Germany introduced a new mandatory insurance for long-term care in 1995 as part of its social security system. It replaced a system based on meanstested social welfare. Benefits from the long-term care insurance are not means tested and depend on the required level of care. The insurance...

Parental leave and subsidized child care are prominent examples of family policies supporting the reconciliation of family life and labor market careers for mothers. In this paper, we combine different empirical strategies to evaluate the employment effects of these policies for mothers in...

In Germany, individuals in need of long-term care receive support through benefits of the long-term care insurance. A central goal of the insurance is to support informal care provided by family members. Care recipients can choose between benefits in kind (formal home care services) and benefits...

This paper extends previous research about the determinants of reservation wages by analysing the effect of progressive income taxation on the ratio between reservation and net market wages. Based on micro data for Germany (SOEP) we show that joint income taxation in Germany which discriminates...

The employment behavior of mothers is strongly influenced by labor market regulations and certain institutional arrangements, which both vary greatly across European countries. Using the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) 1994-2001 for Denmark, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom, which...

Early retirement options are usually targeted at employees at risk of not reaching their regular retirement age in employment. An important at‐risk group comprises employees who have worked in demanding jobs for many years. This group may be particularly negatively affected by the abolition of...

We evaluate the labor market and distributional effects of an increase in the early retirement age (ERA) from 60 to 63 for women. We use a regression discontinuity design which exploits the immediate increase in the ERA between women born in 1951 and 1952. The analysis is based on the German...

This paper shows that increasing the normal retirement age and introducing pension deductions for retirement before normal retirement age in Germany did not prolong employment of older men. The reason for this surprising result is that employers encouraged their employees to use the bridge...

Germany introduced a new mandatory insurance for long-term care in 1995 as part of its social security system. It replaced a system based on means tested social welfare. Benefits from the long-term care insurance are not means tested and depend on the required level of care. The insurance...

Informal care by close family members is the main pillar of most longterm care systems. However, due to demographic ageing the need for long-term care is expected to increase while the informal care potential is expected to decline. From a budgetary perspective, informal care is often viewed as...