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on Demographic Economics |
| By: | Turon, Hélène (University of Bristol) |
| Abstract: | This chapter surveys recent literature on the drivers of mothers’ labour supply in OECD countries. We present a number of facts on the variations across time and across countries of family composition and mothers’ employment. We aim to answer key questions on their decision to return to work after childbirth: How is the decision taken within the household? What are the contemporaneous and longer term determinants of this decision? What other lifecycle choices are interrelated with the labour supply choice? How do social norms and policy influence this decision? What role is there for policy to play in households’ decision regarding mothers’ participation in the labour force? We aim to summarise the main results from recent research on these questions. We will see that there are large variations in the policy choices made in different countries, which may reflect both the difficulty of designing an optimal mix of policies and the diversity of societies’ perceptions of women combining motherhood and career. |
| Keywords: | labour force participation, hours of work, children, collective model, wages, childcare, social norms |
| JEL: | J12 J22 J38 |
| Date: | 2022–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp15312&r= |
| By: | Katrine Marie Jakobsen; Thomas H. Jørgensen; Hamish Low; Katrine Marie Jakobsen |
| Abstract: | We study the role of fertility adjustments for the labor market responsiveness of men and women. First, we use longitudinal Danish register data and tax reforms from 2009 to provide new empirical evidence on asymmetric fertility adjustments to tax changes of men and women. Second, we quantify the importance of these fertility adjustments for understanding the labor supply responsiveness of couples through a life-cycle model of family labor supply and fertility. Allowing fertility adjustments increases the labor supply responsiveness of women by 28%. These adjustments affect human capital accumulation and has permanent implications for the gender wage gap within couples. |
| Keywords: | fertility, labor supply, human capital accumulation, gender inequality, tax reform, life-cycle |
| JEL: | J22 J13 D15 H24 |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9750&r= |
| By: | D'Albis, Hippolyte (University of Toulouse I); Doorley, Karina (Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin); Stancanelli, Elena G. F. (Paris School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | A significant literature in the social sciences addresses the impact of child-bearing and rearing on marital stability and on mothers' labour market outcomes. Much less is known about older mothers' employment and marriage patterns when the adult children leave the parental nest. This study aims to shed light on these issues using longitudinal labour force data for France. Exploiting retirement laws for identification purposes, and taking a regression discontinuity approach, we find that older women's retirement probability is positively associated with an empty nest. We also conclude that an empty nest is negatively associated with older mothers' marriage probability. There is scope for better targeting of both family and retirement policies for older mothers during those critical years when adult children leave the parental nest. |
| Keywords: | ageing, retirement, divorce |
| JEL: | J12 J14 J22 |
| Date: | 2022–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp15272&r= |
| By: | Cecilia Velázquez (CEDLAS-IIE-FCE-UNLP and CONICET and CINVE); Wanda Cabella (Facultad de Ciencias Sociales - Universidad de la República del Uruguay) |
| Abstract: | The Latin America and the Caribbean adolescent fertility rate is among the highest in the world: about 1.7 million children are born to teen mothers every year, and most of them are declared as being unintended pregnancies. The region also has the highest rate of unintended pregnancy of any world region, and nearly half of such pregnancies end in abortion. However, fewer than 18% of the region’s women live in countries where abortion is broadly legal. This paper estimates the causal effect of abortion legalization on adolescent fertility in Uruguay, using official data on legal abortions provided after the 2012 reform. We employed a difference-in-differences strategy, classifying states by whether they are responsive or unresponsive to the reform. The results suggest that abortion reform had a negative impact on the adolescent birth rate by 2.5 to 2.8 births per thousand adolescents aged 15–19 (4% decrease from the preintervention average). Additionally, we exploited variation in reform implementation intensity through the estimation of fixed-effect linear regression models and found consistent results. Our findings are robust to controlling for a concurrent large-scale program of contraceptive implants. We conclude that legislation aimed at enhancing rights and reducing avoidable deaths and complications from unsafe abortions may also have spillover effects that help reduce adolescent fertility. |
| JEL: | J13 |
| Date: | 2022–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dls:wpaper:0298&r= |
| By: | Strozza, Cosmo (University of Southern Denmark); Vigezzi, Serena; Callaway, Julia (University of Southern Denmark); Kashnitsky, Ilya (University of Southern Denmark); Aleksandrovs, Aleksandrs; Vaupel, James W |
| Abstract: | Larger numbers of people are living to retirement and old age, posing a threat to the financing of the welfare state. In Denmark, statutory retirement age is increasing gradually to account for changes in life expectancy. However, the chances of reaching retirement age are not equal across the population, and raising the retirement age could disproportionally affect those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. In this paper, we investigate socioeconomic inequalities in mortality before retirement age or shortly thereafter in Denmark. We use Danish registry data over a 30-year period, focusing on individuals aged 50 to 70. We perform sex-specific survival analyses across socioeconomic groups using three measures of socioeconomic status: education, income, and occupation. We observe an increase in survival inequalities over time between the lowest and highest socioeconomic groups for each measure. The reason for the widening gap lies in minimal mortality improvements in the lowest socioeconomic group. These results are complemented by lifespan inequality measures, which have the same mortality trends. We show that individual level variability in socioeconomic characteristics play a crucial role in defining the survival chances just before and shortly after retirement and thus should be accounted for in designing retirement policies. |
| Date: | 2022–04–29 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:osfxxx:8wbdv&r= |
| By: | Andrew Shaver (University of California, Merced); Benjamin Krick (Political Violence Lab); Judy Blancaflor (Political Violence Lab); Sarah Yein Ku (Political Violence Lab); Xavier Liu (Political Violence Lab) |
| Abstract: | The world faces a forcible displacement crisis. Across the world, tens of millions of individuals have been forced from their homes and across international boundaries. The causes and consequences of refugee flows are, therefore, the subjects of significant social science inquiry. Unfortunately, historical lack of reliable data on actual refugee flows has significantly limited empirical inferences on these topics. Using data newly released by the United Nations on annual dyadic flows, we replicate twenty-seven studies published in economics and political science journals on the causes and consequences of these flows. We extend fourteen of these. We find that some of the causes of flows described in the literature are less substantively and/or statistically significant than previously reported while others are more. Generally, with some exceptions, we find that previously reported effects of refugees on security conditions are attenuated, suggesting that the literature’s predominant focus on refugees as sources of violent instability may be overstated. |
| Keywords: | Refugees; Asylum Seekers; Terrorism; Civil War |
| JEL: | D74 F22 H56 |
| Date: | 2022–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pri:esocpu:29&r= |
| By: | Robert S. Pindyck |
| Abstract: | How does the sustainable level of consumption depend on productivity growth and the size and growth rate of the population? What is the effect of uncertainty over these growth rates? I address these questions using a model in which productivity and population growth are stochastic, and social welfare allows for human lives to have (positive or negative) intrinsic value. I show how the maximum sustainable consumption-wealth ratio depends on expected rates of productivity and population growth, the volatility of those growth rates, and the extent to which welfare depends directly on the size of the population. For plausible parameter values, the sustainable consumption-wealth ratio is well below the optimal ratio that maximizes welfare. This raises a question: Given its cost, should sustainability be a social objective? |
| JEL: | D60 Q5 Q56 |
| Date: | 2022–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30019&r= |
| By: | Alexander, Monica |
| Abstract: | This paper demonstrates how an existing mathematical decomposition technique can be used to understand mortality inequalities across populations. The use of Singular Value Decomposition to extract key mortality patterns by age and respective relative weights across populations is discussed. This method is demonstrated through decomposing mortality by US state to highlight the main dimensions of mortality inequalities, and finds: 1) that majority of differences in mortality age schedules across states in recent years is due to differences in young-adult mortality; and 2) that relatively high-mortality states have evolved in a fundamentally different way to low-mortality states over time. This decomposition approach is complementary to existing methods to describe and summarize mortality patterns, focusing on key dimensions of mortality differences. |
| Date: | 2022–04–17 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:uqwxj&r= |