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on Demographic Economics |
| By: | Richard Blundell (Institute for Fiscal Studies and IFS and UCL); Monica Costa Dias (Institute for Fiscal Studies and Institute for Fiscal Studies); Costas Meghir (Institute for Fiscal Studies and Yale University); Jonathan Shaw (Institute for Fiscal Studies and Institute for Fiscal Studies) |
| Abstract: | We estimate a dynamic model of employment, human capital accumulation - including education, and savings for women in the UK, exploiting tax and benefit reforms, and use it to analyze the effects of welfare policy. We find substantial elasticities for labor supply and particularly for lone mothers. Returns to experience, which are important in determining the longer-term effects of policy, increase with education, but experience mainly accumulates when in full-time employment. Tax credits are welfare improving in the UK and increase lone-mother labor supply, but the employment effects do not extend beyond the period of eligibility. Marginal increases in tax credits improve welfare more than equally costly increases in income support or tax cuts. |
| Date: | 2016–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ifs:ifsewp:16/03&r=dem |
| By: | Boll, Christina; Bublitz, Elisabeth |
| Abstract: | Regarding gender differences, theory suggests that in a partnership the individual with the lower working hours and earnings position should exhibit lower training participation rates. Since women are more likely to match this description, we investigate whether systematic group differences explain gender variation. Across all countries, male workers are not affected by their earnings position. For female workers in Germany, but not Italy or the Netherlands, working part-time instead of full-time corresponds with a decrease in course length by 5.5 hours. Also, regarding German parttime employed women, single earners train 5.6 hours more than secondary earners. The findings of our study hold at the extensive and the intensive margin, suggesting that Germany faces particular household-related obstacles regarding gender differences in job-related training. |
| Keywords: | further education and training,gender differences,country comparisons |
| JEL: | J16 J24 M53 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:hwwirp:172&r=dem |
| By: | Dunn, Richard A. (University of Connecticut); Nayga, Rodolfo M., Jr. (Bates College); Thomsen, Michael (University of Arkansas); Heather L. Rouse (University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences) |
| Abstract: | This paper employs a novel identification strategy based on changes in the route students would use to commute between their home and their school as they transition to higher grades housed in different schools to investigate the effect of fast-food availability on childhood weight outcomes by gender, race and location. Using a longitudinal census of height and weight for public school students in Arkansas, we find no evidence that changes in fast-food exposure are associated with changes in BMI z-score. Our findings suggest that laws restricting fast-food restaurants from areas near schools are neither effective nor efficient means of improving public health. |
| Keywords: | Fast-food, childhood obesity |
| JEL: | I10 R12 R40 |
| Date: | 2014–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zwi:wpaper:34&r=dem |
| By: | Clark, Gregory; Cummins, Neil |
| Abstract: | In recent theorizing, modern economic growth was created by substituting child quality for quantity. However evidence for this tradeoff is minimal. In England the Industrial Revolution occurred in a period 1780-1879 of substantial human capital investment, but no fertility control, huge random variation in family sizes, and uncorrelated family size and parent quality. Yet family size variation had little effect on educational attainment, occupational status, or longevity, for both prosperous and poor families. More children reduced inherited wealth, but even that effect largely disappeared by the next generation. There is no quality-quantity tradeoff. Growth theory must proceed in other directions. |
| Keywords: | Economic Growth; Human Capital; Quality-Quantity Tradeoff |
| Date: | 2016–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:11232&r=dem |
| By: | Bertoni, Marco (University of Padova); Brunello, Giorgio (University of Padova); Mazzarella, Gianluca (University of Padova) |
| Abstract: | By increasing the residual working horizon of employed individuals, pension reforms that raise minimum retirement age are likely to affect the returns to investments in health-promoting behaviours before retirement, with consequences for individual health. Using the exogenous variation in minimum retirement age induced by a sequence of Italian pension reforms during the 1990s and 2000s, we show that Italian males aged 40 to 49 reacted to the longer time to retirement by raising regular exercise and by reducing smoking and regular alcohol consumption. Dietary habits were also affected, with positive consequences on obesity and self-reported satisfaction with health. |
| Keywords: | retirement, working horizon, healthy behaviours, pension reforms |
| JEL: | H55 I12 J26 |
| Date: | 2016–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9834&r=dem |
| By: | Acemoglu, Daron; Egorov, Georgy; Sonin, Konstantin |
| Abstract: | An influential thesis often associated with De Tocqueville views social mobility as a bulwark of democracy: when members of a social group expect to join the ranks of other social groups in the near future, they should have less reason to exclude these other groups from the political process. In this paper, we investigate this hypothesis using a dynamic model of political economy. As well as formalizing this argument, our model demonstrates its limits, elucidating a robust theoretical force making democracy less stable in societies with high social mobility: when the median voter expects to move up (respectively down), she would prefer to give less voice to poorer (respectively richer) social groups. Our theoretical analysis shows that in the presence of social mobility, the political preferences of an individual depend on the potentially conflicting preferences of her "future selves", and that the evolution of institutions is determined through the implicit interaction between occupants of the same social niche at different points in time. When social mobility is endogenized, our model identifies new political economic forces limiting the amount of mobility in society - because the middle class will lose out from mobility at the bottom and because a peripheral coalition between the rich and the poor may oppose mobility at the top. |
| Keywords: | De Tocqueville; democracy; dynamics.; institutions; Social mobility; stability |
| JEL: | D71 D74 |
| Date: | 2016–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:11209&r=dem |
| By: | Stephen Hickson (University of Canterbury) |
| Abstract: | Do females achieve lower grades in economics than males? What role does personality type play in any difference if one exists? This study examines a cohort of first year students who all took Principles of Economics courses and completed the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator questionnaire at a large publically funded New Zealand university. I find that males do enjoy a comparative advantage in economics (or females a comparative disadvantage). This does not disappear when personality type is controlled for but does persist. Some personality types also achieve higher grades in their study than others. Most studies in the literature have tended to focus on economics but I am able to conduct the same analysis on the other first year courses that these students take. This enables a point of comparison allowing me to examine if gender and personality type effects are unique to economics or whether economics is actually no different to other disciplines. |
| Keywords: | Principles of Economics, Gender, Personality Type, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator |
| JEL: | A22 |
| Date: | 2016–06–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cbt:econwp:16/07&r=dem |