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on Unemployment, Inequality and Poverty |
| By: | David G. Blanchflower; Alex Bryson; Anthony Lepinteur; Alan Piper |
| Abstract: | A substantial literature finds poor mental health is hump-shaped with respect to age, whilst subjective wellbeing is U-shaped. Recent cross-sectional studies indicate a change in this relationship driven by the declining mental health of the young. We contribute to this literature by re-examining the age patterns in subjective wellbeing and illbeing for individuals in five European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden). We do so with fifteen waves of the COME-HERE (CH) panel survey for 2020-2025 plus data from the Global Minds (GM) surveys of 2020-2026 for the same countries. We show that wellbeing rises and illbeing declines in a roughly monotonic fashion with age. This is found both with cross-section data from the CH and GM data, and from longitudinal plots of person fixed effects by age in the CH data. |
| Keywords: | subjective wellbeing; mental health; age; despair; panel data |
| JEL: | I31 I38 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26200 |
| By: | Chiappori, Pierre-André; Meghir, Costas; Okuyama, Yoko |
| Abstract: | In this paper we develop a novel approach to measuring individual welfare within households, recognizing that individuals may have both different preferences (particularly regarding public consumption) and differential access to resources. We construct a money metric measure of welfare that accounts for public goods (by using personalized prices) and the allocation of time. We then use our conceptual framework to analyse intrahousehold inequality in Japan, allowing for the presence of two public goods: expenditures on children and other public goods including housing. We show empirically that women have much stronger preferences for both public goods and this has critical implications for the distribution of welfare in the household. |
| JEL: | H31 H42 J12 J16 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19194 |
| By: | Paul Bingley; Lorenzo Cappellari; Marco Ovidi; Matteo Sandi |
| Abstract: | We provide the first causal evidence on the intergenerational effects of parental criminal victimization originating outside the family. Using population-wide Danish administrative data, we compare end-of-compulsory-school examination scores of children exposed to parental victimization with those of matched controls, and exploit victimizations occurring after compulsory schooling to account for residual selection. Violent, but not property, victimization lowers children's mathematics scores by 0.03 standard deviations, rising to 0.05 standard deviations for exposure in early childhood, a period when parental inputs are especially consequential for skill formation. Deterioration in family stability, paternal behavior, and labor market attachment following victimization emerge as the primary mechanisms, pointing to an underappreciated channel of intergenerational inequality. |
| Keywords: | Parental criminal victimization, intergenerational spillovers, children's human capital, early childhood |
| JEL: | K42 I24 J13 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26210 |
| By: | Brañas, Pablo; Cabrales, Antonio; Espinosa, María Paz; García-Muñoz, Teresa |
| Abstract: | In this paper we explore how individual social preferences correlate with political support for redistribution. We ran an incentivized experiment with a large representative sample of the Spanish population. Our participants took six decisions that elicited their social preferences. Their choices could result in a different total surplus and different distributions of the surplus between the subject and an anonymous counterpart. In our sample, social preferences are unrelated to political support for distributive policies. The main correlates for support of redistribution are the beliefs concerning the importance of effort versus luck for success (fairness), the trust in government institutions (effectiveness) and the perceived importance of the poverty problem (need). |
| JEL: | C93 D31 D72 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19274 |
| By: | Lamadon, Thibaut; Lise, Jeremy; Meghir, Costas; Robin, Jean-Marc |
| Abstract: | This paper develops the nonparametric identification of models with production complementarities, worker-firm specific disutility of labor and search frictions. Mobility in the model is subject to preference shocks, and we assume that firms can write wage contracts. We develop a constructive proof for the nonpara- metric identification of the model primitives from matched employer-employee data. We use the estimated model to decompose the sources of wage dispersion into worker heterogeneity, compensating di↵erentials, and search frictions that generate between-firm and within-firm dispersion. We find that compensating di↵erentials are substantial on average, but the contribution di↵ers greatly be- tween the lowest and highest types of workers. Finally, we use the model to provide an economic interpretation of several empirical regularities. |
| Keywords: | Matching; Amenities; Job search behavior; Identification; Matched employer employee data |
| JEL: | J21 J24 J31 J41 J64 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19255 |
| By: | Thomas F. Epper; Ernst Fehr; Kristoffer B. Hvidberg; Claus T. Kreiner; Søren Leth-Petersen; Basit Zafar; Claus Thustrup Kreiner |
| Abstract: | We examine whether individual preferences predict higher education choices. According to standard human capital theory, differences in individuals’ time and risk preferences lead to differences in educational investments. Testing this hypothesis is challenging, as it requires measuring individuals’ preferences, doing so before they make educational investments, and subsequently observing their educational choices. We combine incentivized, experimentally elicited measures of time and risk preferences for a large, representative sample of 18–19-year-old Danes with administrative data on subsequent higher education choices, program-specific earnings trajectories, prior school performance, and family background. In line with theory, we find that more patient individuals choose longer education programs and programs with steeper early-career earnings profiles, while more risk-averse individuals select programs with lower earnings dispersion and reduced downside risk. These relationships remain strong after controlling for cognitive ability, prior academic performance, and family background. Our findings suggest that preferences have a substantial impact on real-world educational investments and have implications for educational sorting. |
| Keywords: | risk preferences, time preferences, educational choices |
| JEL: | I23 I24 I26 C91 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12954 |