This paper examines the relationship between the family and work histories of olderwomen in the UK and their individual incomes in later life, using retrospective datafrom the first fifteen waves of the British Household Panel Survey. The associationsbetween women’s family histories and their...

We estimate the magnitude of social interaction effects in disability pension participation amongolder workers in Norway. The problem of omitted variable bias is addressed using neighbors’exposure to plant downsizing events as an instrument for the disability entry rate among one’spreviously...

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...

This paper carries out a critical reappraisal of the two contending theories purporting to explain long-run government spending: Wagner's Law and different variants of the ratchet effect. We analyze data spanning from the early 19th century until the present day in Sweden and the United Kingdom....

There is a strong intergenerational correlation in welfare participation, but this does not imply that parental welfare receipt induces child receipt. While there are a few quasi-experimental studies that provide estimates of the causal effect of parental welfare participation for children from...

Basic income advocates see a universal income grant, no questions asked, as bringing many potential benefits, not in the least as an ironclad protection against poverty, if set high enough. It is hard to know with any certainty what a world with a sizeable basic income would look like but we can...

Over the years, the Belgian social security system has undergone substantial reform with a prime focus on increasing older worker labor force participation. The paper explores the effect of past reforms on inequality in old age. We distinguish two separate effects: The mechanical effect...

We investigate behavioral responses to the generosity of Disability Insurance (DI) within the context of work compatibility. Exploiting an institutional discontinuity leading to exogenous variation in replacement rates, we use rich administrative data on the work and health histories of Italian...

The design of pension schemes is crucial in determining savings behavior. The impact of pension schemes on saving rates across countries remains to be an intriguing empirical question considering the complicated nature of the relationship between saving patterns and pension wealth. This paper...

This paper quantifies the effect of Poland's 1999 pension reform on the inequality of future pension benefits. The reform increases inequality, both in the upper and lower parts of the distribution. The estimates, based on the 2012 Polish Household Budget Survey, show that the Gini coefficient...