|
on Microeconomic European Issues |
| By: | Julia Baarck; Moritz Bode; Andreas Peichl |
| Abstract: | This paper is the first to show that intergenerational income mobility in Germany has decreased over time. We estimate intergenerational persistence for the birth cohorts 1968-1987 and find that it rises sharply for cohorts born in the late 1970s and early 1980s, after which it stabilizes at a higher level. As a step towards understanding the mechanisms behind this increase, we show that parental income has become more important for educational outcomes of children. Moreover, we show that the increase in intergenerational persistence coincided with a surge in cross-sectional income inequality, providing novel evidence for an ``Intertemporal Great Gatsby Curve''. |
| Keywords: | Intergenerational Mobility, Social Mobility, Income, Education, Inequality. |
| JEL: | J62 I24 D63 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:25103 |
| By: | Rasmus Landersø; Kristian B. Karlson |
| Abstract: | This paper studies intergenerational educational mobility among immigrants and descendants in Denmark for cohorts born between 1965 and 1990. At first glance, the data suggests that immigrants experience higher mobility than native Danes, but this pattern is driven by low coverage and poor data quality of parental education information in administrative registers. Among immigrants with the most reliable data, mobility patterns closely resemble those of natives. Auxiliary analyses using representative survey data corroborate this finding. Moreover, including immigrants in population-wide mobility estimates-given their artificially high relative mobility-attenuates trends in estimated mobility, especially for cohorts born in the 1980s. |
| Keywords: | Educational mobility, Native-immigrant gaps, Data quality |
| JEL: | E43 E52 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:25115 |
| By: | Torben M. Andersen; Anne Katrine Borgbjerg; Jonas Maibom |
| Abstract: | We analyze how pension wealth influences retirement timing using 25 years of Danish administrative panel data on wealth and labor market status. Exploiting early-career variation in firm-specific mandatory pension contribution rates, we study labor supply decisions from age 55 onward. Greater pension wealth accelerates labor market exit: at age 63, the elasticity is about 0.3-an additional 100, 000 DKK (15, 000 USD) at age 55 reduces earnings by 1% at age 63. Effects intensify near statutory retirement age, driven by self-support and early occupational pension withdrawals. Mandatory savings raise retirement wealth but induce earlier exit, underscoring key behavioral responses for pension policy design. |
| Keywords: | Pension wealth, retirement, labor supply, mandated savings |
| JEL: | J32 J26 J22 D14 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26011 |
| By: | Alexander Bertermann; Wolfgang Dauth; Jens Suedekum; Ludger Woessmann |
| Abstract: | How do firms and workers adjust to trade and technology shocks? We analyze two mechanisms that have received little attention: training that upgrades skills and early retirement that shifts adjustment costs to public pension systems. We combine novel data on training participation and early retirement in German local labor markets with established measures of exposure to trade competition and robot adoption. Results indicate that negative trade shocks reduce training-particularly in manufacturing-while robot exposure increases training-particularly in indirectly affected services. Both shocks raise early retirement among manufacturing workers. Structural change thus induces both productivity-enhancing and productivity-reducing responses, challenging simple narratives of labor market adaptation and highlighting the scope for policy to promote adjustment mechanisms conducive to aggregate productivity. |
| Keywords: | training, retirement, trade, technological change, automation, robots, firms, workers, labor market |
| JEL: | J24 J26 O33 F16 R11 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:25139 |
| By: | N. Meltem Daysal; Dan Anderberg; Line Hjorth Andersen; Mette Ejrnæs |
| Abstract: | We examine the impact of a 2002 Danish parental leave reform on intimate partner violence (IPV) using administrative data on assault-related hospital contacts. Using a regression discontinuity design, we show that extending fully paid leave increased mothers' leave-taking and substantially reduced IPV, with effects concentrated among less-educated women. The reform also lengthened birth spacing, while separations remained unchanged and earnings effects were modest. The timing and heterogeneity of impacts point to fertility adjustments-rather than exit options or financial relief-as the key mechanism. Parental leave policy thus emerges as an underexplored lever for reducing IPV. |
| Keywords: | Intimate partner violence; parental leave |
| JEL: | J12 I38 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:25132 |
| By: | Yasmine Elkhateeb; Riccardo Turati; Jérôme Valette |
| Abstract: | Does immigration challenge the identities, values, and cultural diversity of receiving societies? This paper addresses this question by analyzing the impact of immigration on cultural diversity in Europe between 2004 and 2018. It combines regional cultural diversity indices derived from the European Social Survey with immigration shares from the European Labor Force Survey. The results indicate that immigration increases the salience of birthplace identity along cultural lines, fostering a shift toward nativist identities among the native population. These identity shifts, in turn, trigger a process of cultural homogenization among natives. This effect is stronger in regions receiving culturally distant immigrants. It reflects a process of convergence toward the values of highly skilled liberal natives and divergence from those of low-skilled conservative immigrants. |
| Keywords: | Immigration, Social Identity, Cultural Diversity |
| JEL: | F22 D03 D72 Z10 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:25120 |
| By: | Alexander Ahammer; Martin Halla; Pia Heckl; Rudolf Winter-Ebmer |
| Abstract: | Long-term unemployment among older workers is particularly difficult to overcome. We study the impacts of a large-scale job guarantee program that offered up to two years of fully subsidized employment to long-term unemployed individuals aged 50 and above. Using a sharp age-based discontinuity in eligibility, we find that participation increased regular, unsubsidized employment by 43 percentage points two years after the program ended. The gains are driven by transitions into new firms and industries, rather than continued subsidized employment, and we find no evidence of displacement effects for non-participants or spillovers to family members. The program had no measurable short-run health effects. |
| Keywords: | Long-term unemployment, temporary job guarantee, subsidized employment, health status. |
| JEL: | J64 J08 J78 I14 H51 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:25160 |
| By: | Greta Morando; Lauro Carnicelli |
| Abstract: | The motherhood penalty is a major source of gender inequality, yet it varies substantially across women. We exploit the random gender of the firstborn in Finnish register data to study how parental preferences for family time interact with occupational constraints to generate this heterogeneity. We document a consistent preference for daughters across education groups, reflected in fertility behavior and maternal leave duration. Despite similar preferences, long-run labor market consequences differ sharply by maternal education. Ten years after birth, university-educated mothers experience a 10% larger earnings penalty when their first child is a son, whereas less educated mothers incur a 5% larger penalty when the first child is a daughter. These differences are consistent with lower employment among non-tertiary-educated women and with job sorting into more family-friendly positions among tertiary-educated women following the birth of a firstborn daughter. Our findings show that parental preferences, mediated by education-specific labor market opportunities, generate substantial heterogeneity in the motherhood penalty. |
| Keywords: | Motherhood penalty; gender inequality; parental preferences; child gender; labor-market sorting; work-family balance; education heterogeneity |
| JEL: | J13 J16 J22 J24 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26101 |
| By: | Giuseppe Pio Dachille; Maria De Paola; Roberto Nisticò |
| Abstract: | We study the fertility effects of guaranteed minimum income (MI) programs using Italy's Reddito di Cittadinanza (RdC), a national income floor introduced in 2019. Using administrative social security microdata and a Regression Discontinuity Design, we find that the RdC had no aggregate effect on fertility but increased childbearing by 18% over two years in Southern Italy, where economic insecurity is higher and gender norms more traditional. The effect appears driven not only by higher income but also by greater economic stability. These results suggest that MI schemes-though not designed with pronatalist intent-can shape fertility in economically disadvantaged settings. |
| Keywords: | Fertility; Guaranteed Minimum Income; RDD |
| JEL: | H53 J13 C21 |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:2588 |
| By: | Giovanna D'Adda; Simone Ferro; Tommaso Frattini; Alessio Romarri |
| Abstract: | Using large-scale high-granularity data from a food delivery platform and granular pollution and weather information, we study how PM2.5 fluctuations affect riders' absenteeism, productivity, and accidents. Exploiting exogenous pollution variation from inverse boundary layer height, we find that higher pollution increases absenteeism for all workers and raises delivery times and accident rates only among (e-)bike riders, who must exert physical effort while working. Affected workers compensate productivity losses by working longer hours. Monetary incentives mitigate the effects on absenteeism but do not offset the decline in productivity and appear to exacerbate accident risk. |
| Keywords: | Air Pollution; Food Delivery Riders; Absenteeism; Labor Productivity; Workplace Safety. |
| JEL: | H4 J28 Q52 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:25123 |
| By: | Francesco Del Prato; Salvatore Lattanzio |
| Abstract: | Men experience workplace injuries at roughly twice the rate of women. We study whether compensating differentials for injury risk contribute to gender differences in firm pay policies. We develop a search model that microfounds an AKM wage equation, decomposing firm pay effects into productivity and injury-risk components. Using Italian matched employer-employee data with individual injury records, we estimate gender-specific firm wage effects and firm-level injury risk. We find that injury-related channels account for 8 percent of the gender gap in firm wage effects, rising to 17 percent in manufacturing. While women receive only 86 percent of men's wage response to firm-level injury risk, conditioning on broad occupation eliminates this within-firm disparity. This indicates that the injury channel reflects sorting across firms and occupational allocation within firms, rather than differential pricing of identical risk. |
| Keywords: | Gender wage gap, workplace injuries, compensating differentials, AKM, rent sharing |
| JEL: | J16 J28 J31 J64 J71 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26081 |
| By: | Rune Vejlin; Hans Sigaard; Michael Svarer; Anne Katrine Borgbjerg |
| Abstract: | This paper estimates the effect of a reform-induced increase in the early retirement age (ERA) on labor supply, health, and healthcare utilization using detailed Danish administrative data and a regression discontinuity design. We show that while raising the ERA successfully increased employment, it also led to spillovers into other public transfers and increased the number of self-supporting individuals. We find that the increased ERA led to small and insignificant effects on GP visits and the use of painkillers, as well as borderline significant, small positive effects on the use of antidepressants and CVD medicine. Further analysis shows that individuals who were employed due to the reform had lower pre-reform income and wealth, while the individuals who were not employed despite being affected by the reform were characterized by worse health before the reform announcement. We argue that possibilities for exiting employment serve as a potentially important mitigating mechanism for health and healthcare utilization effects by sorting vulnerable individuals out of employment. |
| Keywords: | retirement reforms, health, healthcare utilization |
| JEL: | I18 J18 J26 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26046 |
| By: | Egshiglen Batbayar; Christoph Breunig; Peter Haan; Boryana Ilieva |
| Abstract: | We propose a new approach to estimate selection-corrected quantiles of the gender wage gap. Our method employs instrumental variables that explain variation in the latent variable but, conditional on the latent process, do not directly affect selection. We provide semiparametric identification of the quantile parameters without imposing parametric restrictions on the selection probability, derive the asymptotic distribution of the proposed estimator based on constrained selection probability weighting, and demonstrate how the approach applies to the Roy model of labor supply. Using German administrative data, we analyze the distribution of the gender gap in full-time earnings. We find pronounced positive selection among women at the lower end, especially those with less education, which widens the gender gap in this segment, and strong positive selection among highly educated men at the top, which narrows the gender wage gap at upper quantiles. |
| Keywords: | C14, C31, C36, J16, J21, J31 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26014 |
| By: | Pauline Carry |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the effects of working time regulations on the allocation of workers and hours. I exploit a unique reform introducing a minimum workweek of 24 hours in France in 2014, affecting 15% of jobs. Drawing on administrative data and an event study design, I find a firm-level reduction in total hours worked, showing imperfect substitutability between workers and hours. The effects differ by gender: women working part-time were replaced by men working longer hours. Importantly, workers also reallocate between firms. To quantify the aggregate impact accounting for these effects, I build and estimate a search and matching model with firm and worker heterogeneity. Overall, the minimum workweek reduced employment by 1.4%, largely driven by women, and decreased total hours by 0.5%. |
| Keywords: | Working time regulations, Hours of work, Reallocation effects, Gender inequality |
| JEL: | J08 J23 J41 E24 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26071 |
| By: | Adriana Di Liberto; Ludovica Giua; Fabiano Schivardi; Marco Sideri; Giovanni Sulis |
| Abstract: | We study how managerial practices of school principals affect student performance and aspirations. For 2011 and 2015, we merge administrative data on Italian high school students with the management quality indices of their principals, constructed using the World Management Survey methodology. The frequent principals' turnover over this period allows us to causally interpret school-fixed-effect estimates. We find that management quality positively and substantially impacts standardized math and language tests and student desire to attend college. The comparison to pooled-OLS suggests that fixed effects correct for the downward bias arising from selection of better principals into more difficult schools. |
| Keywords: | Management; School principals; Student outcomes |
| JEL: | L2 I2 M1 O32 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:25121 |
| By: | Gabriella Conti; Rita Ginja; Petra Persson; Barton Willage |
| Abstract: | The motherhood penalty is well-documented, but what happens at the other end of the reproductive spectrum? Menopause-a transition often marked by debilitating physical and psychological symptoms-also entails substantial costs. Using population-wide Norwegian and Swedish data and quasi-experimental methods, we show that a menopause diagnosis leads to lasting drops in earnings and employment, alongside greater reliance on social transfers. Increasing access to menopause-related health care can help offset these losses. Our findings reveal the hidden economic toll of menopause and the potential gains from better support policies. |
| Keywords: | Menopause, Health, Labor Market |
| JEL: | I10 J01 J13 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:25141 |
| By: | Sarah Fritz; Catherine van der List; Lorenzo Incoronato |
| Abstract: | This paper documents substantial fiscal waste in the context of one the world's largest regional development programs - the EU Cohesion Policy. We study Italy, and find that 20% of funding commitments are never paid out and funneled into unfinished or never-started projects. In our setting, this happens for reasons unrelated to fiscal constraints - municipalities appear to simply leave money on the table. Foregone spending is more prevalent in Southern regions, but there is also stark variation across municipalities within regions. We show that such under-utilization of available funds is strongly associated with limited administrative capacity of local governments. |
| Keywords: | foregone spending, state capacity, fiscal waste |
| JEL: | H11 H83 R58 |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:2567 |
| By: | Martin Olsson; Fredrik Heyman |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how automation shapes intergenerational income mobility. Using Swedish register data on parents and children from 1985 to 2019, we study how parental exposure to robots at the occupational and industry level during the 1990s affected children's outcomes up to thirty years later. To address selection, we match parents on detailed worker, firm, and family characteristics and complement this with firm-level variation based on robot and broader automation imports. We also employ two IV strategies that leverage exogenous variation in automation adoption: one based on foreign industry-level robot adoption, and another exploiting differences in managerial education at the firm level. Our results show that parental exposure to robotization and automation reduces children's income and upward mobility, and leads to worse long-run labor market and educational outcomes. These effects are concentrated among low-income families. Evidence suggests that parental labor market shocks and financial strain are key mechanisms. Taken together, the findings indicate that technological change can reduce intergenerational mobility and contribute to long-run inequality. |
| Keywords: | Intergenerational Mobility; Robots; Automation; Inequality |
| JEL: | J31 J62 O33 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26047 |
| By: | Spindler, Lena; Hacker, Bernd |
| Abstract: | This study provides an empirical analysis of deferred tax accounting under IFRS (IAS12), focusing on international and sectoral diversity within the eurozone. While IFRS aims for uniform accounting standards, prior research suggests that national tax, legal, and cultural contexts significantly influence its application. This paper investigates whether such country-specific influences extend to deferred tax accounting. Using a sample of 1, 240 companies from the ten largest eurozone economies, the study analyzes consolidated financial statements for the 2024 fiscal year. Key metrics, including the absolute values of deferred tax assets and liabilities and their ratios to total assets, are compared across countries and industries. The findings reveal substantial heterogeneity. Absolute deferred tax positions are concentrated in the largest economies (Germany, France), but relative significance varies, with countries like Spain and Ireland showing higher proportions relative to total assets. At the industry level, capital-intensive and innovation-driven sectors (e.g., automotive, pharmaceuticals) exhibit distinct patterns. Furthermore, a strong positive correlation between deferred tax assets and liabilities exists in most sectors, indicating common underlying accounting and tax factors. The results confirm that, despite a unified standard, deferred tax reporting is shaped by national economic strength, industry affiliation, and local accounting practices, highlighting the need for a differentiated, relative-key-figure approach when comparing such positions internationally. This working paper is based on the thesis of Lena Spindler. |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:rpaebs:340166 |
| By: | Moïse Drabo; Raquel Fonseca; Marie-Louise Leroux |
| Abstract: | Informal care is a cornerstone of long-term care for older adults but may entail substantial psychological costs for caregivers. Using seven waves (2004–2022) of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) for 27 countries, we estimate the causal effect of providing regular personal care inside the household on depressive symptoms and quality of life. We estimate dynamic panel instrumental-variable (IV) models with country and wave fixed effects, exploiting the persistence of caregiving and using lagged indicators of caregiving provision as instruments to address reverse causality and unobserved heterogeneity. Our baseline estimates indicate that providing informal care increases depressive symptoms by about 25% and reduces quality of life by roughly 6% relative to non-caregivers. These adverse effects are strongest for spousal caregivers and when caregiving is sustained over time, and they persist even after caregiving ends. Robustness checks using alternative outcomes, subsamples, and specifications suggest that the well-being costs of informal caregiving are sizable and pervasive, underscoring the need for long-term care policies that explicitly account for the mental health burden placed on family caregivers. |
| Keywords: | Informal care, Depressive symptoms, Long-term care, Quality of life, Older adults. |
| JEL: | I12 J14 J22 C33 H55 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rsi:creeic:2602 |
| By: | Krzysztof Karbownik; Helena Svaleryd; Jonas Vlachos; Xuemeng Wang |
| Abstract: | Work-related burnout and stress-related sickness absence have become increasingly prevalent, but evidence on which workplace features shape workers' mental health remains limited. Using population-level Swedish register data covering all lower- and upper-secondary teachers from 2006-2024, we show that schools serving more disadvantaged students exhibit substantially higher rates of sickness absence, particularly for stress-related diagnoses. Exploiting within teacher variation across student cohorts, we separate sorting from exposure and find that a one standard deviation increase in student disadvantage raises overall and stress-related sick leave by 3.6% and 8.7%, respectively. Survey evidence indicates that these effects operate through classroom conditions rather than workload or organizational differences. The findings establish client composition as a distinct and policy-relevant determinant of worker health in contact intensive occupations. |
| Keywords: | student composition, teachers' health, mental health, contact-intensive occupations |
| JEL: | I10 I21 J63 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26050 |
| By: | Christian Dustmann; Sebastian Otten; Uta Schönberg; Jan Stuhler |
| Abstract: | Most studies on the labor market effects of immigration use repeated cross-sectional data to estimate the effects of immigration on regions. This paper shows that such regional effects are composites of effects that address fundamental questions in the immigration debate but remain unidentified with repeated cross-sectional data. We provide a unifying empirical framework that decomposes the regional effects of immigration into their underlying components and show how these are identifiable from data that track workers over time. Our empirical application illustrates that such analysis yields a far more informative picture of immigration's effects on wages, employment, and occupational upgrading. |
| Keywords: | Immigration, wage effects, employment effects, upgrading, elasticity, selection, identification |
| JEL: | J21 J23 J31 J61 R23 |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:2586 |
| By: | Horng Chern Wong; Dennis Novy; Carlo Perroni; Natalie Chen |
| Abstract: | Using French micro-data, we show that rapid structural transformation in densely populated cities is driven by the expansion of large tradable services firms and the departure of large manufacturing firms. This reallocation is accompanied by sharply rising house prices but without a compensating increase in urban nominal wages. Using a quantitative spatial equilibrium model, we highlight the role that local consumption services play in reconciling these facts. We show that structural change leads to an expansion of local services varieties, which improves amenities and moderates urban wage growth despite rising house prices. By containing labor costs, this mechanism allows large, urban-centered tradable services firms to capitalize on their fast productivity growth. As a result, the forces underlying urban-biased structural change have facilitated the rise of superstar services firms and have increased the urban-rural welfare gap, even though conventional statistics point in the opposite direction. |
| Keywords: | Agglomeration, Cities, House Prices, Services, Sorting, Structural Change |
| JEL: | R11 R12 R30 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26006 |
| By: | Caravaggio, Nicola; Resce, Giuliano; Santangelo, Agapito Emanuele |
| Abstract: | This paper examines whether public investments in digital infrastructure improve citizen-facing government performance. We combine administrative data on the staggered rollout of a large-scale digitalization program with high-frequency social-media data for Italian municipalities, using online communication as a proxy for public service delivery. Exploiting variation in treatment timing, we estimate causal effects across access, usage, and outcomes. Digital investments increase municipalities' online presence and communication activity: treated municipalities are more likely to adopt social media, post more frequently, and generate higher aggregate engagement. However, improvements in effectiveness are limited in the short run. Engagement per post remains unchanged, and gains in communication quality, measured by readability, emerge only gradually. These findings suggest that while digital investments expand activity, translating them into effective communication requires time and complementary capabilities. |
| Keywords: | Digital transformation; Structural change; Public sector digitalization; Technological adoption; Digital divide; Government communication; High-frequency data. |
| JEL: | O33 O38 H75 C23 |
| Date: | 2026–04–27 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mol:ecsdps:esdp26104 |
| By: | Å tÄ›pán Mikula; Mariola Pytliková |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how improvements in air quality affect migration behavior. We exploit a natural experiment in the Czech Republic, where rapid desulfurization of coal-fired power plants in the 1990s led to a sharp reduction in SO2 pollution - from extremely high levels to below EU/WHO limits - without directly impacting economic activity. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we find that cleaner air reduced emigration from previously heavily polluted municipalities by 24% and increased net migration by 78%, with effects strongest in the most polluted areas. The impact was particularly pronounced among highly educated individuals. Migration responses were strongest in municipalities with weaker social capital and fewer public amenities, suggesting that environmental improvements matter most where other local advantages are limited. In contrast, anti-emigration monetary subsidies-such as those offered during the socialist period in polluted areas-had no effect. Overall, our findings highlight the potential of environmental policies to support re-population and regional revitalization-especially when combined with investments in infrastructure and public services. |
| Keywords: | Air quality; Migration; Natural experiment |
| JEL: | J61 Q53 R23 O3 |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:2581 |
| By: | Sonia Bhalotra; N. Meltem Daysal; Louis Fréget; Jonas Hirani; Priyama Majumdar; Mircea Trandafir; Miriam Wüst; Tom Zohar |
| Abstract: | Using Danish administrative data linked to two independent, validated postpartum depression screenings, we study how postpartum mental health shocks shape women's labor market trajectories. Event-study estimates show no pre-birth differences in trends between depressed and non-depressed mothers, but persistent employment gaps that widen immediately after birth. Health-care utilization patterns indicate that these differences reflect acute mental health shocks rather than pre-existing trends. The penalties are concentrated among less educated mothers and those in less family-friendly jobs. Our results highlight postpartum depression as a meaningful and unequal contributor to the motherhood penalty. |
| Keywords: | Postpartum depression, motherhood penalty, labor market inequality |
| JEL: | I12 J13 J16 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26015 |
| By: | Mette Foged; Jens Hainmueller; Mikkel Stahlschmidt; Edith Zink |
| Abstract: | Sudden displacement crises strain reception systems and require rapid expansion of refugee accommodation beyond conventional channels. We study Denmark's 2022 reception of Ukrainian refugees and provide the first population-level analysis of two scalable strategies that expanded capacity outside standard public refugee housing: public "pop-up" shelters and private hosting in residents' homes. Using linked administrative registers covering the full arriving population, combined with a representative refugee survey, we classify each refugee's initial accommodation from address and co-residence records and track outcomes for 18 months. The majority of arrivals was absorbed in pop-up shelters (37%) and private hosting (43%). Both proved durable, with mean stays of about seven months and no indication that private hosting was less stable. Exploiting quasi-random assignment generated by within-municipality capacity and time constraints, we estimate effects of accommodation type while conditioning on locality, arrival timing, and sociodemographics. Relative to conventional public housing, private hosting led to higher early employment, higher earnings, persistently lower public-transfer receipt, and improved psychological well-being. Pop-up housing performed at least as well on labor-market outcomes and showed modest gains in social integration. By holding locality constant, we show that how refugees are housed within municipalities has an independent, first-order effect on integration-distinct from the well-studied importance of where they are placed. These findings highlight the potential for civic-led accommodation to complement public systems during displacement shocks and shape long-term refugee trajectories. |
| Keywords: | Refugees; integration; public policy; housing provision |
| JEL: | J15 J61 J68 R31 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:25154 |