How East and West Germans finance their lifecycle consumption: evidence from NTA

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The Economic Lifecycle by Gender – Results Combining Monetary and Time Use Estimates

In recent decades, we have witnessed profound changes in family size and structure. While marriage rates and the number of children have declined in most industrialised countries, female labour force participation rates have risen significantly. However, while the working hours and wages of women have increased, we continue to observe huge discrepancies in market production by gender in Germany. This results in considerable differences in the economic lifecycle of men and women. The differences diminish if we take unpaid household production, consumption, and caring into account. We find that, after applying this comprehensive approach, the female lifecycle resembles male consumption, income, and transfer patterns. These findings are interesting in the light of future demographic changes, as they suggest that the explicit policy aim of increasing female labour force participation could place constraints on the currently observed division of labour in the market and in the household.In recent decades, we have witnessed profound changes in family size and structure. While marriage rates and the number of children have declined in most industrialised countries, female labour force participation rates have risen significantly. However, while the working hours and wages of women have increased, we continue to observe huge discrepancies in market production by gender in Germany. This results in considerable differences in the economic lifecycle of men and women. The differences diminish if we take unpaid household production, consumption, and caring into account. We find that, after applying this comprehensive approach, the female lifecycle resembles male consumption, income, and transfer patterns. These findings are interesting in the light of future demographic changes, as they suggest that the explicit policy aim of increasing female labour force participation could place constraints on the currently observed division of labour in the market and in the household

Intergenerational resource sharing and mortality in a global perspective

Resource sharing has always been a central component of human sociality. Children require heavy investments in human capital; during working years, help is needed due to illness, disability, or bad luck. While hunter-gatherer elders assisted their descendants, more recently, elderly withdraw from work and require assistance as well. Willingness to share has been critically important for our past evolutionary success and our present daily lives. Here, we document a strong linear relationship between the public and private sharing generosity of a society and the average length of life of its members. Our findings from 34 countries on six continents suggest that survival is higher in societies that provide more support and care for one another. We suggest that this support reduces mortality by meeting urgent material needs, but also that sharing generosity may reflect the strength of social connectedness, which itself benefits human health and wellbeing and indirectly raises survival

The economic lifecycle by gender - results combining monetary and time use estimates

"In recent decades, we have witnessed profound changes in family size and structure. While marriage rates and the number of children have declined in most industrialized countries, female labor force participation rates have risen significantly. However, while the working hours and wages of women have increased, we continue to observe huge discrepancies in market production by gender. This picture changes if we take unpaid household production, consumption, and caring into account. We find that, after applying this inclusive approach, the female lifecyle resembles male consumption, income, and transfer patterns. These findings have strong implications for future demographic change, as they suggest that the explicit policy aim of increasing female labor force participation could place constraints on the currently observed division of labor in the market and in the household." (author's abstract

The fiscal impact of population ageing in Germany:an unequal challenge for different levels of government

Population ageing is a global phenomenon, and Western European welfare states, in particular, are ageing at a rapid pace. Still, not all states or even regions within a given country are ageing in the same way, and we find significant differences among them. While some metropolitan areas are attracting younger inhabitants and are even growing, peripheral areas are suffering from out-migration and rapid ageing. In federal countries, these demographic differences create challenges across levels of government, and the variation in the cost and revenue structures of these levels should be taken into account. There are also considerable differences among states or municipalities due to diverging demographic developments. In this chapter, we present age profiles of government revenues and expenditures per capita for the federal, state, and local governments, and use the population projections for the different German Länder to examine how demographic changes affect budget gaps at each level of government. The results show the long-term fiscal implications caused by different ageing patterns. As out-migration reinforces economic fortunes, a compensatory factor in the fiscal equalisation scheme among the Länder is discussed

Income sources and intergenerational transfers in different regimes: The case of East Germany's transformation

Background: Intergenerational transfers are a fundamental feature of the economic life cycle. In western welfare states, private transfers typically flow from members of the older generations to their children and grandchildren, especially when in need, while public transfers tend to flow in the opposite direction. Objective: This paper shows the changes in the relative importance of various income sources, such as labor income and public and private transfers, among eastern Germans of different age groups from 1988 to 2008. This period of rapid societal transition represents a quasinatural experiment setting that allows us to study how different political regimes shape the patterns of income and transfers among different age groups. Methods: To study the income and transfer patterns among different age groups, we use the National Transfer Accounts method and rarely used data sources, such as the income survey of blue-collar and white-collar worker households conducted in 1988 in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Results: We find that there was a shift in income and transfer patterns immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall. We show that the elderly gained the most from reunification, and transferred an increasing fraction of their income to their children and grandchildren

Intergenerational resource sharing and mortality in a global perspective.

Resource sharing has always been a central component of human sociality. Children require heavy investments in human capital; during working years, help is needed due to illness, disability, or bad luck. While hunter-gatherer elders assisted their descendants, more recently, elderly withdraw from work and require assistance as well. Willingness to share has been critically important for our past evolutionary success and our present daily lives. Here, we document a strong linear relationship between the public and private sharing generosity of a society and the average length of life of its members. Our findings from 34 countries on six continents suggest that survival is higher in societies that provide more support and care for one another. We suggest that this support reduces mortality by meeting urgent material needs, but also that sharing generosity may reflect the strength of social connectedness, which itself benefits human health and wellbeing and indirectly raises survival