nep-dem New Economics Papers
on Demographic Economics
Issue of 2015‒02‒05
nine papers chosen by
Michele Battisti
ifo Institut

  1. Migrant diversity, migration motivations and early integration: the case of Poles in Germany, the Netherlands, London and Dublin By Renee Luthra; Lucinda Platt; Justyna Salamońska
  2. Effects of Changes in Pensions on the Age of First Benefit Receipt: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from Repatriated Ethnic Germans By Puhani, Patrick A.; Tabbert, Falko
  3. Female labour supply, human capital and welfare reform By Richard Blundell; Costas Meghir; Jonathan Shaw; Monica Costa Dias
  4. Back to baseline in Britain: adaptation in the British household panel survey By Andrew E. Clark; Yannis Georgellis
  5. The Stress Cost of Children By Buddelmeyer, Hielke; Hamermesh, Daniel S.; Wooden, Mark
  6. Does Income Inequality Increase Charitable Giving? By Payne, A. Abigail; Smith, Justin
  7. Crime and immigration: new evidence from England and Wales By Laura Jaitman; Stephen Machin
  8. Suicide Attacks and Religious Cleavages By Andra Filote; Niklas Potrafke; Heinrich Ursprung
  9. Why do Europeans steal more than Americans? By Peter Rupert; Giulio Zanella; Marek Kapicka

  1. By: Renee Luthra; Lucinda Platt; Justyna Salamońska
    Abstract: The expansion of the European Union eastwards in 2004, with an ensuing massive increase in East-West migration from the accession countries has been represented as a new migration system of a kind unique in recent migration history, with its specific features of rights of movement and low mobility and information costs accompanying persistent East-West wage differentials. In principle, it provides an ideal context in which to develop understandings of the ‘new migration’ reflecting complex motivations and migration trajectories as well as chain migration and transnational lives. Despite a rapid expansion of research in this area, new insights into the complexities of mixed migration motivations and migrant heterogeneity have tended to be focused on country-specific qualitative studies. In this paper we utilise a unique, four-country data source covering over 3,500 Poles migrating to Germany, the Netherlands, London and Dublin in 2009-2010, to enable the quantitative characterization of the new migration. Exploiting information on pre-migration experience as well as expressed migration motivations and post-migration structural, subjective and social measures of integration in the receiving country, we conduct a three-stage analysis. First we employ latent class analysis to allocate the migrants to six migrant types. Second, we link these migrant types to pre-migration characteristics and estimate multinomial logit models for class membership. Third, controlling for these pre-migration characteristics we are able to explore how the migrant types are associated with measures of integration. We reveal substantial heterogeneity among migrants and some evolving ‘new’ migrant types alongside more traditional labour migrants. We show how these types are associated with differences in pre-migration human capital, region of origin and employment experience and with post-migration social and subjective integration in receiving societies.
    Keywords: Migrant diversity; migration motivations and early integration
    JEL: J11 J61
    Date: 2014–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:57605&r=dem
  2. By: Puhani, Patrick A. (Leibniz University of Hannover); Tabbert, Falko (Leibniz University of Hannover)
    Abstract: To estimate the effects of large cuts in pensions on the age of first benefit receipt, we exploit two natural experiments in which such cuts affect a group of repatriated ethnic German workers. The pensions were cut by about 12%, yet, according to our regression discontinuity estimates based on administrative pension data, there was no significant delay in the age of first pension receipt. Based on additional data sources, we find (i) that almost all pension recipients of our study population had left the labor force and (ii) that repatriated ethnic Germans hold similar jobs and exhibit similar retirement behavior as low-skilled Germans. The results are consistent with low-skilled workers in Germany being frozen in a corner-solution equilibrium in which the optimal choice is to retire as early as possible.
    Keywords: policy, evaluation, pension reform, labor supply, retirement
    JEL: J26 H55
    Date: 2015–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8787&r=dem
  3. By: Richard Blundell; Costas Meghir; Jonathan Shaw; Monica Costa Dias
    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 analyze both the short run incentive effects and the longer run implications of such programs. By allowing for risk aversion and savings,we 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 labor 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.
    JEL: J1
    Date: 2013–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:58076&r=dem
  4. By: Andrew E. Clark; Yannis Georgellis
    Abstract: We look for evidence of adaptation in wellbeing to major life events using eighteen waves of British panel data. Adaptation to marriage, divorce, birth of child and widowhood appears to be rapid and complete; this is not so for unemployment. These findings are remarkably similar to those in previous work on German panel data. Equally, the time profiles with life satisfaction as the wellbeing measure are very close to those using a twelve-item scale of psychological functioning. As such, the phenomenon of adaptation may be a general one, rather than being found only in German data or using single-item wellbeing measures.
    Keywords: life satisfaction; anticipation; adaptation; baseline satisfaction; labour market and life events
    JEL: I31 J12 J13 J62 J63 J64
    Date: 2013–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:59327&r=dem
  5. By: Buddelmeyer, Hielke (Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research); Hamermesh, Daniel S. (University of Texas at Austin, Royal Holloway); Wooden, Mark (Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research)
    Abstract: We use longitudinal data describing couples in Australia from 2001-12 and Germany from 2002-12 to examine how demographic events affect perceived time and financial stress. Consistent with the view of measures of stress as proxies for the Lagrangean multipliers in models of household production, we show that births increase time stress, especially among mothers, and that the effects last at least several years. Births generally also raise financial stress slightly. The monetary equivalent of the costs of the extra time stress is very large. While the departure of a child from the home reduces parents' time stress, its negative impacts on the tightness of the time constraints are much smaller than the positive impacts of a birth.
    Keywords: time use, children, demographic economics
    JEL: J13 J20
    Date: 2015–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8793&r=dem
  6. By: Payne, A. Abigail; Smith, Justin
    Abstract: Do households react to changes in the distribution of income in their localities by changing their charitable giving? The theoretical prediction of the effects of income inequality on giving is unclear. We study how changes in income inequality measured at the neighbourhood and municipality levels affect charitable giving by households in Canada between 1991 and 2006. We find that increases in inequality increase giving. Results are sensitive to the geographic dispersion of low and high-income households in neighbourhoods within a municipality. The effect on donations is smaller in areas with high levels of inequality at both neighbourhood and municipality levels.
    Keywords: charitable giving, donations, income inequality
    JEL: H3 H44 J38
    Date: 2015–01–25
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ubc:clssrn:clsrn_admin-2015-4&r=dem
  7. By: Laura Jaitman; Stephen Machin
    Abstract: We study a high profile public policy question on immigration, namely the link between crime and immigration, presenting new evidence from England and Wales in the 2000s. For studying immigration impacts, this period is of considerable interest as the composition of migration to the UK altered dramatically with the accession of Eastern European countries (the A8) to the European Union in 2004. As we show, this has important implications for ensuring a causal impact of immigration can be identified. When we are able to implement a credible research design with statistical power, we find no evidence of an average causal impact of immigration on crime, nor do we when we consider A8 and Non-A8 immigration separately. We also study London by itself as the immigration changes over time in the capital city were large. Again, we find no causal impact of immigration on crime from our spatial econometric analysis and also present evidence from unique data on arrests of natives and immigrants in London which shows no immigrant differences in the likelihood of being arrested.
    Keywords: Crime; Immigration; Enclaves; A8
    JEL: F22 K42
    Date: 2013–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:59328&r=dem
  8. By: Andra Filote (Department of Economics, University of Konstanz, Germany); Niklas Potrafke (ifo Institute, Ifo Center for Public Finance and Political Economy, Munich, Germany); Heinrich Ursprung (Department of Economics, University of Konstanz, Germany)
    Abstract: Many experts claim that the incidence of suicide attacks is driven by religious cleavages. To test this hypothesis, we investigate whether the total number of suicide attacks per violent conflict or the annual number of suicide attacks per country is associated with simmering religious conflicts. We distinguish between two kinds of religious cleavages: cleavages at the macro level between the stake holders in violent conflicts and cleavages at the micro or battle field level between the actual perpetrators and victims of suicide attacks. Our results do not indicate that religious cleavages are an important precondition for the incidence of suicide attacks.
    Keywords: suicide terrorism, religion, religious cleavages, club goods
    JEL: Z12 D74 H56 F51
    Date: 2015–01–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:knz:dpteco:1501&r=dem
  9. By: Peter Rupert (University of California, Santa Barbara); Giulio Zanella (University of Bologna); Marek Kapicka (University of California Santa Barbara)
    Abstract: Property crime is today more widespread in Europe than in the United States, while the opposite was true during the 1970s and 1980s. In this paper we study the determinants of crime in a dynamic general equilibrium model with uninsured idiosyncratic shocks. We focus on Germany, and compute the contribution of various factors to the total change. We find that the most important factor explaining the reversal are changes in the probability of apprehension and prison duration for the United States, and demographic changes for Germany. Changes in labor tax rates and transfers are unimportant for the United States. For Germany they have non-negligible effects, but they go in opposite directions and tend to offset each other.
    Date: 2014
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:red:sed014:847&r=dem

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