This study examines an increase in the early retirement age from 60 to 63 for the group of older unemployed men in Germany. As consequence of this policy reform, the time to retirement is increased from the perspective of recently unemployed individuals and therefore serves as a source of...

Recent literature on long-term care looks at the substitutability of informal and professional home-based care arrangements. Other factors that influence the utilization of informal care instead of formal care have been ignored in conditional analyses so far. However, regressors that represent...

Of the many labour market Hartz IV reforms that have been implemented in Germany since 2005, the role of short-term unemployment insurance has not received much attention. In this paper we examine distributional effects of labour earnings and unemployment benefits using simulated increases in...

The elderly are the main beneficiaries of recent gains in life expectancy in the EU. Whether the additional life time is spent in good or in poor health will drastically influence the development of health care costs as morbidity status rather than age per se determines an individual’s need...

In Germany, informal home care is preferred to professional care services in the public discussion as well as in legal care regulations. However, they ascribe only minor importance to the opportunity costs care givers have to face. Therefore, this paper explores the influence home care has on...

Informal caregivers provide valuable services to elderly persons with long-term care needs, but the consequences of caregiving on caregivers are not yet fully understood. This paper illustrates the interrelation between caregiving and caregivers’ labour force participation, cognitive ability,...