Topic Labor and Employment

The Effects of an Increase in the Retirement Age on Health Care Costs: Evidence from Administrative Data

In this paper, we use unique health record data that cover outpatient care and the associated costs to quantify the health care costs of a sizable increase in the retirement age in Germany. For the identification, we exploit a sizable cohort-specific pension reform which abolished an early retirement program for all women born after 1951. Our results show that health care costs significantly increase ...

The Heterogeneous Effects of Social Assistance and Unemployment Insurance: Evidence from a Life-Cycle Model of Family Labor Supply and Savings

We empirically analyze the heterogeneous welfare effects of unemployment insurance and social assistance. We estimate a structural life-cycle model of singles' and married couples' labor supply and savings decisions. The model includes heterogeneity by age, education, wealth, sex and household composition. In aggregate, social assistance dominates unemployment insurance; however, the opposite holds ...

The Effect of Increasing Retirement Age on Households’ Savings and Consumption Expenditure

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 ...

Do Women Expect Wage Cuts for Part-Time Work?

I quantify the perceived changes in hourly wage rates associated with working different hours on the same job for a representative sample of female workers. While part-time working women expect significant hourly wage gains from switching to full-time work - 7% on average - full-time workers expect no effect on current wages when switching to part-time, on average. Perceived pecuniary losses from part-time ...

Causal Misperceptions of the Part-time Pay Gap

In this paper, we analyze if an increase in the working life leads to more human capital investment via on-the-job training. We obtain RDD-estimates from a sharp date-of-birth cut-off, generated by a pension reform that increased the Early Retirement Age (ERA) by three years for many women in Germany. In our preferred specification, we find that this reform causally increased on-the-job training by ...

Working Life and Human Capital Investment: Causal Evidence from a Pension Reform

Women in Management and the Gender Pay Gap

We analyze the impact of women’s managerial representation on the gender pay gap among employees on the establishment level using German Linked-Employer-Employee- Data from the years 2004 to 2018. For identification of a causal effect we employ a panel model with establishment fixed effects and industry-specific time dummies. Our results show that a higher share of women in management significantly ...

Should Mama or Papa Work? Variations in Attitudes towards Parental Employment by Country of Origin and Child Age

Employment among mothers has been rising in recent decades, although mothers of young children often work fewer hours than other women do. Parallel to this trend, approval of maternal employment has increased, albeit not evenly across groups. However, differences in attitudes remain unexplored despite their importance for better understanding mothers’ labour market behaviour. Meanwhile, the employment ...

Midijob Reform: Increased Redistribution in Pension Insurance – Noticeable Costs, Relief Not Well Targeted

The German Federal Government has expanded subsidies for employees with low gross wages (midijob employees) as of January 1, 2023, and raised the upper earnings limit to 2,000 euros. As a result, around 6.2 million midijob employees will benefit from paying reduced social security contributions while still receiving their full pension entitlements, made possible by a redistribution within the social ...

Gender Parity on Top Boards Is Still a Far-off Goal, and It Is Time for Companies to Take Action: Editorial