2014-10-24
Cylus
J, Glymour MM, Avendano M., NCBI: Do generous unemployment benefit programs
reduce suicide rates? A state fixed-effect analysis covering 1968-2008.
The
recent economic recession has led to increases in suicide, but whether US state
unemployment insurance programs ameliorate this association has not been
examined. Exploiting US state variations in the generosity of benefit programs
between 1968 and 2008, we tested the hypothesis that more generous unemployment
benefit programs reduce the impact of economic downturns on suicide. Using
state linear fixed-effect models, we found a negative additive interaction
between unemployment rates and benefits among the US working-age (20-64 years)
population (β = -0.57, 95% confidence interval: -0.86, -0.27; P < 0.001).
The finding of a negative additive interaction was robust across multiple model
specifications. Our results suggest that the impact of unemployment rates on
suicide is offset by the presence of generous state unemployment benefit
programs, though estimated effects are small in magnitude.
Richard
V Burkhauser et al, IZA: Disability benefit growth and disability reform in the
US: lessons from other OECD nations. Unsustainable growth
in program costs and beneficiaries, together with a growing recognition that
even people with severe impairments can work, led to fundamental disability
policy reforms in the Netherlands, Sweden, and Great Britain. In Australia, rapid
growth in disability recipiency led to more modest reforms. Here we describe the
factors driving unsustainable DI program growth in the U.S., show their
similarity to the factors that led to unsustainable growth in these other four
OECD countries, and discuss the reforms each country implemented to regain
control over their cash transfer disability program. Although each country took
a unique path to making and implementing fundamental reforms, shared lessons
emerge from their experiences.
2014-10-10
Daniel
S. Hamermesh, Daiji Kawaguchi, Jungmin Lee, NBER: Does Labor Legislation Benefit Workers? Well-Being after an Hours Reduction.
Are workers in modern economies working "too hard"--would they be
better off if an equilibrium with fewer work hours were achieved? We examine
changes in life satisfaction of Japanese and Koreans over a period when hours
of work were cut exogenously because employers suddenly faced an overtime
penalty that had become effective with fewer weekly hours per worker. Using
repeated cross sections we show that life satisfaction in both countries may
have increased relatively among those workers most likely to have been affected
by the legislation. The same finding is
produced using Korean longitudinal data.
In a household model estimated over the Korean cross-section data we
find some weak evidence that a reduction in the husband's work hours increased
his wife's well-being. Overall these
results are consistent with the claim that legislated reductions in work hours
can increase workers' happiness.
Rene
Boeheim, Thomas Leoni, IZA: Firms'
Sickness Costs and Workers' Sickness Absences. In many
countries, social security insures firms against their workers' sickness
absences. The insurance may create a
moral hazard for firms, leading to inefficient monitoring of absences or to an
underinvestment in the prevention of absences. We
exploit an administrative threshold in the Austrian social security that
defined whether a firm had to pay a deductible for its blue-collar workers
sicknesses or not. The
quasi-experimental situation around the threshold provides causal evidence on
the extent of moral hazard induced by the deductible. We apply a regression discontinuity design to
estimate the differences in the incidences and durations of sicknesses for
firms that faced the deductible and those who did not. We find that the deductible did not lead to
different sickness outcomes and conclude that relatively low deductibles have
little impact on forms' management of sicknesses.
2014-10-03
Stefan
Walter, Maria Glymour, Mauricio Avendano, PLOS:The Health Effects of US
Unemployment Insurance Policy: Does Income from Unemployment Benefits Prevent
Cardiovascular Disease? Previous studies
suggest that unemployment predicts increased cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk,
but whether unemployment insurance programs mitigate this risk has not been
assessed. Exploiting US state variations in unemployment insurance benefit
programs, we tested the hypothesis that more generous benefits reduce CVD risk.
States with higher unemployment benefits had lower incidence of CVD, so that a
1% increase in benefits was associated with 18% lower odds of CVD. This
association remained after introducing US census regional division fixed
effects, but disappeared after introducing state fixed effects. This was
consistent with the fact that unemployment was not associated with CVD risk in
state-fixed effect models. Although states with more generous unemployment
benefits had lower CVD incidence, this appeared to be due to confounding by
state-level characteristics. Possible explanations are the lack of short-term
effects of unemployment on CVD risk.
Elvira
Andersson, Petter Lundborg, Johan Vikström, IZA: Income Receipt and Mortality:
Evidence from Swedish Public Sector Employees. In this paper,
we study the short-run effect of salary receipt on mortality among Swedish
public sector employees. By exploiting variation in pay-days across
work-places, we completely control for mortality patterns related to, for
example, public holidays and other special days or events coinciding with
paydays and for general within-month and within-week mortality patterns. We
find a dramatic increase in mortality on the day salaries arrive. The increase
is especially pronounced for younger workers and for deaths due to
activity-related causes such as heart conditions and strokes. Additionally, the
effect is entirely driven by an increase in mortality among low income
individuals, who are more likely to experience liquidity constraints. All
things considered, our results suggest that an increase in general economic
activity upon salary receipt is an important cause of the excess mortality.
Joanne
W. Hsu, David A. Matsa, Brian T. Melzer, NBER:
Positive Externalities of Social Insurance: Unemployment Insurance and
Consumer Credit. This paper studies the impact of
unemployment insurance (UI) on consumer credit markets. Exploiting heterogeneity in UI generosity
across U.S. states and over time, we find that UI helps the unemployed avoid
defaulting on their mortgage debt. We
estimate that UI expansions during the Great Recession prevented about 1.4
million foreclosures. Lenders respond to
this decline in default risk by expanding credit access and reducing interest
rates for low-income households at risk of being laid off. Our findings call attention to two benefits
of unemployment insurance not previously highlighted: reducing deadweight
losses from loan default and expanding access to credit.
Horst
Entorf, Philip Sieger, IZA: Does the Link between Unemployment and Crime Depend
on the Crime Level? A Quantile Regression Approach.
Two alternative hypotheses – referred to as opportunity- and stigma-based
behavior – suggest that the relationship between unemployment and crime also
depends on preexisting local crime levels. In order to analyze conjectured
nonlinearities between both variables, we are using quantile regressions
applied to German county panel data. While both conventional OLS and quantile regressions
confirm the positive link between unemployment and crime for property crimes,
results for assault differ with respect to the method of estimation. Whereas
conventional mean regressions do not show any significant effect (which would
confirm the usual result found for violent crimes in the literature), quantile
regression uncovers that size and importance of the relationship are
conditional on the crime rate: The partial effect is significantly positive for
moderately low and median quantiles of local assault rates.
2014-09-12
John
P. Martin, IZA: Activation and Active Labour Market Policies in OECD Countries:
Stylized Facts and Evidence on their Effectiveness.
Activation policies aimed at getting working-age people off benefits and into
work have become a buzzword in labour market policies. Yet they are defined and
implemented differently across OECD countries and their success rates vary too.
The Great Recession has posed a severe stress test for these policies with some
commentators arguing that they are at best "fair weather" policies.
This paper sheds light on these issues mainly via the lens of recent OECD
research. It presents the stylized facts on how OECD countries have responded
to the Great Recession in terms of ramping up their spending on active labour
market policies (ALMPs), a key component in any activation strategy. It then
reviews the macroeconomic evidence on the impact of ALMPs on employment and
unemployment rates. This is followed by a review of the key lessons from recent
OECD country reviews of activation policies. It concludes with a discussion of
crucial unanswered questions about activation.
Nynke
De Groot, Bas van der Klaauw, IZA: The Effects of Reducing the Entitlement
Period to Unemployment Insurance Benefits. This paper
exploits a substantial reform of the Dutch UI law to study the effect of the
entitlement period on job finding and subsequent labor market outcomes. Using
detailed administrative data covering the full population we find that reducing
the entitlement period increases the job finding rate, but decreases the job
quality. Unemployed workers accept more often temporary jobs with lower wages
and fewer working hours. Therefore, they also change jobs more frequently. The
reform did not affect total post-unemployment earnings indicating that the
positive effects on job finding and job turnover cancel out the negative
effects on job quality. We also observe a spike in job finding around benefits
exhaustion even, although more modest, for individuals who do not experience a
drop in benefits level when moving to welfare.
2014-08-29
Bart H.H. Golsteyn, Trudie Schils, IZA: Gender Gaps in
Primary School Achievement: A Decomposition into Endowments and Returns to IQ
and Non-cognitive Factors. In elementary school, girls typically outperform boys
in languages and boys typically outperform girls in math. The determinants of
these differences have remained largely unexplored. Using rich data from Dutch
elementary schools, we decompose the differences in achievement into gender
differences in endowments and returns to IQ and non-cognitive factors. This
descriptive analysis is a thought experiment in which we show the consequences
for school performance if girls and boys would have similar resources and take
similar advantage of these resources. Our findings indicate that gender
differences in resources with respect to social and instrumental skills and
need for achievement can explain part of the differences in performance. Boys
seem to be better equipped with these resources. Additionally, boys and girls
employ their skills differently. Girls take more advantage of their IQ than
boys. Yet, the largest part of this parameter effect is left unexplained by IQ
and non-cognitive factors.
Daniel
Hallberg, Per Johansson, Malin Josephson, IFAU: Hälsoeffekter av tidigarelagd
pensionering. Vi beräknar effekten av
tidig pensionering på individens hälsa. Den empiriska analysen har som
utgångspunkt ett erbjudande om tidig pensionering för militärer födda
1934–1939. Erbjudandet gällde pension från 55 års ålder jämfört mot normal
pensionsålder som var 60 år. Vi finner positiva effekter på hälsan genom
pensionserbjudandet: de som fick erbjudandet att gå i tidig pension hade både
en lägre dödlighet och färre dagar i slutenvård fram till 70 års ålder. Under
antagandet att resultaten för officerare kan generaliseras till befolkningen i
stort, behöver alltså en höjd pensionsålder inte bara ha en positiv effekt på
samhällsekonomin i form av högre arbetsutbud och högre skatteinkomster utan kan
även ha en negativ sidoeffekt genom ökade kostnader för hälso- och sjukvård.
2014-08-22
Peder J. Pedersen, Torben Dall
Schmidt, IZA: Life Events and Subjective Well-being: The Case of Having
Children. In the present paper we focus on the eventual impact
on SWB from having children. The dominant result in the rather few studies
until now is the finding of no – or even a negative – impact on subjective well
being following birth of a child. We focus on the impact from having children
using two very big panel data sets. In descriptive analyses using the ECHP data
we find convincing evidence that there is on average in Europe a positive
impact on satisfaction for married and cohabitating women from having especially
the first child and to a lesser extent from having the second child. The impact
is however small in absolute magnitude. In subsequent multivariate analyses
using ECHP data we find significant positive effects both from having children
in the family, defined here to include only married or cohabitating women, and
from giving birth to a first and a second child. This is not the case for all
countries in the ECHP but most systematically so for the Southern European
countries and for UK and Ireland representing the liberal type of welfare
state. For the Continental and the Social democratic welfare state, we find no
impact on satisfaction from having children or from birth of a child. It is
well known that the eventual relationship between family policy and fertility
is complex.
Katharine Bradbury, Boston FED: Labor Market
Transitions and the Availability of Unemployment Insurance. Economists often expect unemployment insurance (UI)
benefits to elevate unemployment rates because recipients may choose to remain
unemployed in order to continue receiving benefits, instead of accepting a job
or dropping out of the labor force. This paper uses individual data from the Current
Population Survey for the period between 2005 and 2013—a period during which
the federal government extended and then reduced the length of benefit
availability to varying degrees in different states—to investigate the
influence of program parameters in the UI system on monthly transition rates of
unemployed individuals. The main finding is that unemployed job losers tend to
remain unemployed until they exhaust UI benefits, at which point they become
more likely to drop out of the labor force; transitions to a job appear to be
unaffected by UI benefit extensions. These findings imply that the longer
periods of benefit eligibility under the federal programs contributed to the
elevated jobless rates observed during that period, but not via lower employment.
By the same token, the sharp contraction of benefit weeks that occurred in 2012
and continued more gradually in 2013 likely contributed to declines in
unemployment and participation rates beyond what one would expect based on the
improving economy alone. Similarly the 2013 sudden cutoff of federal UI
payments to an estimated 1.3 million jobless Americans who had been looking for
work for more than six months is adding to the pace of transitions from
unemployment to dropping out of the labor force, thus reducing the unemployment
rate and the labor force participation rate further in the first half of 2014,
although very modestly.
2014-06-18
Daniele Checchi, Herman G. van de Werfhorst, IZA:
Educational Policies and Income Inequality. In this paper we study the associations between
educational policies, distributions of educational attainments and income
distributions. By matching inequality measures on test scores, years of
education and labour earnings by country, birth cohorts and gender, we show
that inequality in education (measured both at quality and quantity levels)
affect earnings inequality. We then consider potential endogeneity of
educational distributions and we resort to instrumental estimation using
information on government reforming activity in the field of education. By
controlling for country-specific and time fixed effects, and by separating age
and cohorts effects, we prove that educational inequality respond to
educational reforms, identifying educational policies (like later entry into
compulsory education or introduction of standardised tests) capable to reduce
income inequalities thirty years later.
Petri Böckerman, Ohto Kanninen, Ilpo Suoniemi, IZA: A
Kink that Makes You Sick: The Incentive Effect of Sick Pay on Absence. This paper examines the effect of the replacement
rule of the Finnish sickness insurance system on the duration of sickness
absence. A pre-determined, piecewise linear policy rule in which the replacement
rate is determined by past earnings allows identification of the effect using a
regression kink design. We find a substantial and robust behavioral response.
The statistically significant point estimate of the elasticity of the duration
of sickness absence with respect to the replacement rate is on the order of
1.4.
2014-06-11
Alan B. Krueger, Andreas I. Mueller, NBER: A
Contribution to the Empirics of Reservation Wages. This paper provides evidence on the behavior of
reservation wages over the spell of unemployment using high‐frequency longitudinal data. Using data from our
survey of unemployed workers in New Jersey, where workers were interviewed each
week for up to 24 weeks, we find that self‐reported reservation wages decline at a modest rate
over the spell of unemployment, with point estimates ranging from 0.05 to 0.14
percent per week of unemployment. The decline in reservation wages is driven
primarily by older individuals and those with personal savings at the start of
the survey. The longitudinal nature of the data also allows us to test the
relationship between job acceptance and the reservation wage and offered wage,
where the reservation wage is measured from a previous interview to avoid bias
due to cognitive dissonance. Job offers are more likely to be accepted if the
offered wage exceeds the reservation wage, and the reservation wage has more
predictive power in this regard than the pre-displacement wage, suggesting the
reservation wage contains useful information about workers’ future decisions.
In addition, there is a discrete rise in job acceptance when the offered wage
exceeds the reservation wage. In comparison to a calibrated job search model,
the reservation wage starts out too high and declines too slowly, on average,
suggesting that many workers persistently misjudge their prospects or anchor
their reservation wage on their previous wage.
Per Johansson, Lisa Laun, Marten Palme, NBER: Pathways to Retirement and the Role of
Financial Incentives in Sweden. We study how economic incentives affect labor force exit through
different income security programs, old-age pensions as well as income taxes in
Sweden. We use the option value for
staying in the labor force as a measure of economic incentives and estimate an
econometric model for the choice of leaving the labor market. Besides old-age
pension, we focus on the Disability Insurance (DI), which is the most important
exit path before age 65. By simulating
the effect of different probabilities to be admitted DI we show how changes in
the stringency of DI admittance affects labor supply among older workers
through economic incentives.
2014-05-04
Werner
Eichhorst, Verena Tobsch, IZA: Not So Standard Anymore? Employment Duality in
Germany. This paper
gives an overview of the transformation of the German labour market since the
mid-1990s with a special focus on the changing patterns of labour market
segmentation or 'dualization' of employment in Germany. While labour market
duality in Germany can partially be attributed to labour market reforms
promoting, in particular, non-standard forms of employment and allowing for an
expansion of low pay, structural changes in the economy as well as strategic
choices by employers and social partners also play a prominent role. Our main
argument is that the liberalization of non-standard contracts has contributed
to the expansion of overall labour market inclusion and job growth in Germany
and that at least some forms of non-standard work provide stepping stones into
permanent regular jobs. Atypical contracts do not necessarily undermine the
dominance of standard employment relationships and job quality in this primary
segment but rather form a supplementary part of employment in sectors that
depend on more flexible and maybe cheaper forms of labour.
Jesper
Roine, Daniel Waldenström, IZA: Long-Run Trends in the Distribution of Income
and Wealth. We present the main inequality trends, in some cases
starting as early as in the late eighteenth century, combining previous
research with recent findings in the so-called top income literature and new
evidence on wealth concentration. The picture that emerges shows that
inequality was historically high almost everywhere at the beginning of the
twentieth century. In some countries this situation was preceded by increasing
concentration, but in most cases inequality seems to have been relatively
constant at a high level in the nineteenth century. Over the twentieth century
inequality decreased almost everywhere for the first 80 years, largely due to
decreasing wealth concentration and decreasing capital incomes in the top of
the distribution. Thereafter trends are more divergent across countries and
also different across income and wealth distributions. Econometric evidence
over the long run suggests that top shares increase in periods of above average
growth while democracy and high marginal tax rates are associated with lower
top shares.
2014-05-28
Per
Johansson, Arizo Karimi, J. Peter Nilsson, IFAU: Könsskillnader i hur
sjukfrånvaro påverkas av omgivningen. Vi studerar om det
finns skillnader mellan hur män och kvinnor i genomsnitt tar hänsyn till
kollegorna på arbetsplatsen och om kvinnors beteende i genomsnitt är mer
formbart. För att undersöka detta använder vi oss av ett randomiserat
experiment där man minskade kravet för sjukskrivning bland 50 procent av de
boende i Göteborg. Sjukfrånvaron ökade som en konsekvens av det minskade
kravet. Vi studerar hur kontrollgruppen (dvs. de som skulle ha varit opåverkade
av experimentet) påverkas av behandlingsgruppens förändrade sjukfrånvaro. Vi
finner en signifikant ökad sjukfrånvaro bland både kvinnor och män i
kontrollgruppen, vilket tyder på att båda könen påverkas av sin omgivnings
sjukfrånvaro. Däremot tycks kvinnor endast påverkas av sina kvinnliga kollegor,
och män endast av sina manliga kollegor.
Alexander Hijzen, Balint Menyhert, IZA: The dispersed
welfare costs of unemployment: Risk, insurance and perceptions of job
insecurity. Despite the
plenitude of relevant research on the well-being costs of unemployment and perceived
job insecurity on the individual level, the question of whether and how these are
disseminated among the continuously employed received less attention. The few existing
studies find that increases in the local unemployment rate have strong negative
impacts on the well-being of the employed. In this paper, we address the same
question but make several important departures from the existing literature in
order to cover a wide range of European countries, to make more nuanced
assertions as regards the relative importance of the main risk and insurance
components, and to better identify the main mechanism and the role of different
factors at play. In particular, using semiaggregated data compiled from the
European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) and the
European Social Survey (ESS), we find that (1) reemployment opportunities
matter more from a welfare point-of-view than the risk of becoming unemployed,
that (2) unemployment insurance can considerably mitigate the ill-effects of
unemployment, and that (3) much of the well-being effect of higher unemployment
can indeed be attributed to perceived differences in job insecurity.
2014-05-21
Olivier Baguelina, Delphine Remillon, Labour
Economics: Unemployment Insurance and Management of the Older Workforce in a
Dual Labor Market: Evidence from France. The analysis is conducted using data from the French
employment agency over the period 2001 to 2005. It is based on a natural
experiment: on January 1, 2003, the potential benefit duration of UI entrants
was sharply reduced. Econometric analysis of the age patterns of UI inflow
reveals that the age incentives provided by UI rules greatly influence labor
market behaviors: dismissals of insiders close to retirement are often
scheduled so that they can receive benefits until retirement. We estimate that
the reform increased the mean age at job termination of workers dismissed close
to retirement by 4 months. Our findings confirm that UI rules have an impact on
inflow into unemployment and that UI is viewed by some employers and/or some
workers as an early retirement scheme rather than as insurance against the risk
of job loss. Thus, addressing the issue of older workers’ participation in the
labor market requires consideration of the joint impact of UI and retirement
system rules.
OECD: Society at a Glance 2014. The financial upheaval of 2007-08 created not just an
economic and fiscal crisis but also a social crisis. Countries that experienced
the deepest and longest downturns are seeing profound knock-on effects on
people’s job prospects, incomes and living arrangements. Some 48 million people
in OECD countries are looking for a job – 15 million more than in September
2007 – and millions more are in financial distress. The numbers living in households
without any income from work have doubled in Greece, Ireland and Spain. Low-income
groups have been hit hardest as have young people and families with children.
With households under pressure and budgets for social support under scrutiny,
more and more people report dissatisfaction with their lives, and trust in
governments has tumbled. There are also signs that the crisis will cast long
shadows on people’s future well-being. Indeed, some of the social consequences
of the crisis, in areas like family formation, fertility and health, will be
felt only in the long term. Fertility rates have dropped further since the
start of the crisis, deepening the demographic and fiscal challenges of ageing.
Families have also cut back on essential spending, including on food,
compromising their current and future well-being. It is still too early to
quantify the longer-term effects on people’s health, but unemployment and
economic difficulties are known to contribute to a range of health problems,
including mental illness.
2014-05-14
Daniel
S. Hamermesh, Daiji Kawaguchi, Jungmin Lee, IZA: Does Labor Legislation Benefit
Workers? Well-Being after an Hours Reduction. Are workers in modern economies working "too
hard" – would they be better off if an equilibrium with fewer work hours
were achieved? We examine changes in life satisfaction of Japanese and Koreans
over a period when hours of work were cut exogenously because employers
suddenly faced an overtime penalty that had become effective with fewer weekly
hours per worker. Using repeated cross sections we show that life satisfaction
in both countries may have increased relatively among those workers most likely
to have been affected by the legislation. The same finding is produced using
Korean longitudinal data. In a household model estimated over the Korean
cross-section data we find some weak evidence that a reduction in the husband's
work hours increased his wife's well-being. Overall these results are consistent
with the claim that legislated reductions in work hours can increase workers'
happiness.
Luc Behaghel, Didier Blanchet, Muriel Roger,
NBER: Retirement, Early Retirement and
Disability: Explaining Labor Force Participation after 55 in France. We
analyze the influence of health and financial incentives on the retirement
behavior of older workers in France, building upon Stock and Wise (1990) option
value approach. The model accounts for three main retirement routes: the normal retirement, disability insurance (DI)
and unemployment/preretirement pathways, and is estimated with a combination of
microeconomic datasets that include the French data of the European SHARE
survey. The estimates confirm that a decrease in the generosity of the pension
and DI schemes induces people to stay longer in the labor market, and that
people with better health tend to retire later. We present extreme situations
simulating what individual's retirement behavior would have been if only one
retirement route had existed and in the absence of constraints on work
capabilities. We show that average years
of work between 55 and 64 are nearly 14% greater when regular retirement incentives
are applied to the whole population than when it is DI rules that are
systematically applied.
2014-05-07Maurice Schiff, IZA: Can US Coordination Failure Explain Why Americans Work So Much More than Europeans? Prescott (2004) argues that Europeans work much less than Americans because of higher taxes and that they would gain significantly by charging US taxes and working as much as Americans. I argue that the opposite may be true and that Americans work more than Europeans due to a coordination failure. Studies show that utility falls with other people's income, a negative externality that is internalized in Europe through laws on the minimum amount of vacation time (and maximum hours of work), something unthinkable in the US. Thus, Americans may be stuck in an "overworking trap" and would gain by working less. A simple model and data on work time are used to obtain an estimate of the US welfare gain from reducing its work time to Europe's level. On the other hand, if neither EU nor US work time is optimal, then the sign of the EU-to-US welfare difference is positive (ambiguous) if EU work time is greater (smaller) than the optimum, while simulations show that even in the latter case, EU welfare is greater than US welfare if, relative to the optimum, the EU work 'shortage' is smaller than the US work 'surplus'.
H. Xavier Jara, Holly Sutherland, EUROMOD: The implications
of an EMU unemployment insurance scheme for supporting incomes. In
this paper we explore the potential of a new unemployment insurance benefit at
EMU level to improve the income protection available to the unemployed and
their families. The benefit is designed to be additional to existing national
provision where this falls short in terms of eligibility (coverage) and the
amount payable. The “EMU-UI” has a common design across countries, which is
intended to reduce the extent of current gaps in coverage where these are
sizeable due to stringent eligibility conditions, to increase generosity where
current unemployment benefits are low relative to earnings and to extend
duration where this is shorter than 12 months. We find that the EMU-UI reduces
the risk of poverty for the new unemployed and has a positive effect on income
stabilisation. The extent of these effects varies in size across countries for
two main reasons: notable differences in design of national unemployment
insurance schemes and differences in labour force characteristics across
countries, mainly in the proportion of self-employed workers who are typically
not covered by national schemes.
2014-04-30
Jonathan D. Ostry el al, IMF: Redistribution,
Inequality, and Growth.
This paper is the first to take advantage of a recently compiled cross-country
dataset that distinguishes market (before taxes and transfers) inequality from
net (after taxes and transfers) inequality and allows us to calculate
redistributive transfers for a large number of country-year observations. Our
main findings are: First, more unequal societies tend to redistribute more. It
is thus important in understanding the growth-inequality relationship to
distinguish between market and net inequality. Second, lower net inequality is
robustly correlated with faster and more durable growth, for a given level of
redistribution. These results are highly supportive of our earlier work. And
third, redistribution appears generally benign in terms of its impact on
growth; only in extreme cases is there some evidence that it may have direct
negative effects on growth. Thus the combined direct and
indirect effects of redistribution
Eva Mörk, Anna Sjögren, Helena
Svaleryd: Blir barn sjuka när föräldrarna blir arbetslösa?
Vi
analyserar i vilken utsträckning barns hälsa påverkas av att ha arbetslösa
föräldrar. Vi gör detta genom att kombinera information om barns sjukhusinskrivningar
för åren 1992–2007 med registerdata över föräldrarnas arbetslöshet. Vi finner
att barn med arbetslösa föräldrar i genomsnitt löper 17 procents större risk att
skrivas in på sjukhus än andra barn. Det beror sannolikt i hög grad på att barn
i familjer i vilka föräldrarna blir arbetslösa har sämre hälsa av flera skäl.
Det är alltså svårt att veta om föräldrarnas arbetslöshet i sig påverkar
sannolikheten att barn skrivs in på sjukhus. För barn till föräldrar som under
perioder är arbetslösa finner vi dock att sannolikheten att hamna på sjukhus
ökar med 1 procent när någon förälder är arbetslös jämfört med när föräldrarna
har jobb. Vår slutsats är att arbetslöshet försämrar barns hälsa, mätt som
sjukhusinskrivningar, men att effekten är liten.
2014-04-23
Försäkringskassan:
Sjukfrånvaro i psykiska diagnoser. En studie av Sveriges befolkning 16–64 år.
Socialförsäkringsrapport 2014:4. Analyserna
bygger på modeller där risken att påbörja sjukfall längre än 14 dagar med
psykisk diagnos och risken att påbörja sjukfall oavsett diagnos skattats för
hela befolkningen 16–64 år bosatt i Sverige. Resultaten visar att risken att
påbörja sjukfall med psykisk diagnos är avsevärt högre för kvinnor än för män.
För både kvinnor och män är risken att påbörja sjukfall med psykisk diagnos
högst i åldern 30–39 år och även något förhöjd för de med barn i åldern 3–12 år
i familjen. Det finns också ett tydligt regionalt mönster med högre risk för
sjukfall med psykisk diagnos i de tätbefolkade storstadsområdena Stockholm,
Göteborg och Malmö, med omnejder. Utifrån de risker som beräknats har även
samvariationen mellan upplevd arbetsmiljö i en rad olika yrken enligt
Arbetsmiljöundersökningarna och risken att påbörja sjukfall studerats, och
kopplingen mellan svag psykosocial arbetsmiljö och sjukfall med psykisk diagnos
framträder tydligt. Både kvinnor och män verksamma inom yrken med nära kontakt
med brukare av olika typer av välfärdstjänster eller andra personliga tjänster
(kontaktyrken) har en tydligt högre risk att påbörja sjukfall med psykisk
diagnos.
Ronald Bachmann, Daniel Baumgarten, IZA Journal: How
do the unemployed search for a job? – Evidence from the EU Labour Force Survey. Using harmonised micro data, this paper investigates
the job search behaviour of the unemployed in Europe. The analysis focuses on
the importance of individual and household characteristics in this context, as
well as on cross-country differences in Europe. Our findings suggest that both
individual and household characteristics play an important role, with the
latter being more decisive for women. However, even when controlling for these
factors, remarkable differences remain between countries, which are associated
with institutional characteristics at the country level.
Tommy Ferrarini, Kenneth Nelson, Ola Sjöberg, SOFI:
Unemployment insurance and deteriorating self-rated health in 23 European
countries. The purpose of this study is to analyse the role of
unemployment insurance for deteriorating self-rated health in the working age
population at the onset of the fiscal crisis in Europe. Method used are multilevel
logistic conditional change models linking institutional-level data on coverage
and income replacement in unemployment insurance to individual-level panel data
on self-rated health in 23 European countries at two repeated occasions, 2006
and 2009. Unemployment insurance significantly reduces transitions into
self-rated ill-health and, particularly, programme coverage is important in
this respect. Unemployment insurance is also of relevance for the socioeconomic
gradients of health at individual level, where programme coverage significantly
reduces health risks attached to educational attainment. Unemployment insurance
mitigated adverse health effects both at individual and country-level during
the financial crisis. Due to the centrality of programme coverage, reforms to
unemployment insurance should focus on extending the number of insured people
in the labour force.
2014-04-16
2014-04-092014-04-16
AFA:
Sjukskrivningsmönster hos kvinnor och män. Kvinnor har i
genomsnitt fler och längre sjukperioder än män. Kvinnor som har barn under 12
år har en högre risk att bli sjukskrivna jämfört med män i samma situation. Kvinnor
har en högre risk att drabbas av sjukfrånvaro som leder till månadsersättning med
en muskuloskeletal diagnos jämfört med män i de mansdominerade yrkesgrupperna metallarbete
och övrigt industriellt arbete. Bland privatanställda arbetare är det psykiska
diagnoser som har lett till flest sjukdagar i genomsnitt. Det gäller både
kvinnor och män.
Ive Marx, Lina Salanauskaite,
Gerlinde Verbist, IZA: The Paradox of Redistribution Revisited: And That It May
Rest in Peace? There is a long-standing controversy over the question
of whether targeting social transfers towards the bottom part of the income
distribution actually enhances or weakens their redistributive impact. Korpi
and Palme have influentially claimed that “the more we target benefits at the
poor, the less likely we are to reduce poverty and inequality”. The basic empirical
underpinning of this claim is a strong inverse relationship at the country
level between social transfer targeting and redistributive impact. We show that
this no longer holds as a robust empirical generalisation. The relationship
between the extent of targeting and redistributive impact over a broad set of
empirical specifications, country selections and data sources has in fact
become a very weak one. For what it matters, targeting tends to be associated
with higher levels of redistribution, especially when overall effort in terms
of spending is high. We try to make substantive sense of this breakdown of the
originally established relationship by focusing on two questions: first, what
has changed in the countries originally included in the study and, second, what
is different about the countries now additionally included in the analysis?
Matthew S. Rutledge, CRR: How Long Do Unemployed Older
Workers Search for a Job?
The Great Recession threw
many older individuals out of work. The results show little tolerance for a
lengthy search; the vast majority either find a job or exit the labor force
within a year. Those with financial resources, such as Social Security, leave
even sooner. Interestingly, the strength of the local labor market does not
seem to have much impact on the duration of job search.
G. Hensing, K. Holmgren, H. Rohdén, Department of
Social Medicine, University of Gothenburg: Strong support for relocation to
other work tasks: A cross-sectional study of attitudes to sickness insurance
regulations in Sweden.
Profound changes are taking place in the
Swedish welfare state. The general population's attitudes are important insofar
changes will be perceived as fair and effective to become implemented. The aim
was to study attitudes to the strictness of the sick-leave rules, relocation to
other work tasks after 3 months of sick leave and applications for new jobs
after 6 months of sick leave. Eligible for this questionnaire study were 1,140
individuals aged 19 to 64 years. Their attitudes were analyzed in relation to
age, gender, political ideology and health status. Health status was measured
as sick-leave experiences, self-reported health and level of symptoms. The
study showed that 42% considered the sick-leave rules to be too strict, 60%
found relocation to other work tasks to be good while 35% found that
applications for new work were good. In logistic regression analyses, high
sick-leave experience was associated with increased odds of finding the sick-leave
rules too strict and disagreement with relocation to other work tasks or
application for new jobs. In conclusion, strong support was found for
relocation to other work tasks with the present employer. Earlier research on
returning to work has found workplace interventions to be efficient. From a
policy perspective it seems relevant to promote such interventions given the
strong public opinion in their favor.
2014-04-02
Anna
Godøy, Knut Røed, IZA: Unemployment Insurance and Underemployment. Should
unemployment insurance (UI) systems provide coverage for underemployed job
seekers? Based on a statistical analysis of Norwegian unemployment spells, we
conclude that the answer to this question is yes. Allowing insured job seekers
to retain partial UI benefits during periods of insufficient part-time work not
only reduces UI expenditures during the part-time work period; it also
unambiguously reduces the time until a regular self-supporting job is found.
Probable explanations are that even small temporary part-time jobs provide
access to useful vacancy-information and that such jobs are used by employers
as a screening device when hiring from the unemployment pool.
Verena
Wondratschek, Karin Edmark, Markus Frölich IZA: The Short- and Long-Term
Effects of School Choice on Student Outcomes: Evidence from a School Choice
Reform in Sweden. This
paper evaluates the effects of a major Swedish school choice reform. The reform
in 1992 increased school choice and competition among public schools as well as
through a large-scale introduction of private schools. We estimate the effects
of school choice and competition, using precise geographical information on the
locations of school buildings and children's homes for the entire Swedish
population for several cohorts affected at different stages in their
educational career. We can measure the long-term effects up to age 25. We find
that increased school choice had very small, but positive, effects on marks at
the end of compulsory schooling, but virtually zero effects on longer term
outcomes such as university education, employment, criminal activity and
health.
2014-03-24
Jessamyn Schaller, Ann Huff Stevens, NBER: Short-run
Effects of Job Loss on Health Conditions, Health Insurance, and Health Care. Job loss in the United States is associated with
long-term reductions in income and long-term increases in mortality rates. This paper examines the short- to medium-term
changes in health, health care access, and health care utilization after job
loss that lead to these long-term effects.
Using a sample with more than 9800 individual job losses and
longitudinal data on a wide variety of health-related measures and outcomes, we
show that job loss results in worse self-reported health, including mental
health, but is not associated with statistically significant increases in a
variety of specific chronic conditions.
Among the full sample of workers, we see reductions in insurance
coverage, but little evidence of reductions in health care utilization after
job loss. Among the subset of displaced
workers for whom the lost job was their primary source of insurance we do see
reductions in doctor's visits and prescription drug usage. These results suggest that access to health
insurance and care may be an important part of the health effects of job loss
for some workers. The pattern of results
is also consistent with a significant role for stress in generating long-term
health consequences after job loss.
Jonas
Maibom Pedersen, Michael Rosholm, Michael Svarer, IZA: Can Active Labour Market
Policies Combat Youth Unemployment? Active labour market policies (ALMPs) may play an
important role in preventing an increase in long-term unemployment following
the Great Recession. We consider this issue for Denmark, a country relying
extensively on this instrument. We present evidence on the effectiveness of
ALMPs as a way of fighting youth unemployment using results from a randomised
controlled trial (RCT) that intensified the use of ALMPs. The intervention was
conducted after the onset of the financial crisis, and the findings are
relatively unfavourable in the sense that further intensification of an already
quite intensive effort for youth did not increase employment. In addition, the
intensification of ALMPs seems to have in-creased transitions into sickness
benefits.
2014-03-17
Iida
Häkkinen Skans, ISF: Utvecklingen av socialförsäkringsförmåner sedan
1990-talet. Rapporten visar att flera av
socialförsäkringsförmånerna inte har följt pris- eller löneförändringar efter
den ekonomiska krisen på 1990-talet då förmånsnivåer frystes eller sänktes för
att åstadkomma besparingar och öka incitament till arbete. De maximala ersättningarna
i dessa försäkringar har inte hängt med löneutvecklingen, och en växande andel
av den arbetande befolkningen har inkomster som överstiger takbeloppen. År 2010
hade nästan hälften av männen och en fjärdedel av kvinnorna i åldersgruppen
20–64 år en inkomst som översteg taket på 7,5 prisbasbelopp i sjukförsäkringen.
År 1992 hade endast 14 procent av männen och 2 procent av kvinnorna i den
åldersgruppen en inkomst som översteg taket. I arbetslöshetsförsäkringen är
taket numera lägre än den lägsta tiondelens heltidslön. År 1992 var
ersättningstaket i arbetslöshetsförsäkringen högre än medianlönen.
Michael Lechner, Nazmi Sari, IZA:
Labor Market Effects of Sports and Exercise: Evidence from Canadian Panel Data.
Based on the Canadian
National Population Health Survey we estimate the effects of individual sports
and exercise on individual labor market outcomes. The data covers the period
from 1994 to 2008. It is longitudinal and rich in life-style, health, and
physical activity information. Exploiting these features of the data allows for
a credible identification of the effects as well as for estimating
dose-response relationships. Generally, we confirm previous findings of
positive long-run income effects. However, an activity level above the current
recommendation of the WHO for minimum physical activity is required to reap in
the long-run benefits.
2014-03-12
James J. Heckman, Tim Kautz (NBER): Fostering and Measuring Skills:
Interventions that Improve Character and Cognition. The
literature establishes that achievement tests do not adequately capture
character skills—personality traits, goals, motivations, and preferences--that
are valued in the labor market, in school, and in many other domains. Their
predictive power rivals that of cognitive skills. Character is a skill, not a
trait. At any age, character skills are stable across different tasks, but
skills can change over the life cycle. Character is shaped by families,
schools, and social environments. High-quality early childhood and elementary
school programs improve character skills in a lasting and cost-effective way.
Ole
Christian Lien, Arbeid og velferd: Få bytter jobb etter fylte 50 år.
Bare
5–6 prosent av arbeidstakerne over 50 år bytter jobb i løpet av et år. Til
tross for at folk over 50 jobber stadig lenger, har denne andelen vært stabil
siden tidlig på 2000-tallet. Ifølge tall fra OECD er det bare islendingene i
Europa som i større grad enn nordmenn velger å bli i den jobben de har etter de
har fylt 50 år. Dette er sannsynligvis først og fremst uttrykk for at norske seniorer
har trygge og stabile jobber som de trives i.
2014-03-03
Alan
B. Krueger, Andreas I. Mueller, IZA: A Contribution to the Empirics of
Reservation Wages. Using data from our survey of unemployed workers in
New Jersey, where workers were interviewed each week for up to 24 weeks, we
find that self-reported reservation wages decline at a modest rate over the
spell of unemployment, with point estimates ranging from 0.05 to 0.14 percent
per week of unemployment. The decline in reservation wages is driven primarily
by older individuals and those with personal savings at the start of the
survey. Job offers are more likely to be accepted if the offered wage exceeds
the reservation wage, and the reservation wage has more predictive power in
this regard than the pre-displacement wage.
SBU:
Arbetsmiljöns betydelse för symtom på depression och utmattningssyndrom.
SBU har gått igenom forskningsläget för samband mellan en lång rad faktorer i
arbetsmiljön och depressionssymtom, respektive symtom på utmattningssyndrom.
Det visar sig att forskningen främst varit inriktad på betydelsen av organisatoriska
och psykosociala faktorer. Det finns vetenskapligt underlag för att bl.a. följande
gäller på gruppnivå: Personer som upplever en arbetssituation med små
möjligheter att påverka, i kombination med alltför höga krav, utvecklar mer depressionssymtom.
Personer som upplever bristande medmänskligt stöd i arbetsmiljön utvecklar mer
symtom på depression och utmattningssyndrom än andra. De som upplever mobbning
eller konflikter i sitt arbete utvecklar mer depressionssymtom än andra, men det
går inte att avgöra om det finns något motsvarande samband för symtom på utmattningssyndrom.
Personer som upplever att de har pressande arbete eller en arbetssituation där
belöningen upplevs som liten i förhållande till ansträngningen utvecklar mer
symtom på depression och utmattningssyndrom än andra.
2014-02-24
Simen
Markussen, Knut Røed, IZA: The Impacts of Vocational Rehabilitation.
Based on local variations in vocational rehabilitation (VR) priorities, we
examine the impacts of alternative VR programs on short- and long-term labor
market outcomes for temporary disability insurance (TDI) claimants in Norway.
The analysis builds on rich and detailed administrative registers covering
345,000 claimants. We find that a strategy focusing on rapid placement in the
regular labor market is superior to alternative strategies giving higher
priority to vocational training or sheltered employment. Strategies
prioritizing subsidized regular education also tend to be relatively successful
in terms of final outcomes, but at the cost of protracted periods of benefit
dependency first.
Mikko Myrskylä, Taina Leinonen, Pekka Martikainen,
Finnish centre for pensions, working papers: Life expectancy by labor force
status and social class: Recent period and cohort trends and projections for
Finland. We use Finnish register data for the years 1989–2007
to analyze period and cohort trends in life, work and retirement expectancies
at age 50 by social class. The period and cohort perspectives complement each
other as the period perspective describes what would happen to a cohort if it
were exposed to a certain year’s conditions throughout life, and the cohort
perspective describes what in reality happens to a cohort as it ages over time.
We use the Lee-Carter method to complete mortality and linear extrapolation to
complete the labor force participation of partially observed cohorts. Over the
period 1989–2007, period life expectancy at age 50 increased 3–4 years for men
and women. Old-age retirement expectancy increased about as much. Work
expectancy declined in the early 1990s but has since been on an upward
trajectory, being in 2007, at 9 years, approximately a year higher than in 1989
for both men and women. The fraction of years that are spent working at ages
above 50 declined from 33% to 31% for men and stayed at 26% for women. These
trends were similar across the social classes. However, there were large level
differences as the upper classes have the highest life, work and retirement
expectancies. For example in 2007, the work expectancy difference between upper
non-manual and manual workers was 3.8 years (men) and 3.4 years (women); for old-age
retirement the differences were 4.5 years (men) and 3.5 years (women).
2014-02-17
Stina
Petersson, Stockholms universitets Linnécentrum: Utrikes födda på arbetsmarknaden
- En forskningsöversikt. Utrikes födda verkar gynnas mer av
att ha inrikes än utrikes födda personer i sina nätverk, i synnerhet om den
sociala kontakten sker på arbetsplatsen. Även diskrimineringen av utrikes födda
missgynnar deras sysselsättning och löner, i synnerhet männens. Utrikes föddas
sämre löneläge verkar dessutom delvis kunna förklaras av att de oftare är
överkvalificerade för sina arbetsuppgifter än inrikes födda, och att de
förlorar mer lönemässigt på överkvalificeringen. Detta verkar också kunna
förklaras av att de har en lägre utbildningsavkastning, även om de har
genomgått sin högsta utbildning i Sverige.
Marcus
Eliason, IFAU: Uppsägningar och alkoholrelaterad sjuklighet och dödlighet.
De
som förlorade sina jobb i samband med arbetsplatsnedläggningar under 1990-talet
hade en högre alkoholrelaterad sjuklighet och dödlighet. Det visar en ny
rapport från IFAU. Studien följer 330 000 personer som förlorade sina jobb i
samband med arbetsplatsnedläggningar under 1990-talet. Resultaten visar att
dessa personer hade 10–41 procents högre risk att drabbas av alkoholrelaterade
sjukdomar eller tillstånd som resulterade i sjukhusvård eller dödsfall än
jämförbara personer som inte var med om dessa nedläggningar.
2014-02-10
Marika Cabral, Neale Mahoney, NBER: Externalities and Taxation of Supplemental
Insurance: A Study of Medicare and Medigap. Most health insurance policies use cost-sharing to
reduce excess utilization. The purchase
of supplemental insurance can blunt the impact of this cost-sharing,
potentially increasing utilization and exerting a negative externality on the
primary insurance provider. This paper estimates the effect of private Medigap
supplemental insurance on public Medicare spending using Medigap premium discontinuities
in local medical markets that span state boundaries. Using administrative data
on the universe of Medicare beneficiaries, we estimate that Medigap increases
an individual's Medicare spending by 22.2%.
We find that the take-up of Medigap is price sensitive with an estimated
demand elasticity of -1.8. Using these
estimates, we calculate that a 15% tax on Medigap premiums would generate
combined tax revenue and cost savings of $12.9 billion annually. A Pigouvian tax would generate combined annual
savings of $31.6 billion.
Werner
Eichhorst et al, IZA: How to Combine the Entry of Young People in the Labour
Market with the Retention of Older Workers? This paper provides an overview of the employment
situation of young and old workers in the EU Member States, setting out the
most recent development during the crisis and dealing with policies implemented
to promote the employment of both groups. The evidence collected shows that
there is no competition between young and older workers on the labour market.
Structural or general policies to enhance the functioning of EU labour markets
are crucial to improving the situation of both groups. However, the responsibility
for employment policies still predominantly lies within Member States of the
European Union, although initiatives taken at the EU level can provide added
value, particularly through stimulating the exchange of experiences and
facilitating regional and cross-border mobility throughout the EU.
2014-02-03
Ett
förlängt arbetsliv - forskning om arbetstagarnas och arbetsmarknadens
förutsättningar. Rapport från riksdagen 2013/14:RFR8.
Slutsatserna från etablerad forskning inom området visar att förändringar bör
göras på såväl individ- som arbetsplats- och samhällsnivå om man vill kunna öka
de äldres deltagande på arbetsmarknaden. För individen är det bland annat
viktigt att ta tillvara erbjudanden om kompetensutveckling. Ar-betstagare i
åldern 55+ bör även uppmärksamma sin hälsa genom att lyssna på kroppens signaler.
Arbetsgivare bör skapa en miljö där alla medarbetare kan prestera väl utifrån
sina förutsättningar, oavsett ålder och kön. Ett åldersmedvetet ledarskap kan
behöva utvecklas i organisationen, vilket kan innebära kunskap om åldrandets
processer och om förutsättningar för ett längre arbetsliv. Ett åldersmedvetet
ledarskap fokuserar på individuella förut-sättningar. På samhällsnivå är det
viktigt att påverka attityderna till arbets-kraft över 55 år.
Pathric
Hägglund, ISF Effekterna av handläggarnas attityder på sjukskrivningstiderna.
Resultaten
visar att en högre regel- och resultatorientering hos handläggare, det vill
säga en positivare inställning till regelverket och betydelsen av att nå
uppsatta verksamhetsmål, leder till kortare sjukfall. Skillnaden mellan de 25
procent som är mest positiva till aktuella regler och de 25 procent som är
minst positiva ger en effekt som motsvarar i genomsnitt 3 sjukskrivningsdagar,
eller cirka 1,5 procent.
2014-01-27
Anders Stenberg, Olle Westerlund, SOFI: Education and
retirement: does University education at mid-age extend working life? To our knowledge, this paper provides the first
study evaluating the effects of higher education for adults on the timing of
retirement. Using detailed longitudinal population register data 1982–2010, we
track first-time enrollees in higher education in 1992–1993. Our sample is aged
42–55 at the time of enrollment and thus aged 60–73 in 2010. We find that
higher education increases labor market survival rates when aged 61–66 by about
5 percentage points. The estimates represent relatively large effects.
Tentative calculations indicate that if enrollment occurs at age 42, the retirement
delay represents about one percent in yearly earnings returns per year of tertiary
education.
Katarina
Baatz, Socialstyrelsen: Dödsorsaker efter utbildningsnivå.
Risken att dö i förtid har minskat för såväl låg- som högutbildade i Sverige
under det senaste decenniet. Men dödsrisken är fortsatt betydligt högre för dem
med låg utbildning än för dem med hög utbildning. Den sämsta utvecklingen har
kvinnor i åldrarna 35-64 år med låg utbildning. Risken att dö i åldern 35-64 år
har minskat med 6 procent för dem med grundskoleutbildning från år 1991 till
2012. För kvinnor med eftergymnasial utbildning har dödligheten minskat med 33
procent. En viktig anledning till sociala skillnader är rökning som inte minskar
bland lågutbildade kvinnor.
James J. Heckman, Tim Kautz, NBER: Fostering and
Measuring Skills: Interventions that Improve Character and Cognition. The literature establishes that achievement tests do
not adequately capture character skills–personality traits, goals, motivations,
and preferences–that are valued in the labor market, in school, and in many
other domains. Their predictive power rivals that of cognitive skills. Reliable
measures of character have been developed.
All measures of character and cognition are measures of performance on
some task. In order to reliably estimate
skills from tasks, it is necessary to standardize for incentives, effort, and
other skills when measuring any particular skill. Character is a skill, not a
trait. At any age, character skills are
stable across different tasks, but skills can change over the life cycle. Character is shaped by families, schools,
and social environments. Skill
development is a dynamic process, in which the early years lay the foundation
for successful investment in later years. High-quality early childhood and
elementary school programs improve character skills in a lasting and
cost-effective way. Many of them
beneficially affect later-life outcomes without improving cognition. There are
fewer long-term evaluations of adolescent interventions, but workplace-based
programs that teach character skills are promising. The common feature of successful
interventions across all stages of the life cycle through adulthood is that
they promote attachment and provide a secure base for exploration and learning
for the child. Successful interventions
emulate the mentoring environments offered by successful families
2014-01-14
Gordon B. Dahl et al: What Is the Case for Paid Maternity Leave? We assess the case for paid maternity leave, focusing on parents' responses to a series of policy reforms in Norway which expanded paid leave from 18 to 35 weeks. Our first empirical result is that none of the reforms seem to crowd out unpaid leave. Our second set of empirical results reveals the expansions had little effect on a wide variety of outcomes, including children's school outcomes, parental earnings and participation in the labor market in the short or long run, completed fertility, marriage or divorce. Our third finding is that paid maternity leave is regressive in the sense that eligible mothers have higher family incomes compared to ineligible mothers or childless individuals. Taken together, our findings suggest the generous extensions to paid leave were costly, had no measurable effect on outcomes and regressive redistribution properties. In a time of harsh budget realities, our findings have important implications for countries that are considering future expansions or contractions in the duration of paid leave.
Casey B. Mulligan, NBER: Uncertainty, Redistribution, and the Labor Market. The recent housing crash, financial crisis, or even political events may have altered the nature of this tradeoff or altered society’s willingness to tolerate labor market inefficiency in order to have more equity. The tradeoff would be altered by a deterioration of information about labor market outcomes that would normally help distinguish luck from the consequences of worker effort. It could also be altered by an increase in non-diversifiable risk. An increase in risk aversion, or possibly a reduction in welfare stigma, induces an optimal movement along that tradeoff in the direction of more social insurance. Under any of these scenarios, it would be no surprise that the social safety net expanded and labor market activity fell as much as they did, and uncertainty in one way or another would be the ultimate cause.
2013-12-30
Johannes F. Schmiedery et al, Boston University: The
Causal Effect of Unemployment Duration on Wages: Evidence from Unemployment
Insurance Extension. Does the search subsidy provided by unemployment
insurance (UI) help workers find better jobs by or does the resulting increased
time out of work lead to skill depreciation and lower reemployment wages? This
paper investigates this question by exploiting strict age thresholds in the
German UI system that determine workers' maximum potential UI benefit duration.
Using a regression discontinuity (RD) design we show that longer potential
benefit durations lead to sharp increases in non-employment durations while
lowering post-unemployment wages. The estimates imply that each month out of
work reduces wage offers (and reemployment wages) by 0.8 percent, pointing to
high costs of long-term unemployment.
David M. Cutler et al, NBER: Evidence for Significant
Compression of Morbidity In the Elderly U.S. Population. The question
of whether morbidity is being compressed into the period just before death has
been at the center of health debates in the United States for some time.
Compression of morbidity would lead to longer life but less rapid medical
spending increases than if life extension were accompanied by expanding
morbidity. Using nearly 20 years of data from the Medicare Current Beneficiary
Survey, we examine how health is changing by time period until death. We show
that functional measures of health are improving, and more so the farther away
from death the person is surveyed. Disease rates are relatively constant at all
times until death. On net, there is strong evidence for compression of
morbidity based on measured disability, but less clear evidence based on
disease-free survival.
Margarida Antunes, University of Coimbra: Economic
dilemmas about unemployment benefit in the context of the future European
insurance system. Since June
2012, is under discussion in the European institutions the idea of moving towards
a “genuine economic and monetary union” which includes the creation of an
instrument of macroeconomic stabilization in the Eurozone based on an insurance
system managed at central level. This project appears when the unemployment
benefit has been subject to a double conditionality resulting from the
reaffirmation of need to improve labour market flexibility and from the fiscal
consolidation policies. The aim of this paper is precisely to discuss the
European idea of this insurance system.
2013-12-16
2013-12-16
Iida
Häkkinen Skans, Malin Olsson, Charlotta Örn, ISF: Slopat frånvarointyg.
För
att förhindra missbruk av tillfällig föräldrapenning för vård av barn (vab)
krävdes fram till årsskiftet 2012/13 ett intyg om barnets frånvaro innan
ersättningen kunde betalas ut. Intyget slopades på grund av stora
administrativa kostnader och därför att regeringen ansåg att Försäkringskassan
hade goda möjligheter att kontrollera föräldrarnas användande av försäkringen
utan intyg. Rapporten visar att vab-användningen bland föräldrarna var högre i
början av 2013 än vid samma tid året innan. Ökningen var dock liten jämfört med
den normala variationen och började dessutom flera månader innan intyget togs
bort. Det är därför inte troligt att borttagandet av frånvarointyget hade någon
större effekt på hur föräldrarna använde försäkringen under det första halvåret
2013.
Tomas
Hemmingsson, Andreas Lundin, IFAU: Prediktorer för arbetslöshet och
förtidspension. Ungdomars psykiska hälsa,
personlighet, förmåga att anpassa sig i skolan samt intelligensnivå påverkar
hela deras arbetsliv. Forskarna har följt ungefär 50 000 män genom arbetslivet
– från sena tonår till pensionsåldern. De som varit arbetslösa mer än tre
månader är oftare arbetslösa som vuxna och har oftare förtidspension. Det är
inte bara ungdomsarbetslösheten i sig som skapar framtida arbetslöshet eller
ett tidigt utträde från arbetsmarknaden. Det är individernas egenskaper som
påverkar såväl tidig som sen arbetslöshet.Andreas I. Mueller, Jesse Rothstein, Till M. von Wachter, NBER: Unemployment Insurance and Disability Insurance in the Great Recession. Disability insurance (DI) applications and awards are countercyclical. One potential explanation is that unemployed individuals who exhaust their Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits use DI as a form of extended benefits. We exploit the haphazard pattern of UI benefit extensions in the Great Recession to identify the effect of UI exhaustion on DI application, using both aggregate data at the state-month and state-week levels and microdata on unemployed individuals in the Current Population Survey. We find no indication that expiration of UI benefits causes DI applications. Our estimates are sufficiently precise to rule out effects of meaningful magnitude.
Rafael Lalive, Camille Landais, Josef Zweimüller,
VOX : How much unemployment
insurance do we need?
In response to the Great Recession, unemployment insurance has been extended in
many countries, but there is controversy over whether such extensions are
optimal. Unemployment insurance entails direct fiscal costs, and encourages job
seekers to prolong their search. The familiar benefit of unemployment insurance
is that it allows the jobless to maintain their consumption. However, by
reducing the search effort of other workers, it also improves a given worker’s
chance of finding a job. Unemployment insurance extensions appear less costly
when these search externalities are considered.
2013-12-09
Daniel S. J. Lechmann, Claus Schnabel, IZA: Absence from Work of the
Self-Employed: A Comparison with Paid Employees: We find that absence from work is clearly less prevalent among the
self-employed than among paid employees. Only to a small extent, this
difference can be traced back to differences in health status and job
satisfaction. Furthermore, the gap in absenteeism is apparently not driven by
different behaviour in case of sickness as we find no difference in the
prevalence of presenteeism between the two groups. We suspect that different
behaviour in case of healthiness plays a role, highlighting potential shirking
and moral hazard problems in paid employment.2013-12-09
Natalia Danzer, Victor Lavy, NBER: Parental Leave and
Children's Schooling Outcomes: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from a Large
Parental Leave Reform. This paper
investigates the question whether long-term human capital outcomes are affected
by the duration of maternity leave, i.e. by the time mothers spend at home with
their newborn before returning to work.
Employing RD and difference-in-difference approaches, this paper
exploits an unanticipated reform in Austria which extended the maximum duration
of paid and job protected parental leave from 12 to 24 months for children born
on July 1, 1990 or later. We use test
scores from the Austrian PISA test of birth cohorts 1990 and 1987 as measure of
human capital. The evidence suggest no significant
overall impact of the extended parental leave mandate on standardized test
scores at age 15, but that the subgroup of boys of highly educated mothers have
benefited from this reform while boys of low educated mothers were harmed by
it.
Andrey Launov, Klaus Wälde, University of Mainz, IZA:
Thumbscrews for Agencies or for Individuals? How to Reduce Unemployment. To which extent does an increase in operating
effectiveness of public employment agencies on the one hand and a reduction of
unemployment benefits on the other reduce unemployment? Using the recent labour
market reform in Germany as background we find that the role of unemployment
benefit reduction for the reduction of unemployment is very modest (7% of the
observed decline). Enhanced effectiveness of public employment agencies, to the
contrary, explains a substantial part (34%) of the observed post-reform
unemployment decline. If disincentive effects of PEA reforms had been avoided,
the effect could have increased to 51%.
Olivier Baguelin, Delphine Remillony, UEVE-EPEE: Unemployment insurance and distance to
retirement: a natural experiment in France. When deciding which of his older workers he should dismiss first,
depending on their distance from retirement, an employer cares about the
duration of their unemployment insurance (UI) entitlement. This paper
identifies and quantifies this behavior for the French labour market in
mid-2000s. The analysis is conducted using data from the French employment
agency over the period 2001-2006 and relies on a natural experiment: on January
1, 2003, UI entrants had their maximum entitlement duration (MED) sharply
reduced. Econometric analysis reveals that these MED reductions led to an
increase in the mean age at the date of UI admission of +4 months for workers
laid o¤ close to retirement. No significant effect is observed neither for ends
of fixed-term contract close to retirement nor for older workers laid o¤ far
from retirement. This conclusion reinforces the suspicion that UI is used by
French employers as an early retirement scheme.