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on Demographic Economics |
| By: | Bezin, Emeline; Chabé-Ferret, Bastien; de la Croix, David |
| Abstract: | Fertility becomes a strategic choice when having a larger population helps to gain power. Minority groups might find it optimal to promote high fertility among their members - this is known as the "weapon of the womb" argument. If, in addition, parents have to invest resources to educate their children, a higher fertility for strategic motives might reduce their investment. Indonesian census data dispel this view, as minority religious groups do not invest less in education. If anything, they invest more in education, as well as in their number of children. This finding is consistent with human capital being an input to appropriation. Solving for the Nash equilibrium of a game between two groups with two strategic variables, we derive the condition under which the minority group displays a higher investment in both the quantity and quality of children. The material cost of conflict involved through the weapon of the womb mechanism is mitigated when human capital enters the contest function. |
| Keywords: | conflict; Fertility; Human Capital; Indonesia; minorities; Nash equilibrium; population engineering; quality-quantity trade-off |
| JEL: | D74 J13 J15 |
| Date: | 2018–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:13412&r=all |
| By: | Antoine Bozio (PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, PSE - Paris School of Economics, IPP - Institut des politiques publiques - PSE - Paris School of Economics); Clémentine Garrouste (LEDa - Laboratoire d'Economie de Dauphine - Université Paris-Dauphine, Legos - Laboratoire d'Economie et de Gestion des Organisations de Santé - Université Paris-Dauphine); Elsa Perdrix (PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, PSE - Paris School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the impact of delaying retirement on mortality among the French population. We take advantage of the 1993 pension reform in the private sector to identify the causal effect of an increase in claiming age on mortality. We use administrative data which provide detailed information on career characteristics, dates of birth and death. Our results, precisely estimated, show that an exogenous increase of the claiming age has no significant impact on the probability to die between age 65 and 72, conversely we find that an increase of the retirement age of one year leads to an increase of 0.004 in the death rate between age 72 and 77. This effect is qualitatively small, and we discuss more generally the ability to estimate small effects in rare event data using minimal detectable effect procedure. |
| Keywords: | pension reform,health,mortality |
| Date: | 2019–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:psewpa:halshs-02019046&r=all |
| By: | Kunze, Astrid (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration); Liu, Xingfei (University of Alberta and IZA) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we investigate whether the expansion of childcare leads to an increase in the female labour supply. We measure female labour supply at both the extensive and intensive margin. For identification, we exploit a nationwide reform that expanded childcare for 1–2year-olds in Norway. Our results reveal a significant increase in the overall employment of mothers in the target group, but only weak evidence of an increase in contracted hours of work. However, both adjustments are only short term following the reform. When we consider subgroups of mothers more closely, we find substantial heterogeneity in the affected outcomes and the timing of these effects. In particular, when we exclude mothers on job-protected maternity leave and with currently zero hours of work from the target group, we estimate even larger effects on employment and now significant effects on actual hours of work. For mothers with more than one child, we find significant long-term effects of the reform on both employment and hours of work. |
| Keywords: | Childcare; female labour supply; contracted hours; actual hours; causal effects. |
| JEL: | J08 J13 J22 |
| Date: | 2019–02–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:nhheco:2019_003&r=all |
| By: | Itzik Fadlon; Shanthi P. Ramnath; Patricia K. Tong |
| Abstract: | We use administrative tax data that cover the U.S. population to identify the causal effects of Social Security’s survivors benefit receipt on American families’ behavior and financial well-being. We analyze over a quarter of a million widowed households in which the husband died between 2002-2007, and we exploit a sharp age discontinuity in benefit eligibility to study the responses of financially vulnerable households to government transfers. We first study how households respond to unanticipated benefit receipt in the immediate periods following a large financial shock to investigate the protective role of transfers. We find significant impacts of the program on newly-widowed families’ net income and labor supply behavior, which points to considerable allocative inefficiencies in the life insurance market and to a high valuation of survivors benefits in protecting Americans against mortality shocks. Second, to investigate the particular role of liquidity and benefit timing, we then study how already-widowed women’s labor supply responds to anticipated survivors benefit receipt. We find considerable responses to cash-on-hand via benefit availability that underscore allocative inefficiencies in the credit market and the value of liquidity itself provided by government transfers. These responses and their heterogeneity highlight mechanisms that underlie the labor supply behavior of older vulnerable households, and they point to liquidity constraints, rather than myopia or benefit-schedule misperceptions, as the likely operative channel. Our results have implications for survivors benefits in the U.S., and, more generally, for retirement behavior and response mechanisms to transfers among older vulnerable populations. |
| JEL: | D1 D61 G22 H0 H55 I1 I38 J2 |
| Date: | 2019–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25586&r=all |
| By: | Robert L. Clark; Steven Nyce; Beth Ritter; John B. Shoven |
| Abstract: | Economist and public policy analysts have devoted considerable research to examining the work and retirement decisions of employees. Much less effort has been spent on understanding the concerns and challenges of employers if their workers delay retirement and remain on the job until older ages. In this study, we report findings from three employer surveys with the objective of learning how organizations are responding to the aging of their workforces. The surveys provide several important observations. First, employer concerns about workforce aging vary considerably across the economy. To some firms, these demographic changes are of immediate concern and are viewed as a significant risk to the organization while other firms remain more concerned about potential productivity and cost effect of an older labor force. Second, most employers expect the importance of workforce aging to increase in the next five years. In response, a significant proportion of organizations are making changes to working conditions and compensation policies. Third, firms remain reluctant to adopt formal phased retirement policies but are more willing to offer part-time employment, return to work, and other policies on a case by case basis. |
| JEL: | J1 J2 J23 J26 |
| Date: | 2019–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25572&r=all |
| By: | Clark, Gregory; Cummins, Neil; Curtis, Matthew |
| Abstract: | Using evidence from the accident of twin births we show that for three Western European pre-industrial population samples -- England 1730-1879, France 1670-1788 and Quebec, 1621-1835 -- there is no evidence for parity-dependent control of fertility within marriage. If a twin was born to a family in any of these populations, average family size increased by 1 compared to families with a singleton birth at the same parity and mother age, with no reduction of subsequent fertility. Twin births also show no differential effect on fertility when they occurred at high, as opposed to low, parities. This is in contrast to populations where fertility is known to have been controlled by at least some families, such as England, 1900-49. There a twin birth increased average births per family by significantly less than 1. |
| Keywords: | Economic Growth; economic history; family planning; Fertility; natural fertility |
| JEL: | D01 J12 J13 N31 N33 N34 |
| Date: | 2019–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:13539&r=all |
| By: | David Neumark (University of California-Irvine, NBER, and IZA); Maysen Yen (University of California-Irvine) |
| Abstract: | We study the effects of the size of older cohorts on labor force participation (LFP) and wages of older workers. In the standard relative supply framework usually applied to relative cohort size, we would expect larger older cohorts to experience lower wages and hence lower employment or LFP. However, there are two reasons that we might find a positive effect. First, we might expect the age structure of the population to affect the composition of consumption and hence labor demand; it is possible that the age structure of employment is such that relative labor demand for an age cohort increases when the relative size of that cohort increases. Second, a large older cohort implies that the old cohort is large relative to at least some other narrowly-defined age cohorts. If two age cohorts are substitutable, then a decline in the relative size of one of them can imply an increase in the relative demand for the other. We use panel data on states, treating the age structure of the population as endogenous, owing to migration. We find that when older cohorts are large relative to a young cohort, the evidence fits the relative supply hypothesis. But when older cohorts are large relative to 25-49 year-olds, the evidence points to a relative demand shift. Thus, we need a more nuanced view than simply whether the older cohort is large relative to the population; the cohort they are large relative to matters. |
| Date: | 2018–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mrr:papers:wp390&r=all |
| By: | Turon, Hélène (University of Bristol) |
| Abstract: | This paper proposes a dynamic structural model of labour market and childcare choices for couples within a collective model of decision making. We formalise explicitly the need for childcare as a function of the age structure of the children population in the household then examine the determinants of the decision to supply labour. The fraction of home-produced childcare to household childcare needs is considered to be a public good within the household, for which preferences are heterogeneous across households. An important feature of our framework, which introduces one of the dynamic dimensions of the decision, is that we take into account the implications of today's labour supply decision on future wage growth and future bargaining power. The decision to leave (partially or not) the labour market is often taken within a couple but, in the event of divorce, the impact of this decision may not be borne by both parties equally, which may render the initial decision inefficient. Using data from the BHPS, we then present a structural estimation of our model to quantify these various components of the choice of home childcare vs. labour supply. We are able to quantify each household's sensitivity to potential childcare policies and find that a large part of the dispersion in these responses comes from households' valuation of home-produced childcare. |
| Keywords: | household, labour supply, collective model, childcare, commitment |
| JEL: | J12 J13 J22 J31 J38 |
| Date: | 2019–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12148&r=all |
| By: | Moberg, Ylva (Uppsal University, Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | Using population wide register data, I exploit the “speed premium” rule in the Swedish parental leave system to estimate the causal effect of a change in the level of benefits per day on the utilization of parental leave. The results show that a 1% (5 SEK ≈ $0.54) increase in the mother’s benefit level per day increases her length of leave by 2.6 days (≈ 1%). Fathers respond by reducing their own time on leave by 1.9 days, i.e. about 75% of the mother’s increase. This suggests that changes in the benefit level effects not only the recipient’s time on leave, but also the division of leave between parents. This is the first paper to causally estimate the elasticity of take-up duration (length of spell) with respect to the parental leave benefit level; which is found to be equal to 1 for mothers. |
| Keywords: | parental leave; division of labor; labor supply; take-up elasticity; |
| JEL: | D13 J13 J16 J22 |
| Date: | 2019–02–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2019_002&r=all |
| By: | Bérengère Davin (SESSTIM - U912 INSERM - Aix Marseille Univ - IRD - Sciences Economiques et Sociales de la Santé & Traitement de l'Information Médicale - IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement - INSERM - Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale - AMU - Aix Marseille Université, ORS PACA - Observatoire régional de la santé Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur [Marseille]); Xavier Joutard (LEST - Laboratoire d'économie et de sociologie du travail - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, OFCE - Observatoire Français des Conjonctures économiques - Institut d'Études Politiques [IEP] - Paris - Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques [FNSP]); Alain Paraponaris (AMSE - Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - ECM - Ecole Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, ORS PACA - Observatoire régional de la santé Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur [Marseille]) |
| Abstract: | Proxy respondents are widely used in population health surveys to maximize response rates. When surveys target frail elderly, the measurement error is expected to be smaller than selection or participation biases. However, in the literature on elderly needs for care, proxy use is most often considered with a dummy variable in which endogeneity with subjects' health status is rarely scrutinised in a robust way. Pitfalls of this choice extend beyond methodological issues. Indeed, the mismeasurement of needs for care with daily activities might lead to irrelevant social policies or to private initiatives that try to address those needs. This paper proposes a comprehensive and tractable strategy supported by various robustness checks to cope with the suspected endogeneity of proxy use to the unobserved health status of subjects in reports of needs for care with activities of daily living. Proxy respondents' subjectivity is found to inflate the needs of the elderly who are replaced or assisted in answering the questionnaire and to deflate the probability of unmet or undermet needs. |
| Keywords: | needs for care,Copula,selection,proxy respondent,measurement bias,endogeneity,ADLs,IADLs |
| Date: | 2019–02–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-02036434&r=all |