Search

Essays in Pension and Long-Term Care Policy

This dissertation studies the relationship of informal elder care and the pension system. The thesis consists of four chapters that apply several micro-econometric methods to survey data sets. The first three chapters use quasi-experimental settings to access important margins in the relationship between informal care giving and retirement and labor market behavior. The fourth chapter builds and estimates ...

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

This study analyzes the causal effect of an increase in the retirement age on official health diagnoses. We exploit a sizable cohort-specific pension reform for women using a Difference-in-Differences approach. The analysis is based on official records covering all individuals insured by the public health system in Germany and including all certified diagnoses by practitioners. This enables us to gain ...

Disparities in Labour Market and IncomeTrends during the First Year of the COVID-19 Crisis: Evidence from Germany

Impact of the COVID‑19 Pandemic on Depression, Anxiety, Loneliness, and Satisfaction in the German General Population: a Longitudinal Analysis

Purpose Cross-sectional studies found high levels of depression and anxiety symptoms, and loneliness during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Reported increases were lower in longitudinal population-based findings. Studies including positive outcomes are rare. This study analyzed changes in mental health symptoms, loneliness, and satisfaction. Methods Respondents of the German Socio-Economic ...

The Long-Run Effects of Sports Club Vouchers for Primary School Children

Childhood obesity is one of the most serious public health challenges of the 21st century. While small-scale experiments change behaviors among adults in the short-run, we know little about the effectiveness of large-scale policies or the longer-run impacts due to habit formation among children. To nudge primary school children into a long-term habit of exercising, the German state of Saxony distributed ...

Increasing disability benefits: selection and labor market effects.

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...

Long term care and migration

Organizing long-term care (LTC) is one of the most pressing challenges for the coming years, both societally and politically. Across OECD countries, the proportion of individuals aged 80 and above will increase from an average of nearly five to almost ten percent of the population by 2050 (OECD, 2020). This rapid aging will have sizable implications for the demand and provision of LTC. The issue...

(In)equality at the Workplace? Differences in Occupational Safety and Health Measures during the Covid-19 Pandemic and Related Employee Health

Auf Basis der Daten einer Sondererhebung des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels zur Covid-19-Pandemie (SOEP-CoV) werden in diesem Beitrag Unterschiede in der Umsetzung verschiedener personenbezogener und organisatorischer Arbeitsschutzmaßnahmen während der Covid-19-Pandemie sowie deren Zusammenhang mit der individuellen Gesundheit von Beschäftigten untersucht. Hierzu wird zunächst ein kurzer Abriss zu sozialen ...

Financial Incentives and Antibiotic Prescribing Patterns: Evidence from Dispensing Physicians in a Public Healthcare System

To ensure sufficient access to healthcare in remote areas, some countries allow physicians to directly dispense prescribed drugs through on-site pharmacies. Depending on the medication prescribed, this may pose a significant financial incentive for physicians to over-prescribe. This study, therefore, explored the effect of on-site pharmacies on antibiotic dispensing in a social health insurance system. ...

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 ...