This study is the first to provide a causal estimate of the subjective well-being effects of spousal unemployment at the couple level. Using German panel data on married and cohabiting partners for 1991-2013 and information on exogenous job termination induced by workplace closure, we show that spousal unemployment reduces the life satisfaction of indirectly-affected spouses. The impact is equally ...
Reliable measures of poverty are an essential statistical tool for public policies aimed at reducing poverty. In this paper we consider the reliability of income poverty measures based on survey data which are typically plagued by missing data and measurement error. Neglecting these problems can bias the estimated poverty rates. We show how to derive upper and lower bounds for the population poverty ...
This paper investigates the interrelated dynamics of employment, cohabitation and fertility for German women and men. Using a simultaneous hazards approach due to Lillard (1993), I estimate a five-equation model with unobserved heterogeneity. One of the contributions of this paper is to include the current employment and nonemployment hazard rates and the union formation and union dissolution hazard ...