nep-dem New Economics Papers
on Demographic Economics
Issue of 2019‒01‒14
four papers chosen by
Héctor Pifarré i Arolas
Universitat Pompeu Fabra

  1. Computations of French Lifetables by Département By Florian Bonnet
  2. Individual Life Horizon Influences Attitudes Toward Democracy By Lechler, Marie; Sunde, Uwe
  3. Early Labor Market Prospects and Family Formation By Mattias Engdahl; Mathilde Godard; Oskar Skans
  4. First-Grade Shock: Women fs Work-Life Conflict in Japan By Tomoe Naito; Dainn Wie

  1. By: Florian Bonnet (UP1 UFR02 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - UFR d'Économie - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne, PSE - Paris School of Economics, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)
    Abstract: Debates concerning the territorial divide in France are deep. To bring a contribution to this issue, I compute the departmental lifetables since 1901, for both men and women. In this paper, I present the raw data collected to do so, namely yearly births and deaths by age as well as population by age at each census carried out during the 20th century. I add statistics according to military mortality and mortality in deportation to cover the periods of the Two World Wars. I also present the methods I use to compute these lifetables, which come mainly from the Human Mortality Database protocol. I revise this protocol to take into account the specificities of French departmental data, mainly the few changes in French departmental boundaries, the underestimation of infant mortality and the lack of raw data homogeneity. This new database complements a still limited supply of long-term mortality statistics computed at local level.
    Date: 2018–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:psewpa:halshs-01955515&r=all
  2. By: Lechler, Marie (LMU Munich); Sunde, Uwe (LMU Munich)
    Abstract: Support for democracy in the population is considered critical for the emergence and stability of democracy. Macro-determinants and retrospective experiences have been shown to affect the support for democracy at the individual level. We investigate whether and how the individual life horizon, in terms of the prospective length of life and age, affect individual attitudes toward democracy. Combining information from period life tables with individual survey response data spanning more than 260,000 observations from 93 countries over the period 1994-2014, we find evidence that the expected remaining years of life influence the attitudes toward a democratic political regime. The statistical identification decomposes the influence of age from the influence of the expected proximity to death. The evidence shows that support for democracy increases with age, but declines with expected proximity to death, implying that increasing longevity might help fostering the support for democracy. Increasing age while keeping the remaining years of life fixed as well as increasing remaining years of life for a given age group both contribute to the support for democracy.
    Keywords: attitudes toward democracy; life expectancy; aging;
    Date: 2019–01–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rco:dpaper:138&r=all
  3. By: Mattias Engdahl (UCLS - Uppsala Center for Labor Studies); Mathilde Godard (GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'analyse et de théorie économique - ENS Lyon - École normale supérieure - Lyon - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - UCBL - Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 - Université de Lyon - UJM - Université Jean Monnet [Saint-Étienne] - Université de Lyon - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Oskar Skans
    Abstract: We use quasi-random variation in graduation years during the onset of a very deep national recession to study the relationship between early labor market conditions and young females' family formation outcomes. A policy-pilot affecting the length of upper-secondary vocational tracks allows us to compare females who graduated into the onset of the Swedish financial crisis of the 1990s to those graduating during the final phase of the preceding economic boom while netting out the main effect of the policy. We find pronounced, but short-lived, negative labor market effects from early exposure to the recession for low-grade students in particular. In contrast, we document very long-lasting effects on family formation outcomes, again concentrated among low-grade students. Young women who graduated into the recession because of the policy-pilot formed their first stable partnerships earlier and had their first children earlier. Their partners had lower grades, which we show to be a strong predictor of divorce, and worse labor market performance. Divorces were more prevalent and the ensuing increase in single motherhood was long-lasting. These negative effects on marital stability generated persistent increases in the use of welfare benefits despite the short-lived impact on labor market outcomes. The results suggest that young women respond to early labor market prospects by changing the quality threshold for entering into family formation, a process which affects the frequency of welfare-dependent single mothers during more than a decade thereafter.
    Keywords: Family formation,female labor supply,cost of recessions
    Date: 2018
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-01958437&r=all
  4. By: Tomoe Naito (National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Tokyo, Japan); Dainn Wie (National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Tokyo, Japan)
    Abstract: In Japan, where the responsibility for child rearing lies mostly with women, mothers experience tighter time constraints and increased demands for parenting when their children enter elementary school. We employ unique data containing detailed information about mothers f employment and emotional distress to first examine the existence of first-grade shock, which has been recognized by the media and government. Our empirical investigation shows that the share of mothers f employment as part-time workers increases when their children are in the first grade but returns to the previous level the following year. We also show consistent evidence from women fs perceptions of work-life conflicts, equal share of housework, and emotional distress, as well as evidence regarding their concerns about their children fs lives, evidence which supports the existence of first-grade shock.
    Date: 2018–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ngi:dpaper:18-20&r=all

This nep-dem issue is ©2019 by Héctor Pifarré i Arolas. It is provided as is without any express or implied warranty. It may be freely redistributed in whole or in part for any purpose. If distributed in part, please include this notice.
General information on the NEP project can be found at http://nep.repec.org. For comments please write to the director of NEP, Marco Novarese at <director@nep.repec.org>. Put “NEP” in the subject, otherwise your mail may be rejected.
NEP’s infrastructure is sponsored by the School of Economics and Finance of Massey University in New Zealand.