While many previous studies on temporary work have found disadvantages for temporary workers as compared to workers with a permanent contract, this study compares temporary work to the alternative of unemployment. Specifically, this paper investigates the potential integrative power of taking up...

We examine to what extent pathways to statutory retirement other than employment are associated with adverse health conditions as measured by increased cause-specific mortality risk during retirement. To do so, we estimate a dependent competing risks model using Dutch administrative data. We...

This paper relates an individual's social capital and the length of unemployment spells of the very same individual. For this purpose, we analyze several facets of an agent's social activities as determinants of her social capital. Social activities lead to social interactions within...

Both health and income inequalities have been shown to be much greater in Britain than in Germany. One of the main reasons seems to be the difference in the relative position of the retired, who, in Britain, are much more concentrated in the lower income groups. Inequality analysis reveals that...

In this project we study joint retirement of couples in Europe. We characterize various empirical regularities and use a model for simultaneous duration variables developed in Honor e and de Paula (2014). Whereas conventionally used duration models cannot account for joint retirement, our model...

This paper analyzes the impact on fertility of changes in national expenditure for family allowances, maternity and parental leave benefits, and childcare subsidies. To do so, I estimate a model for the timing of births using individual-level data from 16 Western European countries supplemented...

Unemployment insurance recipients in the Netherlands were for a long time exempted from the requirement to actively search for a job when they reached the age of 57.5. We study how this exemption affected the job finding rates of the recipients involved. We find evidence that the job finding...

We use a recent policy change in the Netherlands to study how changes in search requirements for the older unemployed affect their transition rates to employment, early retirement and sickness/disability benefits. The reform, becoming effective on January 1st 2004, requires the elderly to...

Are there negative health effects from losing the job? We analyze the causal effect of job displacement on diabetes incidence and prevalence. Type 2 diabetes is an illness that is directly affected by lifestyle factors and psychosocial stress, and with severe sideeffects deteriorating the...

Posner (1995) proposes the redistribution of health spending from old women to old men to equalize life expectancy. His argument is based on the assumption that the woman’s utility is higher if her husband is alive. Using self-reported satisfaction measures from a long-running German panel...