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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.
Distributional Effects of the Child Tax Credit in Poland and Its Potential Reforms
The Child Tax Credit (CTC) in Poland now differs substantially in its generosity and distributional implications from the original policy proposals. While initially designed as an instrument addressed to low income working families, the tax credit was implemented without any upper earnings limit, and its generosity was substantially extended in 2007 implying an annual budgetary cost of about 0.5% of the GDP. The current design of the credit grants largest income gains in absolute terms to families in the upper half of the income distribution, while proportional gains are most significant for those in the middle of the income distribution. Households with children in the bottom 10% of the income distribution gain on average about 7.60 PLN per month, and those in the top 40% gain over a 100 PLN per month on average. The paper also analyses the possible effects of potential reforms of the CTC aimed at reducing its cost. The recently proposed eligibility limitation to families with three or more children would reduce the fiscal cost of the tax credit by 80-90%, while a simulated reduction of generosity of the credit by 50% would save in the state budget about 2.2 bn PLN per year. The latter policy would leave the incomes of families with children in the lowest deciles largely unchanged, and it would reduce the benefits from the credit to households in the upper half of the income distribution by about 50% on average.
Mommies’ girls get dresses, daddies’ boys get toys. Gender preferences in Poland and their implications.
We examine the relationship of child gender with family and economic outcomes using a large dataset from the Polish Household Budgets’ Survey (PHBS) for years 2003-2009. Apart from studying the effects of gender on family stability, fertility and mothers’ labor market outcomes, we take advantage of the PHBS’ detailed expenditure module to examine effects of gender on consumption patterns. We find that a first born daughter is significantly less likely to be living with her father compared to a first born son and that the probability of having the second child is negatively correlated with a first born daughter. Using the context of the collective model we provide interpretation of these results from the perspective of individual parental gender preferences. We also examine the potential effects of sample selection bias which may affect the results and may be important for other findings in the literature. Labor supply of mothers and overall child-related consumption is not affected by gender of the first child, but the pattern of expenditure significantly varies between those with first born sons and first born daughters. One possible interpretation of the findings is that Polish fathers have preferences for sons and Polish mothers have preferences for daughters. Expenditure patterns suggest potential early determination of gender roles – mommies’ girls get dresses and daddies’ boys get toys.