Gema Zamarro

Retirement Effects on Health in Europe

What are the health impacts of retirement? As talk of raising retirement ages in pensions and social security schemes continues around the world, it is important to know both the costs and benefits for the individual, as well as the governments budgets. In this paper we use the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) dataset to address this question in a multi-country setting. We use country-specific early and full retirement ages as instruments for retirement behavior. These statutory retirement ages clearly induce retirement, but are not related to an individuals health. Exploiting the discontinuities in retirement behavior across countries, we find significant evidence that retirement has a health-preserving effect on overall general health. Our estimates indicate that retirement leads to a 35 percent decrease in the probability of reporting to be in fair, bad, or very bad health, and an almost one standard deviation improvement in the health index. While the self-reported health seems to be a temporary impact, the health index indicates there are long-lasting health differences.

Dimensions of Subjective Well-Being

AbstractnWe use two waves of a population based survey (the RAND American Life Panel) to investigate the relations between various evaluative and experienced well-being measures based on the English Longitudinal Study of Aging, the Gallup Wellbeing Index, and a 12-item hedonic well-being module of the Health and Retirement Study. In a randomized set-up we administered several versions of the survey with different response scales. Using factor analysis, we find that all evaluative measures load on the same factor, but the positive and negative experienced affect measures load on different factors. We find evidence of an effect of response scales on both the estimated number of underlying factors and their relations with demographics. We conclude that finer response scales allowing more nuanced answers offer more reliability. The relation of evaluative and experienced measures with demographics are very different; perhaps the most striking aspect is the lack of a consistent relation of experienced well-being measures with income, while evaluative well-being is strongly positively related with income.

Retirement patterns of couples in Europe

AbstractIn this paper we study the retirement patterns of couples in a multi-country setting using data from the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe. In particular we test whether women’s (men’s) transitions out of the labor force are directly related to the actual realization of their husbands’ (wives’) transition, using the institutional variation in country-specific early and full statutory retirement ages to instrument the latter. Exploiting the discontinuities in retirement behavior across countries, we find a significant joint retirement effect for women of 21 percentage points. For men, the estimated effect is insignificant. Our empirical strategy allows us to give a causal interpretation to the effect we estimate. In addition, this effect has important implications for policy analysis.JEL CodesJ26, D10, C21

Family Labor Participation and Child Care Decisions: The Role of Grannies

One of the most significant long term trends in the labor market in most OECD countries has been the increase in the proportion of working mothers. However, not all countries show the same pattern. Countries in Southern Europe (Italy, Greece and Spain) show an average participation rate of about 45% whereas the participation rates in Northern countries (Denmark, Sweden) are around 75%. The characteristics of child care systems also differ significantly across OECD countries. This along with the characteristics of the labor market may have led families to get the necessary social services in an alternative way, i.e. through grandmothers. This paper analyzes how and to what extent child care is provided by grandmothers and how this task is combined with paid work in 10 European countries. Moreover, it studies whether the child care provided by grandmothers is encouraging the labor participation of their sons and, especially, their daughters. For this aim, it uses a sample drawn from the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) which provides detailed information about grandmothers (the units of observation) as well as their offspring with children. The econometric model considered takes into account the simultaneity of labor market decisions and care-giving activities, while controlling for unobserved heterogeneity in care-giving decisions. Here it exploits the fact that, information about multiple offsprings with children is usually available for each grandmother. It finds a negative and very significant effect of participating in the labor market on the probability of taking care of the grandchildren on a regular basis. It also finds evidence that, for some countries, the child care provided by grandmothers has a positive effect on the labor participation of their daughters.

Accounting for heterogeneous returns in sequential schooling decisions

This paper presents a method for estimating returns to schooling that takes into account that returns may be heterogeneous among agents and that educational decisions are made sequentially. A sequential decision model is interesting because it explicitly considers that the level of education of each individual is the result of previous schooling choices and so, the variation of supply-side instruments over time will emerge as a source of identification of the desired parameters. A test for heterogeneity in returns from sequential schooling decisions is developed and expressions for Marginal Treatment Effects are obtained in this context. Returns are estimated and tested from cross-sectional data from a Spanish household survey that contains rich family background information and useful instruments. This data is stratified by level of education and so estimators are adapted to take this feature into account. Finally, this methodology is used to analyze possible effects of the 1970 reform of the Spanish education system.

Teacher Effectiveness in Urban High Schools

This research examines whether teacher licensure test scores and other teacher qualifications affect high school student achievement. The results are based on longitudinal student-level data from Los Angeles. The achievement analysis uses a value-added approach that adjusts for both student and teacher fixed effects. The results show little relationship between traditional measures of teacher quality (e.g., experience and education level) and student achievement in English Language Arts (ELA) or math. Similarly, teacher aptitude and subject-matter knowledge, as measured on state licensure tests, have no significant effects on student achievement. Achievement outcomes differ substantially from teacher to teacher, however, and the effects of a good ELA or math teacher spillover from one subject to the other.