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on Unemployment, Inequality and Poverty |
| By: | Katharina Bettig; Valentin Lindlacher |
| Abstract: | Commuting is a fundamental aspect of employees’ daily routines and continues to evolve with technological advancements. Yet the effects of commuting on subjective well-being remain insufficiently investigated in the context of expanding digital connectivity. This paper examines the causal effects of changes in commuting distance on subjective well-being in an era of widespread mobile internet availability. Exploiting exogenous shifts in commuting distance resulting from employer-driven workplace relocations, we employ a Difference-in-Differences framework using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) from 2010 to 2019. Our results show that an involuntary increase in commuting distance reduces life satisfaction by 3 percent, on average, and heightens feelings of worry by almost 8 percent, on average. Our heterogeneity analysis shows that increased mobile coverage during commutes partially mitigates the decline in life satisfaction but exacerbates the negative impact on satisfaction with leisure. |
| Keywords: | commuting, subjective well-being, mobile coverage, life satisfaction, SOEP, panel data |
| JEL: | I31 J28 R40 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11784 |
| By: | Bloom, Nicholas (Stanford University); Dahl, Gordon B. (University of California, San Diego); Rooth, Dan-Olof (Swedish Institute for Social Research) |
| Abstract: | There has been a dramatic rise in disability employment in the US since the pandemic, a pattern mirrored in other countries as well. A similar increase is not found for any other major gender, race, age or education demographic. At the same time, work from home has risen four-fold. This paper asks whether the two are causally related. Analyzing CPS and ACS microdata, we find the increase in disability employment is concentrated in occupations with high levels of working from home. Controlling for compositional changes and labor market tightness, we estimate that a 1 percentage point increase in work from home increases full-time employment by 1.1% for individuals with a physical disability. A back of the envelope calculation reveals that the post pandemic increase in working from home explains 80% of the rise in full-time employment. Wage data suggests that WFH increased the supply of workers with a disability, likely by reducing commuting costs and enabling better control of working conditions. |
| Keywords: | disability employment; remote work |
| JEL: | J14 J20 |
| Date: | 2025–04–15 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:sofile:2025_005 |
| By: | Gmeiner, Michael; Gschwandtner, Adelina |
| Abstract: | There is substantial evidence from psychology and medicine that pets are associated with better health and higher life satisfaction of their human companions. Yet whether this relationship is causal or purely a correlation remains largely unknown. We use an instrumental variable approach to overcome this, specifically exploiting relationships in which neighbours ask individuals to look over their property when traveling, which is correlated with pet companionship. We control for baseline relationships with neighbours as well as various other potential sources of bias. Using the Innovation Panel as part of the UK Household Longitudinal Survey, we find that a pet companion increases life satisfaction by 3 to 4 points on a scale of 1 to 7. Moreover, we estimate the size of the impact of pets on human life satisfaction and wellbeing in monetary units. We find that having a pet companion is worth up to £70, 000 a year in terms of life satisfaction, similar to values obtained in the literature for meeting with friends and relatives on a regular basis. |
| Keywords: | life satisfaction; human-animal interaction; pet effect; health promotion; interspecies interaction; wellbeing |
| JEL: | I30 D91 |
| Date: | 2025–03–31 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:127746 |
| By: | Duleep, Harriet; Dowhan, Dan; Liu, Xingfei; Regets, Mark; Gesumaria, Robert |
| Abstract: | The 1924 Immigration Act excluded immigrants from economically developing countries to the point of their near total exclusion. Forty years later, the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act eliminated most discriminatory county-of-origin barriers. America's doors opened and immigration from economically developing countries soared. Fueling debates about the "quality" of immigrants from economically developing countries, empirical studies based on a wellrespected methodology conclude that post-1965 immigrant men have low initial earnings and sluggish earnings growth. This methodology is based on flawed assumptions (Duleep, Liu, and Regets, 2022). Removing these assumptions reveals high earnings growth for post-1965 immigrant men in accordance with the Immigrant Human Capital Investment Model (Duleep and Regets, 1999). A similar story emerges for immigrant women, contradicting the Family Investment Hypothesis first put forth by Long (1980) and Duleep and Sanders (1993). It appears a pre- 1965/post-1965 transition occurred in the earnings profiles of U.S. immigrants, from earnings resembling those of U.S. natives to low initial earnings but much higher earnings growth than their U.S.-born statistical twins. The transition underlies the overtime success story of immigrant families from economically developing countries (Duleep, Regets, Sanders, and Wunnava, 2021); the high earnings growth reflects human capital investment that invigorates the economy (Duleep, Jaeger, and McHenry, 2018; Green, 1999, Green and Worswick, 2012). |
| Keywords: | Immigrant earning growth, human capital investment, skill transferability, immigrant quality, sample restrictions, family investment hypothesis, nonparametric estimation |
| JEL: | J15 J16 J24 J31 C1 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:1596 |
| By: | Tovar Jalles, JoaÞo; Pessino, Carola; Calderón, Ana Cristina |
| Abstract: | Widening income disparities, higher corruption and larger informality in many emerging market and developing economies (EMDE) including Latin America, all with pressing and mounting fiscal problems, have rekindled interest in the empirical analysis of the key factors determining the occurrence of fiscal consolidations. Using discrete choice models, this paper examines the drivers of fiscal consolidation episodes in a sample of 148 EMDE between 1980 and 2019 with a focus on Latin America. Consolidations are more likely during good economic times. Inequality does not seem to drive consolidations in Latin America, while more informality increases the probability of their occurrence, corruption decreases it. In turn, when examining the drivers of successful consolidations, larger income inequality seems to act as a boost for successful consolidations, while informality hinders the likelihood of success. In fact, while the size of the public investment multiplier in Latin America is larger than in other country groups, when informality is high the multiplier effect gets reduced to a much lower and insignificant magnitude. Results are robust to several sensitivity and robustness tests. |
| Keywords: | fiscal adjustments;filtering;Panel Data;binary choice models;local projection;fiscalmultipliers;nonlinearities;corruption;shadow economy |
| JEL: | C23 E21 E62 H50 H62 |
| Date: | 2025–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:idb:brikps:14020 |
| By: | Joan Costa-Font; Anna Nicińska; Melcior Rosello-Roig; Joan Costa-i-Font |
| Abstract: | Past trauma resulting from personal life shocks, especially during periods of particular volatility such as regime transition (or regime change), can give rise to significant long-lasting effects on people’s health and well-being. We study this question by drawing on longitudinal and retrospective data to examine the effect of past exposure to major individual-level shocks (specifically hunger, persecution, dispossession, and exceptional stress) on current measures of an individual’s health and mental well-being. We study the effect of the timing of the personal shocks, alongside the additional effect of ‘institutional uncertainty’ of regime change in post-communist European countries. Our findings are as follows: First, we document evidence of the detrimental effects of shocks on a series of relevant health and well-being outcomes. Second, we show evidence of more pronounced detrimental consequences of such personal shocks experienced by individuals living in formerly communist countries (which accrue to about 8% and 10% in the case of hunger and persecution, respectively) than in non-communist countries. The effects are robust and take place in addition to the direct effects of regime change and shocks. |
| Keywords: | transition shocks, Soviet communism, later life health, health care system. |
| JEL: | I18 H75 H79 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11763 |