Doris Oberdabernig

Decomposing Welfare Wedges: An Analysis of Welfare Dependence of Immigrants and Natives in Europe

We study differences in contributory and non-contributory welfare benefit receipt between immigrants and natives for 16 EU countries. In contrast to previous studies we analyse differences in benefit levels allowing for potentially different takeup rates between immigrants and natives and use Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions to discuss residual welfare dependence. Results point to substantial heterogeneity in welfare dependence between countries when not controlling for observed characteristics of immigrants and natives. This is primarily due to different selection into benefits between immigrants and natives and differences in their characteristics (mainly income, personal, and household characteristics). Once this is controlled for, immigrants participate at most equally often in both types of benefits as natives and usually also receive lower or comparable benefit levels.

Migration in an ageing Europe: What are the challenges?

We use new migration modelling and projection techniques in order to quantify the effect of migration in the context of ageing societies in Europe over the forthcoming decades. Using new empirical results, data and projections of migration flows developed in the framework of the WWWforEUROPE project, we inform the policy discussion concerning the role of demographic change, inequality dynamics, labour market integration of migrants and the sustainability of public finances in the continent.

Democracy, Geography and Model Uncertainty

We analyse the nature of robust determinants of differences in democracy levels across countries taking explicitly into account uncertainty in the choice of covariates and spatial spillovers. We make use of recent developments in Bayesian model averaging to assess the effect of a large number of potential factors affecting democratisation processes and account for several specifications of spatial linkages. Our results indicate that spatial spillovers are present in the data even after controlling for a large number of geographical covariates. Addressing the determinants of democracy without modelling such spillovers may lead to flawed inference about the nature of the determinants of democratisation processes. In particular, our results emphasise the role played by Muslim religion, population size, trade volumes, English language, natural resource rents, GDP per capita, being a MENA country and the incidence of armed conflicts as factors affecting democracy robustly.

Catching up? The educational mobility of migrants’ and natives’ children in Europe

ABSTRACT Migrants into European countries are often less educated than European natives. We analyse whether migrants’ children are more or less likely than natives’ children to achieve upward educational mobility across generations, and study differences in the factors, which contribute to differences in mobility for the two groups. We find that migrants’ descendants are more often upwardly mobile (and less often downwardly mobile) than their native peers in the majority of countries studied, and show that the main factor contributing to these patterns is the education level of parents. Although a lower parental education means that their children are less likely to access the same amount of human, social and financial capital as children of more highly educated parents, migrants’ descendants over the last two generations were able to make significant progress in reducing education gaps with natives.

The methane footprint of nations: Evidence from global panel data

We develop a unique global dataset on methane inventories derived from production, final production, and consumption for 1997 - 2011. Anthropogenic emissions are quantitatively important for global warming and have increased about 25% from 1997 - 2011. We analyze the drivers of methane emissions per capita, both economy-wide and across sectors, paying attention to the form of the relation between emissions and growth. There is relative decoupling between methane and growth, and the relationship is non-linear. The effect of economic growth on emissions is likely to worsen when moving from lower to middle levels of development, and only improves as countries reach high levels of income. There is substantial heterogeneity in this relationship at a sectoral level, and sectoral transformation accompanying economic growth also leads to increased emissions. Together, relative decoupling and sectoral diversity challenge the design and implementation of environmental instruments to mitigate methane emissions. Methane also poses challenges to the overall management of greenhouse gas levels.

The labor content of exports database

This paper develops a novel methodology to measure the quantity of jobs and value of wages embodied in exports for a large number of countries and sectors for intermittent years between 1995 and 2011. The resulting Labor Content of Exports database allows the examination of the direct contribution of labor to exports as well as the indirect contribution via other sectors of the economy for skilled and unskilled labor. The analysis of the new data sets documents several new findings. First, the global share of labor value added in exports has been declining globally since 1995, but it has increased in low-income countries. Second, in line with the standard Hecksher-Ohlin trade model, the composition of labor directly contained in exports is skewed toward skilled labor in high-income countries relative to developing countries. However, that is not the case for the indirect labor content of exports. Third, manufacturing exports are a key source of labor demand in other sectors, especially in middle- and low-income countries. And the majority of the indirect demand for labor spurred by exports is in services sectors, whose workers are the largest beneficiaries of exporting activities globally. Fourth, differences in the labor value added in exports share across developing countries appears to be driven more by differences in the composition of exports rather than in sector labor intensities. Finally, average wages typically increase rapidly enough with the process of economic development to more than compensate the loss in jobs per unit of exports. The paper also includes the necessary information to build the Labor Content of Exports database from the original raw data, including stata do-files and matlab files, as well as descriptions of the variables in the data set.