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on Demographic Economics |
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Issue of 2017‒11‒05
eight papers chosen by Héctor Pifarré i Arolas Max-Planck-Institut für demografische Forschung |
| By: | Thor O. Thoresen; Trine Engh Vattø |
| Abstract: | Norwegian parents of preschool children make their care choices from a completely different choice set compared to what their predecessor did, say, two decades ago. Now, there is essentially only one type of nonparental care, center-based care, and at the parental side fathers take a more pivotal role in the early childhood care. In the present paper we develop a joint labor supply and child care choice model that accounts for these new characteristics of the family choice set – only one nonparental care option and both mothers and fathers contributing to the production of nonparental care. Even though Norway may be seen as a frontrunner in terms of both publicly subsidized care and gender equality, we believe that the model points to current and future modeling directions for several other economies too. The model is estimated on data on working hours and families’ use of child care. We find that parents are not responsive to the price on center-based care, but respond more strongly to changes in wages. The average wage elasticity for mothers is in the range 0.25–0.30. |
| Keywords: | family policy, child care, structural labor supply model |
| JEL: | J13 J22 C25 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6641&r=dem |
| By: | Kamila Cygan-Rehm; Daniel Kühnle; Regina T. Riphahn |
| Abstract: | We examine how a German paid parental leave reform causally affected early childhood living arrangements. The reform replaced a means-tested benefit with a universal transfer paid out for a shorter period. Using a difference-in-differences design, we find that the reform increased the probability that a newborn lives with non-married cohabiting parents. This effect results from a reduced risk of single parenthood among women who gained from the reform. We reject the economic independence hypothesis and argue that the effects for reform winners are consistent with alternative hypotheses related to increased female financial attractiveness and increased paternal involvement in childcare. |
| Keywords: | parental leave, living arrangements, marriage, cohabitation, single motherhood, child well-being, early childhood |
| JEL: | J12 J13 J18 I30 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6319&r=dem |
| By: | Wrohlich, Katharina; Unterhofer, Ulrike |
| Abstract: | We analyze whether the introduction of the fathers’ quota in parental leave in 2007 has changed the gender roles attitudes in the grandparents’ generation. Exploting the quasi-experimental setting of the reform, we find a positive effect of the fathers’ quota on attitudes towards gender equality. The results suggest that such programs not only induce direct behavioral responses by the target group but also have indirect effects on other groups through social interaction. |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc17:168297&r=dem |
| By: | Geoffrey R. Dunbar; Arthur Lewbel; Krishna Pendakur |
| Abstract: | Resource shares, defined as the fraction of total household spending going to each person in a household, are important for assessing individual material well-being, inequality and poverty. They are difficult to identify because consumption is measured typically at the household level, and many goods are jointly consumed, so that individual-level consumption in multi-person households is not directly observed. We consider random resource shares, which vary across observationally identical households. We provide theorems that identify the distribution of random resource shares across households, including children’s shares. We also provide a new method of identifying the level of fixed or random resource shares that does not require previously needed preference similarity restrictions or marriage market assumptions. Our results can be applied to data with or without price variation. We apply our results to households in Malawi, estimating the distributions of child and female poverty across households. |
| Keywords: | Domestic demand and components, Econometric and statistical methods |
| JEL: | D13 D11 D12 C31 I32 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bca:bocawp:17-45&r=dem |
| By: | Sanni Breining; Joseph Doyle; David N. Figlio; Krzysztof Karbownik; Jeffrey Roth |
| Abstract: | Birth order has been found to have a surprisingly large influence on educational attainment, yet much less is known about the role of birth order on delinquency outcomes such as disciplinary problems in school, juvenile delinquency, and adult crime: outcomes that carry significant negative externalities. This paper uses particularly rich datasets from Denmark and the state of Florida to examine these outcomes and explore potential mechanisms. Despite large differences in environments across the two areas, we find remarkably consistent results: in families with two or more children, second-born boys are on the order of 20 to 40 percent more likely to be disciplined in school and enter the criminal justice system compared to first-born boys even when we compare siblings. The data allow us to examine a range of potential mechanisms, and the evidence rules out differences in health at birth and the quality of schools chosen for children. We do find that parental time investment measured by time out of the labor force is higher for first-borns at ages 2-4, suggesting that the arrival of a second-born child extends early-childhood parental investments for first-borns. |
| JEL: | J01 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6330&r=dem |
| By: | Amaral, S.; Bhalotra, Sonia |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the consequences of sex imbalance in India's population for violence against women. We match district level administrative crime data by category to age- specific sex ratios in census data across four decades and, to analyse mechanisms, we also use administrative data on marriage rates and household survey data on attitudes to violence against women and marriage quality. We estimate that the elasticity of violence against women with respect to the surplus of men age 20-24 is unity, and that this explains about 35% of the rise in gender-based violence since 1995. Although less robust, there is some evidence that the youth sex ratio also raises non-gendered forms of violence, but we find no discernible impact upon property and economic crime. In probing mechanisms we argue that men are more prone to crime than women, that the share of unmarried men is increasing in the youth sex ratio, that attitudes to violence against women are evolving as a function of the sex ratio at birth and marriage quality measures, including self-reported domestic violence, are negatively related to sex ratios. |
| Date: | 2017–10–24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ese:iserwp:2017-12&r=dem |
| By: | Peter Haan; Daniel Kemptner; Holger Lüthen |
| Abstract: | This study uses German social security records to provide novel evidence about the heterogeneity in life expectancy by lifetime earnings and, additionally, documents the distributional implications of this earnings-related heterogeneity. We find a strong association between lifetime earnings and life expectancy at age 65 and show that the longevity gap is increasing across cohorts. For West German men born 1926-28, the longevity gap between top and bottom decile amounts to about 4 years (about 30%). This gap increases to 7 years (almost 50%) for cohorts 1947-49. We extend our analysis to the household context and show that lifetime earnings are also related to the life expectancy of the spouse. The heterogeneity in life expectancy has sizable and relevant distributional consequences for the pension system: when accounting for heterogeneous life expectancy, we find that the German pension system is regressive despite a strong contributory link. We show that the internal rate of return of the pension system increases with lifetime earnings. Finally, we document an increase of the regressive structure across cohorts, which is consistent with the increasing longevity gap. |
| Keywords: | mortality, lifetime inequality, pensions, redistribution |
| JEL: | H55 I14 J11 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp1698&r=dem |
| By: | Mariacristina De Nardi (University College London / Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago / IFS / NBER); Svetlana Pashchenko (University of Georgia); Ponpoje Porapakkarm (National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies) |
| Abstract: | Health shocks are an important source of risk. People in bad health work less, earn less, face higher medical expenses, die earlier, and accumulate much less wealth compared to those in good health. Importantly, the dynamics of health are much richer than those implied by a low-order Markov process. We first show that these dynamics can be parsimoniously captured by a combination of some lag-dependence and ex-ante heterogeneity, or health types. We then study the effects of health shocks in a structural life-cycle model with incomplete markets. Our estimated model reproduces the observed inequality in economic outcomes by health status, including the income-health and wealth-health gradients. Our model has several implications concerning the pecuniary and non-pecuniary effects of health shocks over the life-cycle. The (monetary) lifetime costs of bad health are very concentrated and highly unequally distributed across health types, with the largest component of these costs being the loss in labor earnings. The non-pecuniary effects of health are very important along two dimensions. First, individuals value good health mostly because it extends life expectancy. Second, health uncertainty substantially increases lifetime inequality by affecting the variation in lifespans. |
| Keywords: | Health, health insurance, medical spending, wealth-health gradient, life-cycle model |
| JEL: | D52 D91 E21 H53 I13 I18 |
| Date: | 2017–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hka:wpaper:2017-079&r=dem |