On households and unemployment insurance

We study unemployment insurance in a framework where the main source of heterogeneity among agents is the type of household they live in: some agents live alone while others live with their spouses as a family. Our exercise is motivated by the fact that married individuals can rely on spousal income to smooth labor market shocks, while singles cannot. We extend a version of the standard incomplete‐markets model to include two‐agent households and calibrate it to the US economy with special emphasis on matching differences in labor market transitions across gender and marital status as well as aggregate wealth moments. Our central finding is that changes to the current unemployment insurance program are valued differently by married and single households. In particular, a more generous unemployment insurance reduces the welfare of married households significantly more than that of singles and vice versa. We show that this result is driven by the amount of self‐insurance existing in married households, and thus, we highlight the interplay between self‐ and government‐provided insurance and its implication for policy.

Job Polarization and the Declining Fortunes of the Young

This paper uses a life-cycle framework to document new stylized facts about the nexus between job polarization and earnings inequality. Using quarterly labor force data for the UK over the period 2000-2018, we find clear life-cycle profiles in the probability of being employed within each occupation type and wages earned therein. Cohort plots and econometric analysis suggest that labor market outcomes and prospects have gradually worsened for the young. These adverse trends are particularly significant for low-skill women: estimated cohort effects point to a fall in wages within each occupation as well as a lower propensity of being employed in abstract-task occupations. We also find evidence of general occupational downgrading in the UK, with more educated workers taking up fewer high-skill occupations than they did in the past. Our analysis informs the policy debate over appropriate measures needed to reduce skill mismatches and alleviate labor market transitions.

Institutional Reforms of 2006 and the Dramatic Rise in Old-Age Employment in Germany

The authors investigate whether a cut in unemployment benefit payout periods enacted in Germany in 2006 affected older workers’ labor market transitions. The authors use rich administrative data and exploit a difference-in-differences approach. During 2004–2007, using monthly observations, they compare a reference group of 40–44 year olds with constant benefit payout periods to older treatment groups with reduced payout durations. Compared to the reference group, those groups with reduced payout periods had lower job exit rates, higher rates of finding a job, higher propensity to remain employed, and lower propensity to remain unemployed. These patterns suggest that the reform may have contributed to the recent rise in old-age employment in Germany.

Life events and donor lapse in Denmark

BackgroundThe likelihood of donating blood changes over the life course, with life events shown to influence entry to and exit from the donor population. While these previous findings provide valuable insights for donor management, blood collection agencies need to be cautious about generalizing findings to other countries as blood donor behaviour is context-specific. To examine cross-country variations in donor behaviour, the repeatability of a previous Dutch study on life events and blood donor lapse is examined by using a sample of Danish donors.Study design and methodsRegister data from Statistics Denmark was linked to the Scandinavian Donations and Transfusions database (n = 152,887). Logistic regressions were conducted to examine the association between life events in 2009-2012 and blood donor lapse in 2013-2014.ResultsOf the total sample, 69,079 (45.2%) donors lapsed. Childbirth and losing a job increased the lapsing risk by 11% and 16%, respectively, while health-related events in the family (i.e., blood transfusion, disease and death) decreased the lapsing risk by 5%, 7% and 9%, respectively. ConclusionLife events are associated with donor lapse of Danish donors. These results are comparable to previous findings from the Netherlands (i.e., childbirth and labor market transitions increased lapsing risk; health-related events decreased lapsing risk), with two thirds of the associations being in the same direction. Differences between study results were mainly related to effect sizes and demographic compositions of the donor pools. We argue contextual factors to be of importance in blood donor studies.