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on Demographic Economics |
| By: | Mörk, Eva (Department of Economics, Uppsala University); Sjögren, Anna (IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy); Svaleryd, Helena (Department of Economics, Uppsala University) |
| Abstract: | We analyze to what extent health outcomes of Swedish children are worse among children whose parents become unemployed. To this end we combine Swedish hospitalization data for 1992-2007 for children 3-18 years of age with register data on parental unemployment. We find that children with unemployed parents are 17 percent more likely to be hospitalized than other children, but that most of the difference is driven by selection. A child fixed-effects approach suggests a small effect of parental unemployment on child health. |
| Keywords: | Parental unemployment; child health; human capital |
| JEL: | I12 J13 |
| Date: | 2014–04–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2014_008&r=dem |
| By: | Stancanelli, Elena G. F. (CNRS, Sorbonne Economics Research Center (CES)) |
| Abstract: | The many facets of retirement have been studied widely by economists. However, the effect of retirement on marriage stability has been ignored in the literature. Retirement represents a dramatic change in individual time allocation that may affect marriage stability. In particular, individuals that grew up in traditional households in which the father did little domestic work and both spouses worked very long hours such as farmer household may find their marriage especially proven by the transition into retirement. We study the effect of retirement on marriage outburst rates using observations on over 200 000 French men and over 166 000 French women aged 50 to 70, drawn from the French Labor Force Surveys over the period 1990 to 2002. Due to reverse causality concerns, we instrument retirement in our divorce model by exploiting legal retirement age in France and applying a regression discontinuity approach. We find a significant increase in divorce rates which soar and almost double upon retirement for individuals of either gender that grew up in a traditional family environment such as a farmer household. |
| Keywords: | ageing, retirement, regression discontinuity |
| JEL: | J14 C1 C36 |
| Date: | 2014–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8117&r=dem |
| By: | Kluve, Jochen (Humboldt University Berlin, RWI); Schmitz, Sebastian (Freie Universität Berlin) |
| Abstract: | Increasing mothers' labor supply is a key policy challenge in many OECD countries. Germany recently introduced a generous parental benefit that allows for strong consumption smoothing after childbirth and, by taking into account opportunity costs of childbearing, incentivizes working women to become mothers and return to the labor force rapidly. Using a sharp regression discontinuity design, we estimate policy impacts for up to 5 years after childbirth and find significant and striking patterns. First, medium-run effects on mothers' employment probability are positive, significant and large, for some subgroups ranging up to 10 per cent. The effects are driven by gains in part-time but not full-time employment. We also find significant increases in working hours. Second, the probability of job continuity rises significantly, i.e. mothers return to their pre-childbirth employer at higher rates. Third, employers reward this return to work by raising job quality significantly and substantially. We argue that the policy generated a profound change in social norms: the new parental benefit defines an "anchor", i.e. a societally preferred point in time at which mothers return to work after childbirth. |
| Keywords: | regression discontinuity, female labor supply, parental benefits |
| JEL: | H31 J13 J22 |
| Date: | 2014–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8115&r=dem |
| By: | Elvin Afandi; Majid Kermani |
| Abstract: | There is no gender difference between success in establishing a business once both males and females have the same preference to self-employment and attempts towards establishing a new business. However, the gender gap tends to be huge when it comes to individual preferences and attempts to start up an entrepreneurial activity. In this study, we empirically estimate the role of inequality in individual and country attributes between man and woman in the bridging this gender entrepreneurship gap. Using Oaxaca-type decomposition and its extensions on choice of weighting matrix for non-linear probability models, we found that differences in both individual as well as country characteristics largely favor males, while the former play greater role in explaining the gender gap. About a one third of the gender gap in both latent as well as nascent entrepreneurship can be traced back to females owning smaller endowments than males. Empirical results also show differences in return to measured characteristics favor males. Nevertheless, a portion of gender gap that is unexplained by the differences in these characteristics and their coefficients (or return) could still indicate gender discrimination. |
| Keywords: | latent entrepreneurship, nascent entrepreneurship, gender gap |
| JEL: | J16 L26 M13 |
| Date: | 2014–02–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wdi:papers:2014-1074&r=dem |
| By: | P. Rupert; G. Zanella |
| Abstract: | We study how becoming a grandparent affects grandparents’ labor supply. In a simple model of the allocation of time in which seniors care about their offspring’s welfare and also value time spent with family children, the sign of the effect is ambiguous. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics we find evidence that becoming a grandparent causes a reduction of employed grandmother’s hours of work. We identify a lower bound of about 190. This effect originates towards the bottom of the hours distribution (i.e., among women less attached to the labor market). For employed grandfathers, the effect is also negative, originates towards the top of the hours distribution (i.e., where overtime work is substantial), but is smaller and more imprecisely estimated than for women. We also find that for working grandmothers the effect is stronger the closer grandparents and grandchildren live and during the first years since becoming a grandparent (i.e., when the grandchildren are younger). The “extensive margin” of grandparenting (becoming a grandparent) turns out to be much more important in generating these effects than the corresponding “intensive” margin (having additional grandchildren). |
| JEL: | D19 J13 J14 J22 |
| Date: | 2014–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bol:bodewp:wp937&r=dem |
| By: | Renee Luthra (University of Essex); Lucinda Platt (London School of Economics); Justyna Salamońska (University of Chieti-Pescara) |
| Abstract: | The expansion of the European Union eastwards in 2004, with an ensuing massive increase in East-West migration from the accession countries has been represented as a new migration system of a kind unique in recent migration history, with its specific features of rights of movement and low mobility and information costs accompanying persistent East-West wage differentials. In principle, it provides an ideal context in which to develop understandings of the ‘new migration’ reflecting complex motivations and migration trajectories as well as chain migration and transnational lives. Despite a rapid expansion of research in this area, new insights into the complexities of mixed migration motivations and migrant heterogeneity have tended to be focused on country-specific qualitative studies. In this paper we utilise a unique, four-country data source covering over 3,500 Poles migrating to Germany, the Netherlands, London and Dublin in 2009-2010, to enable the quantitative characterization of the new migration. Exploiting information on pre-migration experience as well as expressed migration motivations and post-migration structural, subjective and social measures of integration in the receiving country, we conduct a three-stage analysis. First we employ latent class analysis to allocate the migrants to six migrant types. Second, we link these migrant types to pre-migration characteristics and estimate multinomial logit models for class membership. Third, controlling for these pre-migration characteristics we are able to explore how the migrant types are associated with measures of integration. We reveal substantial heterogeneity among migrants and some evolving ‘new’ migrant types alongside more traditional labour migrants. We show how these types are associated with differences in pre-migration human capital, region of origin and employment experience and with post-migration social and subjective integration in receiving societies. |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:1412&r=dem |
| By: | Benjamin Crost (University of Colorado Denver); Joseph H. Felter (Stanford University); Patrick B. Johnston (RAND Corporation) |
| Abstract: | Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs are an increasingly popular tool for reducing poverty in conflict-affected areas. Despite their growing popularity, there is limited evidence on how CCT programs affect conflict and theoretical predictions are ambiguous. We estimate the effect of conditional cash transfers on civil conflict in the Philippines by exploiting an experiment that randomly assigned eligibility for a CCT program at the village level. We find that cash transfers caused a substantial decrease in conflict-related incidents in treatment villages relative to control villages. Using unique data on local insurgent influence, we also find that the program significantly reduced insurgent influence in treated villages. |
| Date: | 2014–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hic:wpaper:174&r=dem |
| By: | Claire L. Adida (Department of Political Science, University of California San Diego - University of San Diego); David D. Laitin (Department of Political Science, Stanford University - Stanford University); Marie-Anne Valfort (CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - CNRS : UMR8174 - Université Paris 1 - Panthéon-Sorbonne) |
| Abstract: | We analyze the assimilation patterns of Muslim immigrants in Western countries with a unique identification strategy. Survey and experimental data collected in France in 2009 suggest that Muslims and rooted French are locked in a sub-optimal equilib- rium whereby (i) rooted French exhibit taste-based discrimination against those they are able to identify as Muslims and (ii) Muslims perceive French institutions as system- atically discriminatory against them. This equilibrium is sustained because Muslims, perceiving discrimination as institutionalized, are reluctant to assimilate and rooted French, who are able to identify Muslims as such due to their lower assimilation, reveal their distaste for Muslims. |
| Keywords: | Assimilation, Muslim and Christian immigrants, Discrimination, France |
| Date: | 2014–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:cesptp:halshs-00977076&r=dem |