This project analyses various reform and labour market scenarios with regard to their impact on old-age poverty in the period up to 2045. These are changes to the lower limit for the level of protection in the GRV (holding lines), the pension adjustment rule, a higher retirement age, a generous exemption scheme for pension income from the GRV for basic security, and increased gainful employment at...
We study the incentive and labor market effects of disability benefit programs using unique policy variation in Germany. In 2014, disability benefits of new recipients were increased considerably while eligibility criteria were not changed. We exploit this quasi-experimental policy variation to test the implications at two different margins. First, we analyze to what extent an increase in the...
Pension funds carry implications on citizens wellbeing in their retirement years and countries’ growths, rendering changes to them following natural disasters of great importance. Using administrative data that comprises a 10 percent random sample of the Australian population and a natural experimental design, we investigate the effects of natural disasters on retirement savings in the aftermath...
This project serves to further develop the open source software GETTSIM. GETTSIM is a simulation model written in the programming language Python, which can depict the German tax and transfer system. The software offers a multitude of applications in research and teaching. It is developed in cooperation with the IZA (Institute of Labor Economics) as well as other German research institutes and...
This dissertation consists of five independent chapters contributing to the field of applied economics. The first three chapters analyze workers' perceptions of the wage penalty associated with working part-time, further evaluating the labor supply implications of biased beliefs. Chapter 4 quantifies the effects of raising the normal retirement age on the career trajectories of middle-aged workers ...
This paper examines how households adjust their savings and consumption expenditure in response to an anticipated increase in the early retirement age (ERA). We examine the 1999 pension reform in Germany, which increased the ERA for women born after 1951 by at least three years. First, we present suggestive evidence that women update their retirement planning in response to the reform. Using the German ...
To determine how wives’ and husbands’ retirement options affect their spouses’ (and their own) labour supply decisions, we exploit (early) retirement cutoffs by way of a regression discontinuity design. Several German pension reforms since the early 1990s have gradually raised women’s retirement age from 60 to 65, but also increased ages for several early retirement pathways affecting both sexes. We ...
Ein Unfall, eine chronische Erkrankung oder auch eine angeborene Behinderung sind häufige Ursachen für den Verlust der Erwerbsfähigkeit. Der Wegfall des Erwerbseinkommens wird zwar durch die Erwerbsminderungsrente in der gesetzlichen Rentenversicherung versichert. Diese Rente ist aber so niedrig, dass Erwerbsgeminderte einem sehr hohen Armutsrisiko ausgesetzt sind und überdurchschnittlich häufig Leistungen ...