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on Demographic Economics |
| By: | Radim Bohácek (GERGE-EI); Jesús Bueren (European University Institute); Laura Crespo (Banco de España); Pedro Mira (CEMFI, Centro de Estudios Monetarios y Financieros); Josep Pijoan-Mas (CEMFI, Centro de Estudios Monetarios y Financieros) |
| Abstract: | We use harmonized household panel data from 10 European countries (SHARE) plus US (HRS) and England (ELSA) to provide novel and comparable measurements of education and gender differences in life expectancy and disability-free life expectancy, as well as in the underlying multi-state life tables. Common across countries we find significant interactions between socio-economic status and gender: (a) the education advantage in life expectancy is larger for males, (b) the female advantage in life expectancy is larger among the low educated, (c) education reduces disability years and this added advantage is larger for females, and (d) females suffer more disability years but this disadvantage is hardly present for the high educated. Common across countries we also find that the education advantage in disability years is due to better health transitions by the highly-educated, and that the female disadvantage in disability years is due to better survival in ill-health by females. Looking at the differences across countries, we find that inequalities are largest in Eastern Europe, lowest in Scandinavia, and that the education gradient in life expectancy for males correlates positively with income inequality and negatively with public health spending across countries. |
| Keywords: | Life expectancy, healthy life expectancy, education gradient, gender gap. |
| JEL: | I14 I24 J14 J16 |
| Date: | 2018–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cmf:wpaper:wp2018_1810&r=dem |
| By: | Kuhn, Andreas (Swiss Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training); Staubli, Stefan (University of Calgary); Wuellrich, Jean-Philippe (University of Zurich); Zweimüller, Josef (University of Zurich) |
| Abstract: | We estimate the causal effect of permanent and premature exits from the labor force on mortality. To overcome the problem of negative health selection into early retirement, we exploit a policy change in unemployment insurance rules in Austria that allowed workers in eligible regions to exit the labor force 3 years earlier compared to workers in non-eligible regions. Using administrative data with precise information on mortality and retirement, we find that the policy change induced eligible workers to exit the labor force significantly earlier. Instrumental variable estimation results show that for men retiring one year earlier causes a 6.8% increase in the risk of premature death and 0.2 years reduction in the age at death, but has no significant effect for women. |
| Keywords: | early retirement, mortality, health behavior, instrumental variable |
| JEL: | I10 I12 J14 J26 |
| Date: | 2018–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11851&r=dem |
| By: | Raj Chetty; John N. Friedman; Nathaniel Hendren; Maggie R. Jones; Sonya R. Porter |
| Abstract: | We construct a publicly available atlas of children's outcomes in adulthood by Census tract using anonymized longitudinal data covering nearly the entire U.S. population. For each tract, we estimate children's earnings distributions, incarceration rates, and other outcomes in adulthood by parental income, race, and gender. These estimates allow us to trace the roots of outcomes such as poverty and incarceration back to the neighborhoods in which children grew up. We find that children's outcomes vary sharply across nearby areas: for children of parents at the 25th percentile of the income distribution, the standard deviation of mean household income at age 35 is $5,000 across tracts within counties. We illustrate how these tract-level data can provide insight into how neighborhoods shape the development of human capital and support local economic policy using two applications. First, the estimates permit precise targeting of policies to improve economic opportunity by uncovering specific neighborhoods where certain subgroups of children grow up to have poor outcomes. Neighborhoods matter at a very granular level: conditional on characteristics such as poverty rates in a child's own Census tract, characteristics of tracts that are one mile away have little predictive power for a child's outcomes. Our historical estimates are informative predictors of outcomes even for children growing up today because neighborhood conditions are relatively stable over time. Second, we show that the observational estimates are highly predictive of neighborhoods' causal effects, based on a comparison to data from the Moving to Opportunity experiment and a quasi-experimental research design analyzing movers' outcomes. We then identify high-opportunity neighborhoods that are affordable to low- income families, providing an input into the design of affordable housing policies. Our measures of children's long-term outcomes are only weakly correlated with traditional proxies for local economic success such as rates of job growth, showing that the conditions that create greater upward mobility are not necessarily the same as those that lead to productive labor markets. |
| JEL: | H0 J0 |
| Date: | 2018–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25147&r=dem |
| By: | Claudia Olivetti (Boston College; NBER); Barbara Petrongolo (Queen Mary University; Centre for Economic Performance, LSE) |
| Abstract: | We draw lessons from existing work and our own analysis on the effects of parental leave and other interventions aimed at aiding families. The outcomes of interest are female employment, gender gaps in earnings and fertility. We begin with a discussion of the historical introduction of family policies ever since the end of the nineteenth century and then turn to the details regarding family policies currently in effect across high-income nations. We sketch a framework concerning the effects of family policy to motivate our country- and micro-level evidence on the impact of family policies on gender outcomes. Most estimates of the impact of parental leave entitlement on female labor market outcomes range from negligible to weakly positive. The verdict is far more positive for the beneficial impact of spending on early education and childcare. |
| Keywords: | parental leave, childcare, family policies, gender gaps |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:boc:bocoec:961&r=dem |