Child-related pension benefits and maternal employment, old-age savings and retirement. Essays in social policy.

Autor/in	Thiemann, Andreas
Titel	Child-related pension benefits and maternal employment, old-age savings and retirement. Essays in social policy.
Quelle	Berlin: Freie Universität Berlin (2016), iii, 214 S. PDF als Volltext kostenfreie Datei (1); PDF als Volltext kostenfreie Datei (2) Link als defekt meldenVerfügbarkeit Dissertation, Freie Universität Berlin, 2016.
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	online; Monographie
URN	urn:nbn:de:kobv:188-fudissthesis000000102166-5
Schlagwörter	Distribution; Gesundheit; Altersvorsorge; Beschäftigung; Dissertation
Abstract	This cumulative dissertation consists of four papers. The first three papers investigate the impact of child-care pension benefits (Kindererziehungszeiten) in the German pension system on maternal employment, old-age savings and retirement. The fourth paper focuses on the top tail of the wealth distribution. The first paper "Pension wealth and maternal employment: Evidence from a reform of the German child care pension benefit" uses administrative data to investigate how a change in pension wealth affects a mother´s employment decision after child birth. It exploits the extension of the child care pension benefit in 1992 as a natural experiment in a regression discontinuity design to estimate short- and medium-run employment effects. In comparison to most family benefits, the child care pension benefit is accumulated upon child birth but only becomes effective on the verge of retirement. Hence, the employment response depends on how a mother discounts future pension benefits. The results suggest that the change in pension wealth does not affect maternal employment, which is not in line with a forward looking rational behavior. The second paper "How does maternal pension wealth affect family old-age savings in Germany" examines how families adjust their private old-age savings in response to a change in individual pension wealth. It exploits two expansions of the child care pension benefit, in 1992 and in 1999, as natural experiments. The empirical analysis is based on three waves of the Survey of Income and Expenditure (EVS): 1998, 2003 and 2008. All results indicate that families do not adjust their private old-age savings in response to the increase in their pension wealth. The third paper "Pension wealth and the retirement decision of mothers" investigates how an increase in pension wealth affects maternal retirement decisions using German administrative data. First, it estimates a simple version of the option value model that describes the relationship between pension wealth and individual retirement, exploiting exogenous variation in pension wealth by the pension reforms in 1992 and in 1996. Then, it simulates the impact of a hypothetical pension reform on a mother´s retirement decision. The policy scenario increases individual pension wealth proportional to a mother´s number of children, therefore mimicking the ´child care pension benefits´ (Kindererziehungszeiten). The results suggest that mothers do not substantially choose an earlier retirement as a consequence of increased pension entitlements. The fourth paper "The Top Tail of the Wealth Distribution in Germany, France, Spain, and Greece" analyzes the top tail of the wealth distribution based on the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS). Since top wealth is likely to be underrepresented in household surveys it integrates the big fortunes from rich lists, estimates a Pareto distribution, and imputes the missing rich. Instead of the Forbes list it mainly relies on national rich lists since they represent a broader base for the big fortunes. As a result, the top percentile share of household wealth in Germany jumps up from 24 percent in the HFCS alone to 33 percent after top wealth imputation. For France and Spain it finds only a small effect of the imputation since rich households are better captured in the survey. The results for Greece are ambiguous since the data do not show clear concentration patterns. (Orig.).
Erfasst von	Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, Frankfurt am Main
Update	2017/1