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on Demographic Economics |
| By: | Stimpfle, Alexander; Stadelmann, David |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the effect of female age at marriage on female education and educational gender inequality. We provide empirical evidence that early female marriage age significantly decreases female education with panel data from 1980 to 2010. Socio-cultural customs serve as an exogenous identification for female age at marriage. We also show that effects of spousal age gaps between men and women significantly affect female education relative to male education. Each additional year between husband and wife reduces the female secondary schooling completion rate by 14 percentage points, the time women spend at university by 6 weeks, and overall affects female education significantly more negatively than male education. We also document that marriage age and conventional measures of gender discrimination do not act as substitutes. |
| JEL: | J12 J16 I24 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc16:145492&r=dem |
| By: | Ebru Kongar; Emel Memis |
| Abstract: | Using data from the 2006 Turkish Time-Use Survey, we examine gender differences in time allocation among married heterosexual couples over the life cycle. While we find large discrepancies in the gender division of both paid and unpaid work at each life stage, the gender gap in paid and unpaid work is largest among parents of infants compared to parents of older children and couples without children. The gender gap narrows as children grow up and parents age. Married women's housework time remains relatively unchanged across their life cycle, while older men spend more time doing housework than their younger counterparts. Over the course of the life cycle, women's total work burden increases relative to men's. Placing our findings within the gendered institutional context in Turkey, we argue that gender-inequitable work-family reconciliation policies that are based on gendered assumptions of women's role as caregivers exacerbate gender disparities in time use. |
| Keywords: | Economics of Gender; Time Use; Life Cycle; Turkey |
| JEL: | D13 J16 J22 |
| Date: | 2017–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lev:wrkpap:wp_884&r=dem |
| By: | Kieron Barclay (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany); Mikko Myrskylä (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany) |
| Abstract: | Annually, 6 million children under age five die and over 80% of these deaths happen in the developing world. However, under-five mortality did decrease by 53% between 1990 and 2015. For an individual mother, having a child at an older age means placing the child into a later birth cohort in which survival should be higher due to secular declines in mortality. Using data covering 7 million births, 77 developing countries, and 228 Demographic and Health Surveys collected from 1985-2014, we implement Cox proportional hazard models and stratified Cox models to study how secular declines in child mortality offset the risks associated with reproductive ageing. We also calculate the population attributable fraction to examine how a change in the distribution of maternal age at birth would affect under-five mortality. Our results show that if fertility in the DHS countries was on average postponed by as little as 1-year, 1.4%, or more than 68,000 of all child deaths per year, could be avoided. An increase in birth spacing by 1-year would reduce child mortality by 0.9% per year. In countries with the fastest rates of decline in under-five mortality, postponing all childbearing by 1-year would reduce child mortality by 3.0%, and a 1-year increase in birth spacing would reduce child mortality by 4.3%. This study shows that secular declines in under-five mortality can counterbalance or outweigh the risks associated with reproductive ageing in developing countries. Postponing fertility is not only the expressed preference of women, but would also help save childrens lives. |
| JEL: | J1 Z0 |
| Date: | 2017–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dem:wpaper:wp-2017-005&r=dem |
| By: | Edlira Narazani (European Commission - JRC); Francesco Figari (Università degli Studi dell'Insubria) |
| Abstract: | It is widely recognized that childcare has important pedagogical, economic and social effects on both children and parents. This paper is the first attempt to estimate a joint structural model of female labour supply and childcare behavior applied to Italy in order to analyse the effects of relaxing the existing constraints in terms of childcare availability and costs by considering public, private and informal childcare. Results suggest that Italian households might alter their childcare and labour supply behaviors substantially if the coverage rate of formal childcare increases to reach the European targets. Overall, increasing child care coverage is estimated to be more effective in enhancing labor incentives than decreasing existing child care costs, at the same budgetary cost. |
| Keywords: | childcare, female labour supply, Italy |
| JEL: | H53 J13 J22 I38 |
| Date: | 2017–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipt:taxref:201702&r=dem |
| By: | Lemmermann, Dominique; Riphahn, Regina |
| Abstract: | We investigate the causal effect of youths' age at immigration on subsequent educational attainment in the destination country. To identify the causal effect we compare the educational attainment of siblings at age 21, exploiting the fact that they typically migrate at different ages within a given family. We consider several education outcomes conditional on family fixed effects. We take advantage of long running and detailed data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, which entails an oversample of immigrants and provides information on language skills. We find significant effects of age at migration on educational attainment and a critical age of migration around age 6. We find that the educational attainment of female immigrants responds more strongly to a high age at immigration than that of males. We can exclude that the causal effect is determined only by language abilities. |
| JEL: | I21 J61 C21 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc16:145882&r=dem |
| By: | Martin Munk (Aalborg University); Till Nikolka (Ifo Institute); Panu Poutvaara (Ifo Institute) |
| Abstract: | Gender differences in labor force participation are exceptionally small in Nordic countries. We investigate how couples emigrating from Denmark self-select and sort into different destinations and whether couples pursue the dual-earner model, in which both partners work, when abroad. Female labor force participation is slightly lower among couples that later emigrate, and drops considerably after migration outside the Nordic countries. Pre migration differences between couples subsequently migrating to different destinations are small. Our survey reveals that couple migration is usually driven by the male’s job opportunities. The results suggest that increasing international migration may reduce women’s career investments. |
| Keywords: | Household production, Female labor force participation, Child care, International migration, Family migration |
| JEL: | D13 J12 J13 J16 F22 |
| Date: | 2017–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:1703&r=dem |
| By: | Kenneth Kasa (Simon Fraser University); Xiaowen Lei (Simon Fraser University) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the dynamics of wealth inequality in a continuous-time Blanchard/Yaari model. Its key innovation is to assume that idiosyncratic investment returns are subject to (Knightian) uncertainty. In response, agents formulate robust portfolio policies (Hansen and Sargent (2008)). These policies are nonhomothetic; wealthy agents invest a higher fraction of their wealth in uncertain assets yielding higher mean returns. This produces an endogenous feedback mechanism that amplifies inequality. It also produces an accelerated rate of convergence, which resolves a puzzle recently identified by Gabaix, Lasry, Lions, and Moll (2016). We ask the following question -Suppose the US was in a stationary distribution in 1980, and the world suddenly became more ‘uncertain’. Could this uncertainty explain both the magnitude and pace of recent US wealth inequality? Using detection error probabilities to discipline the degree of uncertainty, we conclude the answer is ‘Yes’. |
| Keywords: | inequality, robustness |
| JEL: | D31 D81 |
| Date: | 2017–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sfu:sfudps:dp17-06&r=dem |