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Financial support for families with children in Poland in 2013 (PL)
The Report presents analysis of the most important elements of financial support for families with children in Poland in 2013: family benefits and tax preferences available for parents. We analyse values of support for specific stylised families and using data from the Polish Household Budget Survey from 2010. The analysis uses the SIMPL microsimulation model.
Financial incentives to work in the context of a complex reform package and growing wages: the Polish experience 2005-2011
We examine the consequences of a tax and benefit reform package on work incentives as implied by changes in tax and replacement rates. For this purpose we focus on policy reforms implemented in Poland between 2005 and 2011 which included a number of significant changes in the tax and benefit system. While marginal and participation tax rates in the majority of analyzed cases fall as a result of the reforms, the conclusions from looking at replacement rates for the population eligible for means tested benefits are generally different. These suggest that despite significant tax giveaways incentives on the labor market weakened as a result of the reform package for families with children and for those eligible to safety net benefits. For the majority of analyzed scenarios work incentives improved over the years despite the negative effect of the reforms only due to significant real wage growth. For a significant number of analyzed cases we find conflicting conclusions on the effect of reforms on financial incentives to work using the PTRs and RRs. Given the different nature of these measures this is not necessarily surprising, but serves as a note of caution on the use of each of them independently, in particular with reference to complex reform packages.
For some mothers more than others: how children matter for labour market outcomes when both fertility and female employment are low
We estimate the causal relationship between family size and labour market outcomes for families in low fertility and low female employment regime. Family size is instrumented using twinning and gender composition of the first two children. Among families with at least one child we identify the average causal effect of an additional child on mother’s employment to be -7.1 percentage points. However, we find no effect of additional children on female employment among families with two or more kids. Heterogeneity analysis suggests no causal effects of fertility on female employment among mothers with less than college education and older mothers (born before 1978). Furthermore, we find evidence for the interaction of family size with maternal education and age. An unintuitive feature of our finding is that we identify a positive bias of OLS estimates for highly educated mothers and for mothers born after 1977.
Family and labor market choices – requirements to guide effective evidence-based policy
Microsimulation methods and models of labor market decisions have attracted a lot of attention as an approach to the assessment of consequences of family related policies in the area of labor market and fertility. We set these models in the context of relevant demographic theories and present them from the point of view of their potential as a tool to guide effective policy making with the aim to reconcile the objectives of increasing female participation and fertility and reducing poverty levels among families with children.
The determinants of teacher mobility in Sweden
This paper examines the teacher mobility using matched employee-employer panel data from Swedish lower and upper secondary schools. The unique Swedish institutional setup with a growing private sector and individually negotiated wages is ideal to analyze teacher turnover in an environment that economists typically argue for. I find statistically significant and robust negative correlations between mobility and earnings as well as wages. Unlike in the previous research, I do not find robust evidence that share of minorities raise turnover, however, upper secondary and private school teachers are significantly affected. Importantly though, even the discouraged teachers rather change schools than leave teaching. Furthermore, the private sector experiences higher teacher turnover and these institutions have particular problems with retaining science teachers and employing full time faculty.
Distributional effect of tax and benefit reforms introduced from 2006-2011 (PL)
A series of tax and benefit reforms directly affecting household incomes have been introduced in Poland in the years 2006-2011. Taking advantage of the microsimulation model SIMPL we demonstrate that the entire package of reforms increased household incomes by from 1.7% to 2.2% of the GDP depending on the assumed incidence of reductions of employers’ social security contributions. With legislated incidence of SSCs incomes of 8.2% of households grew by more than 10%. Assigning entire reductions in employers’ SSCs to employees, incomes of as many as 16.7% of households grow by at least 10% as a result of the changes. At the same time however, about 8% of households experienced falling incomes, mainly as a result of freezing of the nominal parameter values of the tax and benefit system. We demonstrate that the proportional gains over the period have been distributed fairly equally by decile groups. The package of reforms introduced from 2006-2011 increased the value of the Gini coefficient by 0,46 percentage points.
Job mobility among high skilled and low skilled teachers in Sweden
This paper examines the teacher mobility using matched employee-employer panel data from Swedish lower and upper secondary schools. The core focus is on the teacher quality and its interaction with Swedish institutional setup, which closely resembles what economists usually argue for. In addition to standard quality measures I use a unique dataset containing the population-wide information on cognitive and non-cognitive assessments of males born 1951 or later. The results do not support the common view that schools, in particular these serving disadvantaged students, experience higher turnover of high quality teachers. In fact, both high cognitive and non-cognitive skills teachers are less likely to change employers. The estimates also suggest that teacher mobility decisions can be influenced through changes in monetary compensations and type of employment. Finally, high skilled teachers do not leave the profession, which suggests that the drop in teacher quality should be ascribed to the quality of new entrants.
Dynamics in Transitory and Permanent Variation of Wages in Germany
We employ covariance structure models to decompose the cross-sectional variance of male wages in Germany into its permanent and transitory parts. We find that the steep growth of cross-sectional inequality during the early 2000s is predominantly driven by transitory factors.
Polish Pre-Election Polls Seem Unmoved by Electoral Giveaways
As in every election, numerous electoral pledges have been made prior to the election that will take place in Poland on the 9th of October. It seems however, that support for different parties has remained largely unaffected by the scale of the giveaways.
Incomes of Polish Households in the Context of 2005-2011 Tax and Benefit Reforms: A Pre-Election Analysis
On October 9, Polish voters will decide who will form the new government. In an analysis of tax and benefit reforms introduced over the last two terms of Parliament, the independent Centre for Economic Analysis, CenEA, examines who gained and who lost on the implemented changes. The reforms that have been implemented since 2006 include significant tax reductions and important changes to family benefits, as well as a recent increase in the VAT. In the context of declarations made in earlier electoral campaigns, the actually implemented economic policies introduced, offer little guidance to the voters regarding the reliability of promises made during this current campaign.