Social protection systems are often still designed for the archetypical full-time dependent employee. Work patterns deviating from this model – be it self-employment or online "gig work" – can lead to gaps in social protection coverage. Globalisation and digitalisation are likely to...

The extent of the demographic changes in Europe is dramatic and will deeply affect future labor, financial and goods markets. The expected strain on public budgets and especially social security has already received prominent attention, but aging poses many other economic challenges that...

The extent to which households can self-insure and the government can help them to do so depends on the wage risk that they face and their family structure. We study wage risk in the UK and show that the persistence and riskiness of wages depends on one's age and position in the wage...

Disability rolls have escalated in developed nations over the last 40 years. The UK, however, stands out because the numbers on these benefits stopped rising when a welfare reform was introduced that integrated disability benefits with unemployment insurance (UI). This policy reform improved job...

We estimate a dynamic model of employment, human capital accumulation - including education, and savings for women in the UK, exploiting tax and benefit reforms, and use it to analyze the effects of welfare policy. We find substantial elasticities for labor supply and particularly for lone...

We exploit variation in National Insurance contributions (NICs) - the UK's system of social security contributions - and a large panel dataset to examine the effects of 35 years of employee and employer NICs reforms on labour cost (gross earnings plus employer NICs), hours of work and labour...

This paper estimates the effects on steady state retirement by men of changes in pension" plans and social security in the 1970's and 1980's. Work incentives associated with pension" coverage and plan characteristics are calculated primarily from the 1969-79 Retirement History" Study and the...

This paper analyzes the incentives provided by the Italian Social Security System (SS) to supply labor. Italy is an interesting example in this context as: (1) fertility rates are very low while life expectancy has improved dramatically over the past decades; (2) the SS Program is extremely...