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on Unemployment, Inequality and Poverty |
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Issue of 2013‒11‒16
ten papers chosen by |
| By: | Tubeuf, Sandy; Trannoy, Alain; Jusot, Florence; Bricard, Damien |
| Abstract: | Purpose: This paper aims to quantify inequalities of opportunities in health in Europe and to assess whether the way the correlation between effort towards health and circumstances empirically matters for the magnitude of inequalities of opportunities. Methodology: This paper considers two alternative normative ways of treating the correlation between effort and circumstances championed by Barry and Roemer, and combine regression analysis with inequality measures to compare inequality of opportunities in health within Europe. This paper uses the Retrospective Survey of SHARELIFE focusing on life histories of European people aged 50 and over. Findings: Our results show considerable inequalities of opportunity in health in Germany, Spain, Italy, Denmark, Greece and Belgium whereas Sweden and Switzerland show low inequalities of opportunities in health. The normative principle considered makes little difference in Austria, France, Czech Republic, Sweden and Switzerland whereas it appears to matter in the Netherlands, Poland, Germany, Spain, Italy, Denmark, Greece and Belgium. Research implications: Our results suggest a strong social and family determinism of lifestyles in the Netherlands, Poland, Germany, Denmark, Belgium and the Mediterranean which emphasized the importance of inequalities of opportunities in health within those countries. In terms of public health and social policies, it appears that reducing social and unhealthy lifestyles reproduction across generations would provide important benefits on health. On the other hand Austria, France, and Czech Republic show high inequalities of opportunities in health mainly driven by social and family background affecting adult health directly, and so would require policies compensating for poorer initial conditions. |
| Keywords: | Equality of opportunity; Europe; health; inequality decomposition; efforts; circumstances; |
| JEL: | I18 I11 |
| Date: | 2013–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dau:papers:123456789/11716&r=ltv |
| By: | Trannoy, Alain; Tubeuf, Sandy; Jusot, Florence |
| Abstract: | The way to treat the correlation between circumstances and effort is a central, yet largely neglected issue in the applied literature on inequality of opportunity. This paper adopts three alternative normative ways of treating this correlation championed by Roemer, Barry and Swift and assesses their empirical relevance using survey data. We combine regression analysis with the natural decomposition of the variance to compare the relative contributions of circumstances and efforts to overall health inequality according to the different normative principles. Our results suggest that, in practice, the normative principle on the way to treat the correlation between circumstances and effort makes little difference on the relative contributions of circumstances and efforts to explained health inequality. |
| Keywords: | equality of opportunity; variance decomposition; circumstances; effort; health; inequality decomposition; |
| JEL: | I12 D63 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dau:papers:123456789/5065&r=ltv |
| By: | Medeiros, Marcelo; Souza, Pedro H.G.F. |
| Keywords: | Social and Behavioral Sciences |
| Date: | 2013–11–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:indrel:qt584222f0&r=ltv |
| By: | Souza, Pedro H.G.F. |
| Keywords: | Social and Behavioral Sciences |
| Date: | 2013–11–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:indrel:qt33q062zj&r=ltv |
| By: | Hart, Robert A; Roberts, J Elizabeth |
| Abstract: | Based on detailed payroll data of blue collar male and female labor in Britain's engineering and metal working industrial sectors between the mid-1920s and mid-1960s, we provide empirical evidence in respect of several central themes in the piecework-timework wage literature. The period covers part of the heyday of pieceworking as well as the start of its post-war decline. We show the importance of relative piece rate flexibility during the Great Depression as well as during the build up to WWII and during the war itself. We account for the very significant decline in the differentials after the war. Labor market topics include piecework pay in respect of compensating differentials, labor heterogeneity, and the transaction costs of pricing piecework output. |
| Keywords: | output pricing; labor heterogeneity; output fluctuations; Piecework - timework hourly pay differentials |
| Date: | 2013–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:stl:stledp:2013-12&r=ltv |
| By: | Richard Layard; Dan Chisholm; Vikram Patel; Shekhar Saxena |
| Abstract: | This paper is a contribution to the second World Happiness Report. It makes five main points. 1. Mental health is the biggest single predictor of life-satisfaction. This is so in the UK, Germany and Australia even if mental health is included with a six-year lag. It explains more of the variance of life-satisfaction in the population of a country than physical health does, and much more than unemployment and income do. Income explains 1% of the variance of life-satisfaction or less. 2. Much the most common forms of mental illness are depression and anxiety disorders. Rigorously defined, these affect about 10% of all the world’s population – and prevalence is similar in rich and poor countries. 3. Depression and anxiety are more common during working age than in later life. They account for a high proportion of disability and impose major economic costs and financial losses to governments worldwide. 4. Yet even in rich countries, under a third of people with diagnosable mental illness are in treatment. 5. Cost-effective treatments exist, with recovery rates of 50% or more. In rich countries treatment is likely to have no net cost to the Exchequer due to savings on welfare benefits and lost taxes. But even in poor countries a reasonable level of coverage could be obtained at a cost of under $2 per head of population per year. |
| Keywords: | Mental illness, welfare benefits, healthcare costs, life-satisfaction |
| JEL: | I10 I14 I18 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp600&r=ltv |
| By: | Pia S. Schober; Christian Schmitt |
| Abstract: | This study investigates whether the expansion of day-care places for under-three-year-old children in East and West Germany from 2007 to 2011 has improved the subjective wellbeing for mothers and fathers with a youngest child in this age group. We extend existing cross-sectional country comparisons and single country policy evaluations by comparing regional variations over time in two different contexts in terms of work-care ideals, labour market, and child care policies. The empirical analysis links administrative records on daycare use at youth welfare office district level from 2007 to 2011 to regionally aggregated data from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) for 2007 to 2011 and from the ‘Families in Germany‘-Study (Familien in Deutschland, FID) for 2010 and 2011. We apply fixed-effects models at the county level. We find that in regions with larger day-care growth mothers and fathers expressed greater satisfaction with the available child care. In West Germany, the daycare expansion was positively associated with an increase in maternal satisfaction with family life, health, personal income, and life overall, whereas fathers’ subjective well-being was less affected. In East Germany, for mothers the associations with some domains were similarly positive but reached statistical significance only for maternal satisfaction with family life. The results suggest that the excess demand before the expansion in West and East Germany restricted maternal choice and well-being more than fathers’. |
| Keywords: | Well-being, satisfaction, parenthood, early childhood education and care, child care |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp602&r=ltv |
| By: | Fredrik Carlsen (Department of Economics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology); Jorn Rattso (Department of Economics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology); Hildegunn E. Stokke (Department of Economics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology) |
| Abstract: | We analyze static and dynamic agglomeration effects across education groups. The data are based on administrative registers covering all full time workers in the private sector of Norway during 2001-2010, about 6.5 million worker-year observations, including place and sector of work experience since 1993. Accounting for unobservable abilities with identification based on movers, the static urban wage premium is similar across education groups. When the history of work experience in different regions and sectors is included, we show that the dynamic wage premium increases in education level and that highly educated in high wage sectors have the largest learning advantage. |
| Keywords: | Agglomeration economies, sorting, education, worker experience |
| JEL: | J24 J31 J61 R12 R23 |
| Date: | 2013–11–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nst:samfok:15213&r=ltv |
| By: | Biavaschi, Costanza (IZA); Zimmermann, Klaus F. (IZA and University of Bonn) |
| Abstract: | Despite the ongoing dialogue on facilitating mobility between the European Union and the Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries, very little is known about the magnitude and characteristics of migrants from these countries. This study aims to fill this gap by studying the size and assimilation patterns of EaP migrants in Germany. Most EaP migrants in Germany come from Ukraine but EaP migrants are a relatively small share of total migrants. EaP migrants experience worse labor market outcomes than other migrant groups, but current and potential migrants hold qualifications in those areas were skill shortages are expected. |
| Keywords: | migration, labour market, assimilation |
| JEL: | J15 J26 J61 J62 |
| Date: | 2013–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izapps:pp72&r=ltv |
| By: | A.B. Atkinson |
| Abstract: | There has been a large rise in the UK ratio of personal wealth to national income. Personal wealth has grown since the 1970s about twice as fast in real terms as national income. Has this rise in the wealth-income ratio led to a corresponding increase in the wealth being passed on from one generation to the next? Are we returning to the levels of inheritance found in the 19th century? In France, the research of Thomas Piketty has highlighted the return of inheritance. The aim of this paper is to construct comparable UK evidence on the extent of the transmission of wealth in the form of estates and, insofar as it is possible, gifts inter vivos. It takes a long-run view of inheritance, starting from 1896, when the modern Estate Duty was introduced and exploits the extensive estate data published over the years in the UK. Construction of a long-run time series for more than a century is challenging, and there are important limitations to the resulting estimates which are discussed extensively in the paper. The resulting time-series demonstrates the major importance of inheritance in the UK before the First World War, when the total transmitted wealth represented some 20 per cent when expressed relative to net national income. In the inter-war period, the total was around 15 per cent, falling to some 10 per cent after the Second World War, and then falling further to below 5 per cent in the late 1970s. Since then, there has indeed been an upturn, although less marked than in France: a rise from 4.8 per cent in 1977 to 8.2 per cent in 2006. This increase was more or less in line with the increase in personal wealth, and has to be interpreted in the light of the changing net worth of the corporate and public sectors of the economy. |
| Keywords: | wealth, inheritance, estate data |
| JEL: | D31 |
| Date: | 2013–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:sticas:/178&r=ltv |