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Economic Consequences of Political Persecution
We analyze the effects of persecution and labor market discrimination during the communist regime in the former Czechoslovakia using a representative life history sample from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. We find strong effects of persecution and dispossession on subsequent earnings, with most severe implications of job loss due to persecution on earnings in subsequent jobs and on career degradation. Accumulated long-term effects in the form of initial retirement pensions paid during the communist regime are even greater. These pension penalties disappear by 2006 largely as a result of compensation schemes implemented by democratic governments after 1989. We use unique administrative data on political rehabilitation and prosecution to instrument for the endogenous variables. Finally, we survey transitional justice theory and document reparations programs in other countries.
Socio-Economic Policy in Poland: A Year of Major Changes in Benefits, Taxes, and Pensions
2016 was the first full calendar year of the new Polish government elected to power in October 2015. The year marked a number of major changes legislated in the area of socio-economic policy some of which have already been implemented and others that will take effect in 2017. In this policy brief, we analyse the distributional consequences of changes in the direct tax and benefit system, and discuss the long-term implications of these policies in combination with the policy to reduce the statutory retirement age.
Shocked by therapy? Unemployment in the first years of the socio-economic transition in Poland and its long-term consequences
We examine long-term implications of unemployment for material conditions and wellbeing using the Polish sample from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Retrospective data from the SHARELIFE survey conducted in 2008/09 is used to reconstruct labour market experiences across the threshold of the socio-economic transformation from a centrally planned to a free market economy in Poland in the late 1980s and early 1990s. These individual experiences are matched with outcomes observed in the survey about twenty years later to examine their correlation with unemployment at the time of the transition. We find that becoming unemployed in the early 1990s correlates significantly with income, assets and a number of measures of wellbeing recorded in 2007 and 2012. Given the nature of labour market changes at the time of the transition, and an extensive set of controls we use in the estimation, we argue that the results can be given a causal interpretation. Losing a job between 1989-91 results in a reduction of total household income two decades later by over 30%, increases the probability of poor material conditions by 14 percentage points and has significant negative effects on overall life satisfaction and other measures of wellbeing.
And the Lights Went Out – Measuring the Economic Situation in Eastern Ukraine
This policy brief assesses the economic situation in the war-affected East of Ukraine. Given that official statistics are not available, we use changes in nighttime light intensity, measured by satellites, to estimate to what extent the war has destroyed the economy, and whether any recovery can be observed since the Minsk II agreement.
“Who gets to look nice and who gets to play? Effects of child gender on household expenditures”
We examine the relationship between a child’s gender and family expenditure using data from the Polish Household Budget Survey. Having a first-born daughter as compared with a first-born son increases the level of household expenditures on child and adult female clothing, and it reduces spending on games, toys and hobbies. This could be a reflection of a pure gender bias on behalf of the parents or a reflection of gender complementarities between parents’ and children’s expenditures. We find no robust evidence on gender differences in educational investment, measured by kindergarten expenditure. The analysed expenditure patterns suggest a so-far unexamined role of gender in child development. Parents in Poland seem to pay more attention to how girls look and favour boys with respect to activities and play, which could have consequences in adult life and contribute to sustaining gender inequalities and stereotypes.
Distributional consequences of tax and benefit policies in Poland: 2005-2014
We examine the dynamics of disposable incomes and their specific components in Poland between 2005 and 2014 using data from the Polish Household Budget Surveys. We focus in particular on changes in the distribution of earnings and pensions and examine why at the time of rapid economic growth which Poland experienced at the time income inequality has remained relatively stable. Fiscal reforms implemented during this period are analysed from the point of view of the changing distributional implications of the tax and benefit system. Finally, we decompose changes in inequality of disposable incomes to identify the role of tax and benefit policies and separate it from other factors affecting incomes at the time. We find that 44% of the 0.7pp reduction in the Gini coefficient between 2005-2014 can be associated with tax and benefit reforms.
25 miliardów złotych dla rodzin z dziećmi: projekt Rodzina 500+ i możliwości modyfikacji systemu wsparcia
Niniejszy Komentarz stanowi kontynuację analiz zmian w systemie finansowego wsparcia rodzin z dziećmi proponowanych w programie wyborczym Komitetu Wyborczego Prawo i Sprawiedliwość i debacie powyborczej przez rząd Beaty Szydło (Myck i in. 2015e, 2015f), a jednocześnie jest wkładem Centrum Analiz Ekonomicznych CenEA do dyskusji publicznej w ramach konsultacji społecznych dotyczących projektu ustawy o pomocy państwa w wychowywaniu dzieci (projekt ustawy z dnia 22 grudnia 2015 r.; tzw. program „Rodzina 500+”,). Przedstawione wyliczenia w pierwszej części Komentarza odnoszą się do głównych elementów debaty dotyczącej wprowadzenia programu Rodzina 500+. W drugiej części natomiast przedstawiono alternatywne podejście do organizacji wsparcia rodzin z dziećmi w formie Zintegrowanego Świadczenia Rodzinnego. Świadczenie to utrzymuje najważniejsze elementy propozycji rządowej, ale jednocześnie wprowadza szereg istotnych rozwiązań upraszczających i racjonalizujących funkcjonowanie systemu wsparcia rodzin z dziećmi w Polsce przy tym samym poziomie kosztów dla sektora finansów publicznych co projekt rządowy.
Estimating Labour Supply Response to the Introduction of the Family 500+ Programme
Please note: an updated version of the results presented in this Working Paper has been published as:
We use a discrete choice labour supply model (van Soest, 1995; Blundell et al., 2000) to estimate labour supply implications of a large scale reform of financial support for families with children in Poland, the so-called Family 500+ programme. The reform introduced universal regular payments of 500 PLN per month for each second and subsequent child in the family aged 0-17, supplemented with means-tested 500 PLN per month for the first child in low income households. As such, the programme significantly changed the balance of financial incentives to work among parents. We estimate that it will reduce labour supply among families with children by about 240,000 individuals, principally mothers in families with one or two children. The estimates suggest that labour supply effects will be felt most strongly in small towns and villages and will contribute substantially to the reduction of the proportion of couples in which both partners are working.
Examining Social Exclusion among the 50+ in Europe – Evidence from the Fifth Wave of the SHARE Survey
Though intuitive, the concept of social exclusion is complex and hard to measure. Recently, however, we have witnessed policymakers and international institutions increasingly pay attention to better understand material and social distress and to identify the means to improve a broadly defined standard of living. In this brief, we summarize some of the results and conclusions from a recently published First Results Book based on the latest data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). We discuss the approach adopted to measure material and social deprivation, and the subsequent identification of risk of social exclusion. We show that Europeans increasingly value the quality of their social life as they grow older and that factors, such as worsening health, unmet long-term care needs, loneliness or lack of social cohesion are important determinants of social exclusion among the 50+ population. If socio-economic policies are to respond effectively to the needs of older Europeans, then broader aspects of their lives need to be taken into account and public policy should go beyond simple targets of income-defined poverty.
Taxes and Benefits in the Polish Parliamentary Election Campaigns
The upcoming parliamentary elections in Poland, scheduled for the 25th of October 2015, have on the one hand stimulated debate on the record of the current coalition government, and on the other opened the debate on the nature of socio-economic policy to be conducted in the coming years. In this brief, we draw on two recent pre-election reports published by the Centre for Economic Analysis, CenEA. We discuss developments in tax and benefit policies under the coalition of the Civic Platform and the Polish People’s Party over the last eight years, as well as the pre-election pledges regarding tax and benefit policies to be implemented after the elections. We show a significant shift in policy priorities with respect to the distributional effect of the tax-benefit policies between the first (2007- 2011) and the second (2011-2015) term in office, towards more support for low-income families. We also argue that, judging by the presented electoral pledges, Polish voters face a difficult choice between the promises of the opposition parties, which seem too costly to be realistic, and an enigmatic tax overhaul reform proposed by the governing Civic Platform, which is supposed to substantially benefit nearly all working households at a low cost for the state budget, with details of the reform design, however, kept away from public scrutiny.