This paper presents results from a randomized evaluation of a home visiting program for disadvantaged first time mothers and their families implemented in three German federal states. At the end of the first year of the program, children in home visited families perform significantly better than...

This paper investigates the role of early life adversity and home resources in terms of competence formation and school achievement based on data from an epidemiological cohort study following 364 children from birth to adolescence. Results indicate that organic and psychosocial risks present in...

This study analyzes the effect of education on the number of children, childlessness, and the timing of the first birth. We use exogenous variation from a mandatory reform to compulsory schooling in West Germany to deal with the endogeneity of schooling. In contrast to studies for other...

In Germany, due to special rules 15- to 24-year-old welfare recipients, registered with Public Employment Office, are highly targeted by mandatory activation policies. This paper investigates the effects of the special rules in terms of enhancing the (re-)employment probability, increasing...

In course of the ''Hartz IV'' reform implementation in January 2005, Germany has tightened unemployment benefit sanctions. In addition, the regulations with respect to job offer acceptance have been strengthened radically. As non-compliant behavior is supposed to entail benefit sanctions, we...

Bringing welfare recipients into jobs is a major goal of German labour market policy since a reform of the year 2005. Direct job creation providing participants with tem-porary subsidized jobs mainly in the non-profit sector plays an important role for achieving this goal. There are three...

This paper uses panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) to analyze welfare entry and exit among natives and immigrants after a substantial reform of the welfare system (``Hartz reform''). Using results from dynamic multinomial logit models, we calculate transition matrices between...

We study state dependence in the German welfare system and compare transition patterns before and after recent reforms of the welfare system (Hartz Reforms). Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we apply dynamic multinomial logit estimators and find that welfare transitions have...

In this paper, we provide a quantitative answer to the question what types of active labour market programmes (ALMPs) work for immigrants. From the existing literature, we identify 24 research papers estimating 79 short-run treatment effects of ALMPs on immigrants. We perform a meta-analysis of...

For instrumental-variable estimation using binary instruments, we offer simple methods to obtain policy-relevant insights beyond local average treatment effects. We demonstrate the methods by evaluating an element of choice introduced into active labour market policy in Germany by a reform in...