This paper reviews how income-support systems affect labour force participation in the UK. The UK's approach to social insurance is basic security, with modest, typically flat-rate, benefits; insurance-based benefits are relatively unimportant. Compared with the EU, the UK has high employment...

This paper exploits variation resulting from a series of federal and state Medicaid expansions between 1979 and 2014 to estimate the effects of child's access to public health insurance on labor market outcomes of parents. The results imply that extended Medicaid eligibility of children leads to...

In 1998 the Swedish national sickness insurance policy changed to allow additional compensation from e.g. collective agreements after the 90th day of absence without a reduction of the public sickness benefit. We estimate the effects of this policy change on the duration of sickness absence for...

Sick workers in many countries receive sick pay during their illness- related absences from the workplace. In several countries, the social security system insures firms against their workers' sickness absences. However, this insurance may create moral hazard problems for firms, leading to the...

This paper explores the capability of the state to affect the individual's decision to work for free. For this purpose we combine individual-level data from the European and World Values Survey with macroeconomic and political variables for OECD member countries. Empirically we identify three...

This paper evaluates the impact of the 2007 expansion of the Bolsa Família programme to families with youths aged 16 to 17 years (Benefício Variável Jovem) on the time allocation of youths and on the labour supply of adults. The differences-in-difference estimator was used to compare...

We study the effect of family income and maternal hours worked on child development. Our instrumental variable analysis suggests different results for cognitive and behavioral development. An additional 1,000 USD in family income improves cognitive development by 4.4 percent of a standard...

This paper analyzes the relationship between work-promoting policies and child development. First, we provide new comprehensive evidence of the unintended consequences for child development of the Earned Income Tax Credit expansions during the 1990s in the United States. Second, our...

We study the effect of lower unearned income on labor supply. To identify the causal effect of an unexpected reduction in unearned income, we exploit a policy reform that lowered survivor pensions in Austria. Men widowed after the survivor pension reform received an approximately 34% lower...

We provide a novel interpretation of the estimated treatment effects from evaluations of parental leave reforms. Accounting for the counterfactual mode of care is crucial in the analysis of child outcomes and potential mediators. We evaluate a large and generous parental leave extension in...