birth declines start five months after the job loss and then last for over a year. Linking the timing of job losses and conceptions suggests that black teen births decline due to increased terminations and perhaps also changes in pre-pregnancy behaviors; national data on risk behaviors also provide evidence that black teens reduce sexual activity and increase contraception use in response to job losses. Job losses seven to nine months after conception do not affect teen birth rates, indicating that teens do not anticipate job losses and lending confidence that job losses are “shocks” that can be viewed as quasi-experimental variation. We also find evidence that relatively advantaged black teens disproportionately abort after job losses, implying that the average child born to a black teen in the wake of job loss is relatively more disadvantaged. |
| JEL: | J13 J65 |
| Date: | 2013–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:19003&r=dem |
| By: | Jason M. Lindo; Jessamyn Schaller; Benjamin Hansen |
| Abstract: | Although a huge literature spanning several disciplines documents an association between poverty and child abuse, researchers have not found persuasive evidence that economic downturns increase abuse, despite their impacts on family income. In this paper, we address this seeming contradiction. Using county-level child abuse data spanning 1996 to 2009 from the California Department of Justice, we estimate the extent to which a county's reported abuse rate diverges from its trend when its economic conditions diverge from trend, controlling for statewide annual shocks. The results of this analysis indicate that overall measures of economic conditions are not strongly related to rates of abuse. However, focusing on overall measures of economic conditions masks strong opposing effects of economic conditions facing males and females: male layoffs increase rates of abuse whereas female layoffs reduce rates of abuse. These results are consistent with a theoretical framework that builds on family-time-use models and emphasizes differential risks of abuse associated with a child's time spent with different caregivers. |
| JEL: | I10 J13 J16 J63 K42 |
| Date: | 2013–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:18994&r=dem |
| By: | Olivier Bargain; Olivier Donni; Prudence Kwenda (Aix-Marseille Université and IZA; THEMA, Universite de Cergy-Pontoise; University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa)) |
| Abstract: | Poverty measures in developing countries often ignore the distribution of resources within families and the gains from joint consumption. In this paper, we estimate the allocation process and adult economies of scale in households from Côte d'Ivoire using a collective model of household consumption. Identification relies on the observation of adult-specific goods, as in the Rothbarth method, and a joint estimation on couples and singles. Results show that children's shares are small and decline quickly with household size. It results that child poverty, measured on the basis of individual allocations within families, is much larger than in traditional measures ignoring intrahousehold inequality. Adult poverty is smaller because parents are highly compensated by the scale economies due to joint consumption |
| Keywords: | Collective Model, Engel Curves, Rothbarth Method, Sharing rule, Scale Economies, Equivalence Scales, Indifference Scales. |
| JEL: | D11 D12 I31 J12 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ema:worpap:2013-23&r=dem |
| By: | Laun, Tobias (Department of Economics, Uppsala University); Wallenius, Johanna (Dept. of Economics, Stockholm School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | In this paper we study the role of social insurance, namely old-age pensions, disability insurance and healthcare, in accounting for the differing labor supply patterns of older individuals across OECD countries. To this end, we develop a life cycle model of labor supply and health with heterogeneous agents. The key features of the framework are: (1) people choose when to stop working, and when/if to apply for disability and pension benefits, (2) the awarding of disability insurance benefits is imperfectly correlated with health, and (3) people can partially insure against health shocks by investing in health, the cost of which is dependent on health insurance coverage. We find that the incentives faced by older workers differ hugely across countries. In fact, based solely on differences in social insurance programs, the model predicts even more cross-country variation in the employment rates of people aged 55-64 than we observe in the data. |
| Keywords: | Life cycle; Retirement; Disability insurance; Health |
| JEL: | E24 J22 J26 |
| Date: | 2013–04–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:hastef:0744&r=dem |
| By: | Raluca Prelipceanu (University of Evry and University of Paris Est Créteil) |
| Abstract: | Our paper sets forth two possible explanations for the fall in female labour force participation in Romania. The first explanation focuses on the increase in temporary labour migration rates, while the second relies on the existence of gender norms. We consider the existence of a social norm that sets the participation of women into household production. We test these assumptions on a 10 percent sample of the Romanian 2002 census. The results show the existence of important differences between women who do not work at all, those who do not move in the labour market and those who move for work, be it within the country or abroad. They also prove the importance of social norms for women who work in their residential locality and for those who temporarily migrate abroad for work. |
| Keywords: | Labour market, Household production, Social norms, Temporary international migration, Internal labour mobility |
| JEL: | D13 J16 J22 J61 R23 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eve:wpaper:13-08&r=dem |
| By: | Aaron George Grech |
| Abstract: | Though the main benchmark used to assess pension reforms continues to be the expected resulting fall in future government spending, the impact of policy changes on pension adequacy is increasingly coming to the fore. As yet, there does not seem to be a broad consensus in policymaking circles and academic literature on what constitutes the best measure of pension adequacy. While various indicators have been developed and utilised, no single measure appears to offer a clear indication of the extent to which reforms will impact on the achievement of pension system goals. Many indicators appear ill-suited to study the effective impact of reforms, particularly those that change the nature of the pension system from defined benefit to defined contribution. Existing measures are frequently hard to interpret as they do not have an underlying benchmark which allows their current or projected value to be assessed as adequate or inadequate. Currently used pension adequacy indicators tend to be point-in-time measures which ignore the impact of benefit indexation rules. They also are unaffected by very important factors, such as changes in the pension age and in life expectancy. This tends to make existing indicators minimise the impact of systemic reforms on the poverty alleviation and income replacement functions of pension systems. The emphasis on assumptions which are very unrepresentative of real-life labour market conditions also makes current indicators deceptive, particularly in relation to outcomes for women and those on low incomes. This paper posits that these defects can be remedied by using adequacy indicators based on estimates of pension wealth (i.e. the total projected flow of pension benefits through retirement) calculated using more realistic labour market assumptions. These measures are used to give a better indication of the effective impact of pension reforms enacted since the 1990s in ten major European countries. They suggest that these reforms have decreased generosity significantly, but that the poverty alleviation function remains strong in those countries where minimum pensions were improved. However, moves to link benefits to contributions have raised clear adequacy concerns for women and for those on low incomes which policymakers should consider and tackle. |
| Keywords: | Social Security and Public Pensions, Retirement, Poverty, Retirement Policies |
| JEL: | H55 I38 J26 |
| Date: | 2013–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:sticas:/172&r=dem |
| By: | Suguru Mizunoya (UNICEF); Sophie Mitra (Fordham University, Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines differences in employment rates between persons with and without disabilities in 15 developing countries using the World Health Survey. We find that people with disabilities have lower employment rates than persons without disabilities in nine countries. Across countries, disability gaps in employment rates are more often found for men than women. The largest disability gap in employment rates is found for persons with multiple disabilities. For countries with a disability gap, results from a logistic decomposition suggest that observable characteristics of persons with/without disabilities do not explain most of the gap. |
| Keywords: | disability, employment, self-employment, developing countries, logit decomposition |
| JEL: | J14 |
| Date: | 2012 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:frd:wpaper:dp2012_03&r=dem |
| By: | John Schmitt; Janelle Jones |
| Abstract: | A series of earlier CEPR reports documented a substantial decline over the last three decades in the share of “good jobs” in the U.S. economy. This fall-off in job quality took place despite a large increase in the educational attainment and age of the workforce, as well as the productivity of the average U.S. worker. This report evaluates the likely impact of several policies that seek to address job quality, including universal health insurance, a universal retirement system (over and above Social Security), a large increase in college attainment, a large increase in unionization, and gender pay equity. |
| Keywords: | good jobs, retirement, pensions, health insurance, wages, labor, education, bad jobs, gender, pay equity |
| JEL: | J J3 J31 J32 J38 J5 J1 J11 J15 I I2 I24 I25 |
| Date: | 2012–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:epo:papers:2013-09&r=dem |
| By: | Ludovica Gambaro; Kitty Stewart; Jane Waldfogel |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how the quality of formal early childhood education and care is associated with children's background. By using different indicators of quality, the research also explored how the relationship varies depending on the way quality is measured. The analysis combines information from three administrative datasets - the Early Years Census, the Schools Census and the Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (Ofsted) dataset on inspections (2010-11). The results suggest that children from disadvantaged background have access to better qualified staff. However, services catering for more disadvantaged children are more segregated and receive poorer quality ratings from Ofsted, the national inspectorate. |
| Keywords: | Early childhood, Pre-school, childcare, Quality, Disadvantaged families |
| JEL: | I24 I38 J13 |
| Date: | 2013–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:sticas:/171&r=dem |
| By: | Erkan Goeren (University of Oldenburg - Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the empirical relationship between the two concepts of ethnicity and economic growth. Ethnicity is assumed to affect economic growth through a number of possible transmission channels that are generally included in crossâ€country growth regressions by proposing an extended econometric system of equations to describe growth and the channel variables. The system incorporates new channel variables for the potential indirect effects of ethnicity that are important in the process of economic development. The results, based on a sample of 95 countries for the period 1960-1999, suggest that the concept of ethnic fractionalization is a strong predictive measure for the direct effect of ethnicity on growth, whereas the concept of ethnic polarization has nonâ€negligible indirect economic effects through the specified channel variables. |
| Keywords: | ethnic diversity, fractionalization, polarization, transmission channels, economic growth |
| JEL: | O5 O11 |
| Date: | 2013–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zen:wpaper:14&r=dem |
| By: | Meghir, Costas (Yale University, IFS and NBER); Palme, Mårten (Dept. of Economics, Stockholm University); Simeonova, Emilia (Tufts University, Princeton University and NBER) |
| Abstract: | We examine how an education policy intervention - the introduction of a comprehensive school in Sweden that increased the number of compulsory years of schooling, affected cognitive and non-cognitive skills and long-term health. We use administrative and survey data including background information, child ability and long-term adult outcomes. We show that education reform increased skills among children, but the effects on long-term health are overall negligible. We demonstrate that effects vary across socio-economic backgrounds and initial skill endowments, with significant improvements in cognition and skills for lower Socio-economic status individuals and lower ability people. |
| Keywords: | Mortality; cognitive skills; non-cognitive skills; education reform |
| JEL: | I12 I14 I18 I21 |
| Date: | 2013–04–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:sunrpe:2013_0010&r=dem |
| By: | Pfeiffer, Friedhelm; Reuß, Karsten |
| Abstract: | The paper studies the power of educational investments in relation to transfers for fostering lifetime income and for reducing income inequality in Germany. The welfare analysis is based on a model of age-dependent human capital accumulation, featuring dynamic complementarities in skill formation over the life cycle, and calibrated for the period of ongoing demographic transition until 2080. If policy aims at reducing the inequality of lifetime income among people of the same generation, educational investments for people younger than or equal to seventeen do a better job compared to transfers in adulthood. In an intergenerational perspective all cohorts born after 1976 will gain from tax-financed additional investments in preschooleducation introduced in 2011. Additional investments into secondary education will, as a rule, not cause life time income to raise enough to compensate its costs. -- |
| Keywords: | early education,demographic change,inequality over the life span,redistributive policy |
| JEL: | D63 H55 I20 J11 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:13021&r=dem |
| By: | Richard Blundell (University College London); Monica Costa Dias (Institute for Fiscal Studies and CEF-UP at the University of Porto); Costas Meghir (Cowles Foundation, Yale University); Jonathan Shaw (Institute for Fiscal Studies and University College London) |
| Abstract: | We consider the impact of Tax credits and income support programs on female education choice, employment, hours and human capital accumulation over the life-cycle. We thus analyze both the short run incentive effects and the longer run implications of such programs. By allowing for risk aversion and savings we are also able to quantify the insurance value of alternative programs. We find important incentive effects on education choice, and labor supply, with single mothers having the most elastic labor supply. Returns to labour market experience are found to be substantial but only for full-time employment, and especially for women with more than basic formal education. For those with lower education the welfare programs are shown to have substantial insurance value. Based on the model marginal increases to tax credits are preferred to equally costly increases in income support and to tax cuts, except by those in the highest education group. |
| Keywords: | Female labor supply, Welfare reform, Tax credits, Education choice, Dynamic discrete choice models, Life cycle models |
| JEL: | H2 H3 J22 J24 |
| Date: | 2013–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:1892&r=dem |
| By: | Janet Currie; W. Bentley MacLeod |
| Abstract: | This paper provides a model of diagnostic skill as an element of provider quality that is separate from a doctor's skill in performing procedures. Unlike higher surgical skill, which leads to higher use of surgical procedures across the board, better diagnostic skill results in fewer procedures for the low risk, but more procedures for the high risk. That is, better diagnostic skill improves the matching between patients and procedures leading to better health outcomes. Taking the model to data on C-sections, the most common surgical procedure performed in the U.S., we show that improving diagnostic skills from the 25th to the 75th percentile of the observed distribution would reduce C-section rates by 11.7% among the low risk, and increase them by 4.6% among the high risk. Since there are many more low risk than high risk women, improving diagnosis would reduce overall C-section rates. Moreover, such an improvement in diagnostic skill would improve health outcomes for both high risk and low risk women, while improvements in surgical skill have the greatest impact on high risk women. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that eorts to improve diagnosis through methods such as checklists, computer assisted diagnosis, and collaborative decision making may improve patient outcomes. |
| JEL: | I11 |
| Date: | 2013–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:18977&r=dem |
| By: | Peter Boone; Ila Fazzio; Kameshwari Jandhyala; Chitra Jayanty; Gangadhar Jayanty; Simon Johnson; Vimala Ramachandrin; Filipa Silva; Zhaoguo Zhan |
| Abstract: | We conducted a survey covering 20% of villages with 200-1000 population in rural Guinea-Bissau. We interviewed household heads, care-givers of children, and their teachers and schools. We analysed results from 9,947 children, aged 7-17, tested for literacy and numeracy competency. Only 27% of children were able to add two single digits, and just 19% were able to read and comprehend a simple word. Our unannounced school checks found 72% of enrolled children in grades 1-4 attending their schools, but the schools were poorly equipped. Teachers were present at 86% of schools visited. Despite surveying 351 schools, we found no examples of successful schools where children reached reasonable levels of literacy and numeracy for age. Our evidence suggests that interventions that raise school quality in these villages, rather than those which target enrolment, may be most important to generate very sharp improvements in children's educational outcomes. |
| Keywords: | Education, Africa, survey results, numeracy, literacy |
| JEL: | O1 O55 I2 F35 H43 |
| Date: | 2013–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp1201&r=dem |
| By: | Zabel, Cordula (Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany]) |
| Abstract: | "This paper investigates employment effects of further vocational training, short classroom training, as well as One-Euro-Jobs for lone mothers receiving Unemployment Benefit II (UB II) in Germany. Lone mothers receiving UB II participate in these active labor market programs at very high rates. As soon as their youngest child is aged three or above, their program entry rates are as high as for childless singles. This paper examines whether lone mothers can actually profit from partici-pating in these programs, given low levels of childcare provision. The empirical analyses are based on administrative data. A timing-of-events approach is used to control for possible selectivity in program entries. Separate models are estimated for entries into minor employment, regular contributory employment in general, and regular contributory employment connected to a complete exit from benefit receipt. Findings are that lone mothers profit especially strongly from participating in vocational training programs in terms of entering regular contributory employment in general as well as regular contributory employment connected to a complete exit from benefit receipt. Presumably, they can particularly benefit from updating their job skills after interrupting their employment for some time to care for their children. Effects of short classroom training programs are somewhat smaller, and One-Euro-Jobs have small positive effects for some, but not all, groups of lone mothers." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en)) |
| Keywords: | allein Erziehende, Mütter, Arbeitslosengeld II-Empfänger, arbeitsmarktpolitische Maßnahme - Erfolgskontrolle, Weiterbildungsförderung, Arbeitsgelegenheit, Trainingsmaßnahme, berufliche Reintegration |
| JEL: | J12 J68 I38 |
| Date: | 2013–04–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iab:iabdpa:201303&r=dem |