Jože Sambt

Distribution of personal income tax changes in Slovenia

Slovenia belongs to a group of EU member states that have reduced their personal income tax burden during the late-2000s financial and economic crisis. The latest changes, introduced in the personal income tax system during the last two years, have primarily reduced the tax burden on low-income taxpayers. However, this was only the last step in a series of personal income tax reforms since 2004 that have reduced the average tax burden on all taxpayers. Using an exclusive database of taxpayers and utilising a general-equilibrium modelling platform, an approach that is unfortunately still rare in Central and Eastern European countries, we assess the consequences of these reforms at both the micro and the macro level. From a macroeconomic point of view, the initial positive consequences of higher private consumption and welfare are declining over time owing to the increased budget deficit and reduced investment.

Regional development assessment: A structural equation approach

We propose a multivariate statistical framework for regional development assessment based on structural equation modelling with latent variables and show how such methods can be combined with non-parametric classification methods such as cluster analysis to obtain development grouping of territorial units. This approach is advantageous over the current approaches in the literature in that it takes account of distributional issues such as departures from normality in turn enabling application of more powerful inferential techniques; it enables modelling of structural relationships among latent development dimensions and subsequently formal statistical testing of model specification and testing of various hypothesis on the estimated parameters; it allows for complex structure of the factor loadings in the measurement models for the latent variables which can also be formally tested in the confirmatory framework; and enables computation of latent variable scores that take into account structural or causal relationships among latent variables and complex structure of the factor loadings in the measurement models. We apply these methods to regional development classification of Slovenia and Croatia.

The gender gap in economic dependency over the life cycle: some theoretical and practical considerations

Abstract Economic analysis usually defines the period of dependency with arbitrary age limits that are independent of country, year, gender and other factors. This paper uses the National Transfer Accounts methodology, which defines dependency by the life cycle periods in which individuals’ consumption exceeds their labour income. The novelty of the paper is the decomposition of the results by gender, as well as the retrospective pre- and post-crisis analysis for the 2000–2012 period. Slovenia, an ageing European society with a small, open economy, is used as a showcase. The findings indicate that, in Slovenia in 2012, women were able to finance their consumption through their labour income for 29.0 years, compared to 35.9 years for men, with a significant decrease in the gender gap in economic dependency over time, from 7.9 years in 2000 to 6.9 in 2012. It would seem that the economic crisis interrupted the path to equal periods of economic dependency for both genders. However, overall, the gender gap tends to decrease, despite the economic crisis.

Longevity in Slovenia: Past and potential gains in life expectancy by age and causes of death

Abstract Introduction In Slovenia, longevity is increasing rapidly. From 1997 to 2014, life expectancy at birth increased by 7 and 5 years for men and women, respectively. This paper explores how this gain in life expectancy at birth can be attributed to reduced mortality from five major groups of causes of death by 5-year age groups. It also estimates potential future gains in life expectancy at birth. Methods The importance of the five major causes of death was analysed by cause-elimination life tables. The total elimination of individual causes of death and a partial hypothetical adjustment of mortality to Spanish levels were analysed, along with age and cause decomposition (Pollard). Results During the 1997–2014 period, the increase in life expectancy at birth was due to lower mortality from circulatory diseases (ages above 60, both genders), as well as from lower mortality from neoplasms (ages above 50 years) and external causes (between 20 and 50 years) for men. However, considering the potential future gains in life expectancy at birth, by far the strongest effect can be attributed to lower mortality due to circulatory diseases for both genders. If Spanish mortality rates were reached, life expectancy at birth would increase by more than 2 years, again mainly because of lower mortality from circulatory diseases in very old ages. Discussion and conclusions Life expectancy analyses can improve evidence-based decision-making and allocation of resources among different prevention programmes and measures for more effective disease management that can also reduce the economic burden of chronic diseases.

Incorporating household production into the National Transfer Accounts for Slovenia

Abstract The National Transfer Accounts (NTA) have recently been developed to measure economic flows across age groups. In this article, we extend the NTA for Slovenia by including the value of unpaid household production. Based on time-use data, we discover that people in Slovenia spent even more time on household production than on paid work, which emphasises the necessity of including household production in the NTA analysis. We find that there are large net transfers of household production flowing from adults to children, and to a lesser extent also to the elderly. We calculate unpaid production separately for both genders, and discover that females provide much more unpaid production and total productive work than males. In addition, they face a much more intensive ‘rush hour of life’ than males. We expect that similar patterns may be found in other post-communist countries where equalising labour force participation by gender was central to the communist agenda, but where no similar efforts were undertaken to equalise household work burdens.

Preferences Versus Actual Family Policy Measures

Attitudes and preferences regarding parental leave and child allowance arrangements are compared with actual schemes. The focus is on the length and mode of taking parental leave, as well as on the dependence of child allowance rates on family income, the age of the child and the number of children. The results have shown a weak correlation between the actual duration of parental leave in different countries and people’s evaluation of its sufficiency, which points to the importance of cultural norms, female employment patterns and equal {opportunities} for understanding people’s attitudes and expectations. No common pattern was found {regarding} the preferred mode of taking parental leave. The prevailing preference is towards child allowance dependent on income but independent of the age of the child. As concerns the dependence of child allowance on the age of the child, preferences strongly correlate with arrangements at the time of the national surveys. In general terms, child allowance as a social assistance policy measure is most commonly preferred, while an allowance which bears prevalent characteristics of a population policy measure is least commonly preferred.