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on Demographic Economics |
| By: | Ulrich Glogowsky; Emanuel Hansen; Dominik Sachs; Holger Lüthen |
| Abstract: | Using German administrative data from the 1960s onward, this paper (i) examines the long-term evolution of child-related gender inequality in earnings and (ii) assesses the impact of family policies on this inequality. We present three sets of findings. First, child penalties (i.e., the percentage of potential earnings lost due to children) have strongly increased over the last decades. Mothers who had their first child in the 1960s faced much smaller penalties than those who gave birth in the 2000s. Second, we decompose overall gender inequality into child-related and child-unrelated components. Over our sample period, the fraction of overall inequality attributed to children rose from 14% to 64%. This trend not only resulted from the growing child penalties but also from rising potential earnings of mothers. Intuitively, in later decades, mothers had more income to lose from child-related career breaks. Third, we investigate the role of policy decisions in this rise in child penalties. Parental leave expansions between 1979 and 1992 amplified child penalties and contributed nearly one-third to the increase in child-related gender inequality. Instead, a parental benefit reform in 2007 mitigated further increases. While the third set of results highlights the role of family policies, the first two imply that sidelining mothers becomes increasingly costly over time. |
| Keywords: | gender inequality, child penalties, family policies |
| JEL: | H31 H42 J08 J13 J16 J18 J22 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11365 |
| By: | Mickael Melki; Hillel Rapoport; Enrico Spolaore; Romain Wacziarg |
| Abstract: | We argue that migrants played a significant role in the diffusion of the demographic transition from France to the rest of Europe in the late 19th century. Employing novel data on French immigration from other European regions from 1850 to 1930, we find that higher immigration to France translated into lower fertility in the region of origin after a few decades - both in cross-region regressions for various periods, and in a panel setting with region fixed effects. These results are robust to the inclusion of a variety of controls, and across multiple specifications. We also find that immigrants who themselves became French citizens achieved lower fertility, particularly those who moved to French regions with the lowest fertility levels. We interpret these findings in terms of cultural remittances, consistently with insights from a theoretical framework where migrants act as vectors of cultural diffusion, spreading new information, social norms and preferences pertaining to modern fertility to their regions of origin. |
| Keywords: | migration, fertility control, social influence, cultural change, diffusion |
| JEL: | J13 F22 N13 O40 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11357 |
| By: | Elsby, Michael W.L.; Smith, Jennifer C.; Wadsworth, Jonathan |
| Abstract: | This article provides a first synthesis of population flows and labor market dynamics across immigrant and native-born populations. We devise a novel dynamic accounting methodology that integrates population flows from two sources-changes in birth cohort size and immigrant flows-with labor market dynamics. We illustrate the method using data for the United Kingdom, where population flows have been large and cyclical, driven first by the maturation of baby boom cohorts in the 1980s and later by immigration in the 2000s. New measures of labor market flows by migrant status uncover the flow origins of disparities in the levels and cyclicality of immigrant and native labor market outcomes and their more recent convergence. An application of our accounting framework reveals that population flows have played a nontrivial role in the volatility of labor markets among the UK-born and, especially, immigrants. |
| Keywords: | immigration; labor market dynamics; worker flows |
| JEL: | R14 J01 |
| Date: | 2024–10–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:125889 |