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on Demographic Economics |
| By: | Brummet, Quentin O.; Bartalotti, Otávio C. |
| Abstract: | While subsidized low-income housing construction provides affordable living conditions for poor households, many observers worry that building low-income housing in poor communities induces individuals to move to poor neighborhoods. We examine this issue using detailed, nationally representative microdata constructed from linked decennial censuses. Our analysis exploits exogenous variation in low-income housing supply induced by program eligibility rules for Low-Income Housing Tax Credits to estimate the effect of subsidized housing on neighborhood mobility patterns. The results indicate little evidence to suggest a causal effect of additional low-income housing construction on the characteristics of neighborhoods to which households move. This result is true for households across the income distribution, and supports the hypothesis that subsidized housing provides affordable living conditions without encouraging households to move to less-affluent neighborhoods than they would have otherwise. |
| Date: | 2016–05–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:isu:genstf:201605130700001004&r=dem |
| By: | Roff, Jennifer Louise (CUNY Graduate Center) |
| Abstract: | Previous literature has established that unilateral divorce laws may reduce female household work. As shown by Stevenson (2007), unilateral divorce laws may affect overall marital investment. In addition, if unilateral divorce has differential costs by gender, then unilateral divorce may impact household work by gender through bargaining channels. However, little research has examined how divorce laws may affect males' household production and the gender distribution of household work. To examine this issue, I use data on matched couples from the PSID and exploit variation over time in state divorce laws. This research indicates that unilateral divorce laws lead to a decrease in marital investment, as measured by both males and females' household work. The evidence also supports a bargaining response to divorce laws, as fathers in states without joint custody laws show a significantly higher share of household work with unilateral divorce than those in states with joint custody laws, consistent with a relatively higher cost of marital dissolution among fathers who stand to lose custody of their children. |
| Keywords: | divorce law, household bargaining, marriage |
| JEL: | J12 J22 |
| Date: | 2017–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10527&r=dem |
| By: | Stockton, Isabel; Bergemann, Annette; Brunow, Stephan |
| Abstract: | We use a partial-equilibrium model of job search with non-wage job attributes to estimate female workers' marginal willingness to pay to reduce commuting distance in Germany. This issue not only has implications for congestion policy, spatial planning and transport infrastructure provision, but is also relevant to our understanding of gender differences in labour market biographies in a more general sense. Gender differences in willingness to pay for job attributes could contribute significantly to observed disparities in a number of labour market behaviours and outcomes, such as participation, labour supply, wages and job mobility. Our analysis makes particular reference to heterogeneity by regional structure and local labour market conditions, and outlines ways of incorporating other types of heterogeneity into the analysis. Using a Cox model on a large administrative dataset, we find a marginal willingness to pay of e0.15 of women workers to reduce commuting distance by one kilometre. |
| Keywords: | Commuting, marginal willingness to pay for job attributes, on-the-job search, Cox relative risk model, partial likelihood estimation, gender and parenthood in job search models, heterogeneity in job mobility |
| JEL: | C41 J61 J16 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc16:145919&r=dem |
| By: | Robert Jensen; Nolan H. Miller |
| Abstract: | In rural areas of most developing countries, intergenerational coresidence is both widespread and an important determinant of well-being for the elderly. Most parents want at least one adult child to remain at home (e.g., so they can work on the family farm or provide care and assistance around the house). However, children themselves may prefer to migrate when they grow up, and parents cannot directly prevent them from doing so. We present a model where parents may strategically limit investments in some children's education so that they will not find it optimal to migrate when they reach maturity, and will thus voluntarily choose to remain home. We provide evidence for the model’s predictions using an intervention that provided recruiting services for the business process outsourcing industry in randomly selected rural Indian villages. Because awareness of these high-paying, high education, urban jobs was limited at baseline, the intervention increased the attractiveness of migration for educated children. Consistent with the model, in response to the treatment we find declines in school enrollment among children that parents reported wanting to remain home at baseline. Children that parents want to migrate have increased enrollment, and parents want more children to migrate. |
| JEL: | D1 I21 J14 O12 O15 |
| Date: | 2017–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23122&r=dem |
| By: | Nishimura, Y.; Oikawa, M.; |
| Abstract: | This study analyzes the effect of informal elderly care on caregiver labor supply. Since the Japanese government intervenes on the supply side of the elderly care market and market entry of nursing home suppliers is regulated, this analysis utilizes exogenous variations from the supply side of government intervention on the elderly care market. Owing to such intervention and regulation, public nursing home capacity exogenously changes for caregivers, which we use to estimate the effect of informal elderly care on labor supply. To the best of our knowledge, no study has thus far utilized exogenous institutional variation as an instrument to estimate this effect. Analysis results reveal that the effect of informal elderly care on female labor force participation is negative. By contrast, male labor force participation is not affected by such care, since, in Japan, females spend more time on informal care than males. The increase in nursing home capacity is thus effective for decreasing the female burden of informal care. |
| Keywords: | informal care; labor supply; government intervention; JSTAR; |
| JEL: | J14 J18 J22 I18 |
| Date: | 2017–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:yor:hectdg:17/02&r=dem |
| By: | Weber, Andrea; Manoli, Dayanand |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the effects of a series of reforms of the public pension system in Austria in 2000 and 2004. An important element of the reforms was the increase in the early retirement age (ERA), which was phased in linearly over several cohorts. The empirical analysis, based on detailed administrative data, distinguishes between pension entries, which are mechanically affected by the ERA, and job exits, which reflect individual labor supply decisions. The paper presents four main findings. (1) The cohort-wise increase in the early retirement age led to pronounced shifts in the spike of pension entries at the cohort specific early retirement ages. (2) Job exits shifted in an almost parallel fashion, which leaves little room for additional substitution with other social insurance programs. (3) An important mechanism leading to increased employment is that individuals keep their pre-retirement jobs longer. (4) To quantify the effects of the reform on average retirement ages, we use a regression kink design that exploits the increasing slope in the ERA by birth cohorts and relates it to a corresponding linear increase in the labor force exit and pension claiming ages. We estimate that a one year increase in the ERA leads to a 0.4 year increase in the exit age and a 0.5 year increase in the claiming age. |
| JEL: | H55 J21 J26 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc16:145549&r=dem |
| By: | Wunder, Christoph |
| Abstract: | This study uses subjective measures of well-being to analyze how workers perceive working hours mismatch. Our particular interest is in the question of whether workers perceive hours of underemployment differently from hours of overemployment. Previous evidence on this issue is ambiguous. We call attention to the level of well-being in the absence of hours mismatch that serves as a reference state for comparison purposes and to the consequences of restrictive functional form assumptions. Using panel data from Australia and Germany, this study estimates the relationship between working hours mismatch and well-being as a bivariate smooth function of desired hours and mismatch hours by tensor product p-splines. The results indicate that well-being is highest in the absence of hours mismatch. In general, the perception of overemployment is statistically significantly different from the perception of underemployment in both countries. In Australia, workers tolerate some underemployment, as their well-being tends to be unaltered in the presence of short hours of underemployment. However, the marginal loss from underemployment appears to be larger than that from overemployment once the mismatch exceeds approximately ten hours. In Germany, on the contrary, underemployment is clearly more detrimental for well-being than overemployment. German males with preferences for full-time hours hardly respond to overemployment. |
| JEL: | I31 J21 J22 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc16:145544&r=dem |
| By: | Paule-Paludkiewicz, Hannah; Fuchs-Schündeln, Nicola; Masella, Paolo |
| Abstract: | We analyze whether culture affects the saving behavior of households and which cultural channels matter for this household decision. To disentangle cultural effects from economic and institutional factors, we study how the saving behavior of second-generation immigrants relates to the attitudes and beliefs in the respective countries of origin. Using data from Germany and the UK, we find that culture significantly determines household saving behavior. The two cultural components that we robustly identify to affect saving rates are the attitudes towards thrift and the wealth accumulation motive: second-generation immigrants from countries that value thrift and wealth accumulation more tend to save more in Germany. By linking parents to their children, we present evidence that these attitudes are related to the saving behavior of both parents and children. We also provide evidence that future-orientation is related to the saving behavior through the intergenerational transmission of language, rather than the direct transmission of attitudes. |
| JEL: | D14 Z10 E21 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc16:145854&r=dem |
| By: | Adamopoulou, Effrosyni (Efi) (Bank of Italy); Zizza, Roberta (Bank of Italy) |
| Abstract: | We use information on monthly wage increases set by collective agreements in Italy and exploit their variation across sectors and over time in order to examine how household consumption responds to different types of positive income shocks (regular tranches versus lump-sum payments). Focusing on single-earner households, we find evidence of consumption smoothing in accordance with the Permanent-Income Hypothesis, since total and food consumption do not exhibit excess sensitivity to anticipated regular payments. Consumption does not respond at the date of the announcement of income increases either, as these are known to compensate workers for the overall loss in their wages' purchasing power. However, consumption responds, albeit a little, to transitory and less anticipated one-off payments, as the expenditures on clothing&shoes increase upon the receipt of the lump-sum payments. This behaviour is consistent with bounded rationality as consumers do not consider the lump-sum as part of the overall wage inflation adjustment. |
| Keywords: | union contracts, consumption, permanent income hypothesis, bounded rationality |
| JEL: | D12 E21 J51 |
| Date: | 2017–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10509&r=dem |