nep-dem New Economics Papers
on Demographic Economics
Issue of 2023‒10‒30
five papers chosen by
Héctor Pifarré i Arolas, University of Wisconsin


  1. History helps us understand gender differences in the labour market By Committee, Nobel Prize
  2. The Parenthood Penalty in Mental Health: Evidence from Austria and Denmark By Ahammer, Alexander; Glogowsky, Ulrich; Halla, Martin; Hener, Timo
  3. Life Expectancy, Income and Long-Term Care: The Preston Curve Reexamined By Thibault, Emmanuel; Ponthieres, Grégory
  4. Intergenerational Mobility of Immigrants by Refugee Status: An Analysis of Linked Landing Files and Tax Records By Adnan, Wifag; Zhang, Jonathan; Zheng, Angela
  5. The Refugee Advantage: English-Language Attainment in the Early Twentieth Century By Ran Abramitzky; Leah Platt Boustan; Peter Catron; Dylan Connor; Rob Voigt

  1. By: Committee, Nobel Prize (Nobel Prize Committee)
    Abstract: Over the past century, the proportion of women in paid work has tripled in many high-income countries. This is one of the biggest societal and economic changes in the labour market in modern times, but significant gender differences remain. It was first in the 1980s that a researcher adopted a comprehensive approach to explaining the source of these differences. Claudia Goldin’s research has given us new and often surprising insights into women’s historical and contemporary roles in the labour market.
    Keywords: Gender in labor markets;
    JEL: J70 J71 J78
    Date: 2023–10–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:nobelp:2023_001&r=dem
  2. By: Ahammer, Alexander (University of Linz); Glogowsky, Ulrich (Johannes Kepler University Linz); Halla, Martin (University of Linz); Hener, Timo (Aarhus University)
    Abstract: Using Austrian and Danish administrative data, we examine the impacts of parenthood on mental health. Parenthood imposes a greater mental health burden on mothers than on fathers. It creates a long-run gender gap in antidepressant prescriptions of about 93.2% (Austria) and 64.8% (Denmark). These parenthood penalties in mental health are unlikely to reflect differential help-seeking behavior across the sexes or postpartum depression. Instead, they are related to mothers' higher investments in childcare: Mothers who take extended maternity leave in quasi-experimental settings are more likely to face mental health problems.
    Keywords: gender equality, fertility, parenthood, motherhood, mental health, parental leave
    JEL: D63 J13 I10 J16 J22
    Date: 2023–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16459&r=dem
  3. By: Thibault, Emmanuel; Ponthieres, Grégory
    Abstract: The Preston Curve - the increasing relation between income per capita and life expectancy - cannot be observed in countries where old-age dependency is widespread (that is, where long-term care (LTC) spending per capita is high). The absence of the Preston Curve in countries with high old-age dependency can be related to two other stylized facts: (1) the inverted-U relation between LTC spending and life expectancy; (2) the inverted-U relation between LTC spending and preventive health investments. This paper develops a two-period OLG model where survival to the old age depends on preventive health spending chosen by individuals while anticipating (fixed) old-age LTC costs. In that model, anticipated LTC costs are shown to have a non-monotonic effect on preventive health investment, thus rationalizing stylized facts (1) and (2). This framework is shown to provide an explanation for the absence of the Preston Curve in countries where old-age dependency is more acute.
    Keywords: Preston Curve, ; life expectancy; OLG models, ; long-term care
    JEL: E13 E21 I15 J14
    Date: 2023–10–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:128602&r=dem
  4. By: Adnan, Wifag (New York University, Abu Dhabi); Zhang, Jonathan (McMaster University); Zheng, Angela (McMaster University)
    Abstract: A large literature shows that the children of immigrants have high upward mobility. However, immigrants vary vastly in how they are selected: while economic immigrants are chosen based on skill and education, refugees migrate at times of conflict and war. In this paper, we study on the mobility of immigrants by admission class. Using administrative data linking the universe of immigrant landing documents with tax records in Canada, we estimate intergenerational mobility outcomes by refugee status. We find that for immigrant parents at the 25th percentile of the income distribution, refugee children have an expected rank of 47 percentiles, while the corresponding estimate for non-refugee children is 51 percentiles. Approximately 60% of this gap can be explained by differences in parental attributes upon arrival, indicating that selection contributes to higher mobility. Finally, we show that when correcting for the underplacement of immigrant parents, the absolute upward mobility of refugees at p25 is largely unaffected while that of non-refugees falls by around 2 percentiles.
    Keywords: intergenerational mobility, refugees, immigration
    JEL: J61 J62 J15
    Date: 2023–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16471&r=dem
  5. By: Ran Abramitzky; Leah Platt Boustan; Peter Catron; Dylan Connor; Rob Voigt
    Abstract: The United States has admitted more than 3 million refugees since 1980 through official refugee resettlement programs. Scholars attribute the success of refugee groups to governmental programs on assimilation and integration. Before 1948, however, refugees arrived without formal selection processes or federal support. We examine the integration of historical refugees using a large archive of recorded oral history interviews to understand linguistic attainment of migrants who arrived in the early twentieth century. Using fine-grained measures of vocabulary, syntax and accented speech, we find that refugee migrants achieved a greater depth of English vocabulary than did economic/family migrants, a finding that holds even when comparing migrants from the same country of origin or religious group. This study improves on previous research on immigrant language acquisition and refugee incorporation, which typically rely on self-reported measures of fluency. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that refugees had greater exposure to English or more incentive to learn, due to the conditions of their arrival and their inability to immediately return to their origin country.
    JEL: J15 N32
    Date: 2023–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:31730&r=dem

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