We investigate the unemployment pathway to retirement in Germany and study the causal effects of two early retirement reforms. Reform 1 (NRA) increased normal retirement age stepwise from 60 to 65. Simultaneously, it became possible to use early retirement with benefit discounts. Reform 2 (ERA)...

This paper examines a broad set of short- and long-term impacts of Individual Placement and Support (IPS) for disability benefit recipients with severe mental disabilities. IPS is a specific intervention that first aims to place an individual in employment and subsequently trains the worker on...

We examine the multigenerational impacts of a nationwide social pension program in China, the New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS). NRPS was rolled out in full scale since 2012, and rural enrollees over age 60 are eligible to receive a minimum of 70 CNY non-contributory monthly pension. We leverage...

We study the effect of the minimum wage on the employment outcomes and Social Security claiming of older US workers from 1983 to 2016. The probability of work at or near the minimum wage increases substantially near retirement, and previous researchers and policies suggest that older workers may...

This paper makes use of the most recent social pension reform in rural China to examine whether receipt of the pension payment equips adult children of pensioners to migrate. Employing a regression discontinuity (hereafter RD) design to a primary longitudinal survey, this paper overcomes...

Variation in assessor stringency in awarding benefits leaves applicants exposed to uninsured risk that could be systematic if discretion were exercised selectively. We test for this using administrative data on applications to the Dutch disability insurance program. We find that discretion is...

This paper uses a rich Norwegian dataset to re-examine the causal relationship between family income and child outcomes. Motivated by theoretical predictions and OLS results that suggest a nonlinear relationship, we depart from previous studies in allowing the marginal effects on children’s...

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, this paper analyses the effects of spending part of adolescents' leisure time on playing music or doing sports, or both. We find that while playing music fosters educational outcomes compared to doing sports, particularly so for girls and children...

This paper evaluates the effect of a voucher award system for assignment into vocational training on the employment outcomes of unemployed voucher recipients in Germany, along with the causal mechanisms through which it operates. It assesses the direct effect of voucher assignment net of actual...

Food security and obesity represent two of the most significant public health issues. However, little is known about how these issues are intertwined. Here, we assess the causal relationship between food security during early childhood and relatively long-run measures of child health....