Who Cares About Stock Market Booms and Busts? Evidence from Data on Mental Health
In: IZA Discussion Paper No. 6956
6 Ergebnisse
Sortierung:
In: IZA Discussion Paper No. 6956
SSRN
In: Economica, Band 82, Heft 327, S. 399-419
ISSN: 1468-0335
Cyclical fluctuations—which affect both asset and labour markets—can have an ambiguous effect on retirement. We explore this empirically using data from the British Household Panel Survey, exploiting small area geographic identifiers to match local house prices, earnings and unemployment to respondents. We match stock prices via the date of interview. Our results show little evidence of any positive wealth effects despite large spatial and temporal variations in asset prices over the period analysed. We find more response to local labour market conditions—increases in unemployment are associated with earlier retirement, while increases in wages delay retirement.
In 1999 the UK government made major reforms to the system of child-contingent benefits, including the introduction of Working Families' Tax Credit and an increase in means-tested Income Support for families with children. Between 1999-2003 government spending per-child on these benefits rose by 50 per cent in real terms, a change that was unprecedented over a thirty year period. This paper examines whether there was a response in childbearing. To identify the effect of the reforms, we exploit the fact that the spending increases were targeted at low-income households and we use the (exogenously determined) education of the woman and her partner to define treatment and control groups. We argue that the reforms are most likely to have a positive fertility effect for women in couples and show that this is the case. We find that there was an increase in births (by around 15 per cent) among the group affected by the reforms.
BASE
In: Economic Inquiry, Band 53, Heft 1, S. 276-293
SSRN
In: IZA Discussion Paper No. 12104
SSRN
Working paper
In: Journal of economic behavior & organization, Band 222, S. 375-393
ISSN: 1879-1751, 0167-2681