Elisabetta Trevisan

The direct impact of maternity benefits on leave taking: Evidence from complete fertility histories.

Maternity leave policies have important effects on several labour market outcomes of women, and are specifically designed to reduce gender differences in the various dimensions of working life and to contrast the negative consequence of fertility decisions. By making use of a unique data set which contains complete work and fertility histories for different European countries, combined with features of maternity leave schemes across countries and over time, we look at the effect of maternity leave benefits on job interruptions after each successive childbirth. The main result of the paper is that maternity leave legislation in Europe effectively increases job protection and female labour market attachment: a more generous paid maternity leave increases the number of weeks employed but not at work, but reduces the number of weeks spent out of the labour market.

“I want to break free”. The role of working conditions on retirement expectations and decisions

Abstract We investigate the role of working conditions on the desire to retire as soon as possible and on the probability of transition from employment to either full or partial retirement, using different measures of work quality. We find that low work quality strongly correlates with the desire to retire as soon as possible of “young-old” workers. This might be explained by the deterioration of employer-employee match with age due to reduced incentives for firms to invest in training and work practises that enhance workability of their senior workers. When we move from intentions to decisions, the role of work quality is less clear-cut and it mainly plays a role in the transitions from employment to full retirement.

Maternity and Labour Market Outcome: Short and Long Term Effects

Retirement patterns, as well as continuity and length of work histories, are strongly influenced by the events over the life cycle. This is particularly true for women. Gender differences in work-careers and the role of women within the family usually lead to fewer pension rights and lower retirement income for women than for men. In particular, maternity is likely to be one of the major drivers of gender differences on life time economic outcomes such as labour force participation, differential productivity and wages and eventually retirement income.

Early Retirement and Financial Incentives: Differences Between High and Low Wage Earners

This paper investigates the impact of financial incentives on early retirement behaviour for high and low wage earners. Using a stylized life-cycle model, we derive hypotheses on the behaviour of the two types. We use administrative data and employ a linear random effects model to test the predictions. We exploit exogenous variation in the replacement rate over birth cohorts of workers who are eligible to a transitional early retirement scheme. The empirical results show that low wage earners are, as predicted by the model, more sensitive to financial incentives. This implies that low wage earners will experience a stronger incentive to continue working in an early retirement scheme with a low implicit tax rate.

Job Security and New Restrictive Permanent Contracts. Are Spanish Workers More Worried of Losing Their Job

This paper investigates the impact of the introduction of new restrictive permanent contracts on the perceived job security of the workers in Spain. The perceived job security is strongly influenced by the characteristics of individuals and their distribution within groups. Comparing heterogeneous groups could make the traditional DID estimator biased. To address this issue I combine the propensity score matching DID with a fixed effect estimator. The analysis is conducted using data from the ECHP Survey for Spain from 1995 to 2000. The result is that this reform has a positive impact only for one targeted group, i.e. the young workers and no effect for the others. Several robustness checks are performed.

The Impact of Acute Health Shocks on the Labour Supply of Older Workers: Evidence from Sixteen European Countries

We investigate the consequences of experiencing an acute health shock, namely the first onset of myocardial infarction, stroke or cancer, on the labour supply of older workers in Europe. Despite its policy relevance to social security sustainability, the question has not yet been empirically addressed in the European context. We combine data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing and the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe and cover sixteen European countries, representative of different institutional settings, in the years spanning from 2002 to 2013. The empirical strategy builds on the availability of an extremely rich set of health and labour market information as well as of panel data. To remove the potential confounding bias, a selection on observables strategy is adopted, while the longitudinal dimension of data allows controlling for time invariant unobservables. Implementation is based on a combination of stratification and propensity score matching methods. Results reveal that experiencing an acute health shock on average doubles the risk of an older worker leaving the labour market, and is accompanied by a deterioration in physical functioning and mental health, as well as by a reduction in perceived life expectancy. Men’s labour market response appears driven by the onset of impairment acting as a barrier to work. In in the case of women, preferences for leisure and financial constraints seem to play a prominent role. Heterogeneity in behavioural responses across countries – with the largest labour supply reductions observed in the Nordic and Eastern countries, and England – are suggestive of a relevant role played by social security generosity.

Economic downturns at the beginning and at the end of working life

Negative business cycle episodes can have important effects on individual labour market decisions. In the short-run, economic downturns can lead to real wage reductions and less employment opportunities for job seekers. Also, households can react to worsening labour market conditions taking irreversible decisions that can lead to long-lasting effects: weaker unemployed individuals can be discouraged and thus pull out of the labour force, older people can be induced to retire earlier. In this chapter, we investigate the different effects of recessions hitting individuals at the beginning and at the end of working life. Understanding how macro shocks affect the welfare of individuals is particularly important for active ageing. As shown in the literature (see Elwood 1982, Mroz & Savage 2006, Oreopulus et al. 2006) adverse macro episodes have “scarring effects” (permanent or at least persistent) on individual income and potentially on health (Brugiavini & Weber 2012, van den Berg & Lindeboom 2012), happiness and job satisfaction. Moreover, a thorough understanding of the degree of persistence of adverse macro shocks on income can shed light on the evolution of income inequalities over time (see Gottschalk & Moffit 1995, Moffit & Gottschalk 2002) and contribute to the design of more effective policies aimed at protecting individuals’ income and supporting labour market participation later in life. In our analysis, we combine the fourth wave of SHARE, which was conducted after the beginning of the “great recession”, with information from SHARELIFE,

The use of PC at work and job satisfaction

▸ There is a strong association between the use of PC at work (and PC literacy) and the overall job satisfaction and intended early retirement, particularly for white collar workers ▸ The analysis shows that individuals with high PC skills and having a job that requires the use of a computer are more satisfied with their jobs and less keen to retire early ▸ Over-skilled women (who have PC skills but do not need them for their jobs) are more satisfied with their jobs and less likely to desire to retire as soon as possible

Assessing the material deprivation of older Europeans

▸ An aggregate measure of material deprivation is defined by summarising in a single index the failures in the affordability of basic needs and the experience of financial difficulties ▸ Aggregation is carried out under alternative approaches ▸ Our results consistently show that material deprivation of older Europeans is lowest in Scandinavian countries and highest in Southern Europe, Slovenia and Estonia

Job Mobility and Skill Transferability - Some Evidences from Denmark and a Large Italian Region

This paper investigates the effect of job mobility and tenure on wage dynamics. In this respect, theory assesses that high job mobility and low tenure are associated to lower wage drop when workers experience a job change. We test this theory first comparing two labour market (i.e. Denmark and a large Italian region, Veneto) characterized by different job mobility and tenure, as a consequence of different level of EPL. Secondly, we perform a within Veneto analysis, comparing the different effects when workers are employed in small rather than big firms. Data drawn from the VWH (Veneto Workers History) and IDA (for Denmark) registered data, from 1987 to 2001, are used. In Denmark job mobility has a positive effect on wage increases, while built up on firm-specific human capital has a negative effect. In Veneto, instead, it appears that long tenure are more rewarding. Some evidences of positive impact of moving from job to job when the barriers are lower come from the analysis of the differences between small and big firms in Veneto.