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on Demographic Economics |
| By: | Stefania Albanesi; Claudia Olivetti; Barbara Petrongolo |
| Abstract: | Using comparable data for 24 countries since the 1970s, we document gender convergence in schooling, employment and earnings, marriage delay and the accompanying decline in fertility, and the large remaining gaps in labor market outcomes, especially among parents. A model of time allocation illustrates how the specialization of spouses in home or market production responds to preferences, comparative advantages and public policies. We draw lessons from existing evidence on the impacts of family policies on women's careers and children's wellbeing. There is to date little or no evidence of beneficial effects of longer parental leave (or fathers' quotas) on maternal participation and earnings. In most cases longer leave delays mothers' return to work, without long-lasting consequences on their careers. More generous childcare funding instead encourages female participation whenever subsidized childcare replaces maternal childcare. Impacts on child development depend on counterfactual childcare arrangements and tend to be more beneficial for disadvantaged households. In-work benefits targeted to low-earners have clear positive impacts on lone mothers' employment and negligible impacts on other groups. While most of this literature takes policy as exogenous, political economy aspects of policy adoption help understand the interplay between societal changes, family policies and gender equality. |
| JEL: | J1 J22 |
| Date: | 2022–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30685&r=dem |
| By: | Abigail Hurwitz; Olivia S. Mitchell |
| Abstract: | Older people often express regret about financial decisions made earlier in life that left them susceptible to old-age insecurity. Prior work has explored one outcome, saving regret, or peoples’ expressed wish that they had saved more earlier in life. The present paper extends attention to five additional areas regarding financial decisions, examining whether older Americans also regret not having insured better, claimed benefits and quit working too early, and becoming financially dependent on others. Using a controlled randomized experiment conducted on 1,764 respondents age 50+ in the Health and Retirement Study, we show that providing people objective longevity information does alter their self-reported financial regret. Specifically, giving people information about objective survival probabilities more than doubled regret expressed about not having purchased long term care, and it also boosted their regret by 2.4 times for not having purchased lifetime income. We conclude that information provision can be a potent, as well as cost-effective, method of alerting people to retirement risk. |
| JEL: | D14 D15 D83 G22 G41 G51 |
| Date: | 2022–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30696&r=dem |
| By: | Adam, Ammaarah; Ades, Raphael; Banks, William; Benning, Canbeck; Grant, Gwyneth; Forster-Brass, Harry; McGiveron, Owen; Miller, Joe; Phelan, Daniel; Randazzo, Sebastian; Reilly, Matthew; Scott, Michael; Serban, Sebastian; Stockton, Carys; Wallis, Patrick |
| Abstract: | How was trust created and reinforced between the inhabitants of medieval and early modern cities? And how did the social foundations of trusting relationships change over time? Current research highlights the role of kinship, neighbourhood and associations, particularly guilds, in creating ‘relationships of trust’ and social capital in the face of high levels of migration, mortality and economic volatility, but tells us little about their relative importance or how they developed. We uncover a profound shift in the contribution of family and guilds to trust networks among the middling and elite of one of Europe’s major cities, London, over three centuries, from the 1330s to the 1680s. We examine the networks of sureties created to secure the inheritances of children whose fathers died while they were minors, surviving in the records of London’s Orphans Court. Our analysis of almost fifteen thousand networks evaluates the presence of trusting relationships connected with guild membership, family and place over several centuries. We show a profound increase in the role of kinship – a re-embedding of trust within the family - and a decline of the importance of shared guild membership in connecting Londoner’s who secured orphans’ inheritances together. We suggest these developments are best explained as a result of the impact of the Reformation on the form and intensity of sociability fostered by guilds and the enormous growth of the metropolis. |
| Keywords: | orphans; networks; trust; credit; London; guilds; kinship; reformation; early-modern |
| JEL: | N20 N13 N33 N93 Z13 |
| Date: | 2022–11–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:wpaper:117445&r=dem |
| By: | Anna Maria Mayda; Gianluca Orefice; Gianluca Santoni |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses the impact of skilled migrants on the innovation (patenting) activity of French firms between 1995 and 2010, and investigates the underlying mechanism. We present district-level and firm-level estimates and address endogeneity using a modified version of the shift-share instrument. Skilled migrants increase the number of patents at both the district and firm level. Large, high-productivity and capital-intensive firms benefit the most, in terms of innovation activ-ity, from skilled immigrant workers. Importantly, we provide evidence that one channel through which the effect works is task specialization (as in Peri and Sparber, 2009). The arrival of skilled immigrants drives French skilled workers towards language-intensive, managerial tasks while foreign skilled workers specialize in technical, research-oriented tasks. This mechanism manifests itself in the estimated increase in the share of foreign inventors in patenting teams as a consequence of skilled migration. Through this channel, greater innovation is the result of productivity gains from specialization. |
| Keywords: | skilled immigration, innovation, patents |
| JEL: | F22 J61 |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10076&r=dem |