Labour Market Exit and Social Stratification in Western Europe: The Effects of Social Class and Gender on the Timing of Retirement

This paper analyses social variability in retirement timing. It draws on a social stratification perspective, which arguably provides a richer theoretical framework than one-dimensional pull or push approaches. The first objective is to establish how class membership influences both the timing of retirement as well as the degree of accessibility to different pathways to retirement. The second objective is to elucidate the interplay of gender and class in work-exit dynamics. The empirical analysis uses data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) to estimate a series of event-history models for a sample of respondents from 11 Western European countries. The results show that social class exerts a strong influence on retirement processes, over and beyond other socio-economic characteristics, and especially on the risk of involuntary retirement. Employment constraints (push factors) and economic incentives (pull factors) affect workers in different class positions in markedly different ways. While there exist significant gender differences in retirement behaviour, these appear to be largely driven by women’s lower class positions. The article concludes that ill health and unemployment remain heavy obstacles to prolonging working life in contemporary Western Europe

The long-term consequences of parental divorce for children's educational attainment

Background: In this paper we study the long-term consequences of parental divorce in a comparative perspective. Special attention is paid to the heterogeneity of the consequences of divorce for children's educational attainment by parental education. Objective: The study attempts to establish whether the parental breakup penalty for tertiary education attainment varies by socioeconomic background, and whether it depends on the societal context. Methods: Data are drawn from the first wave of the Generations and Gender Survey, covering 14 countries. We estimate multi-level random-slope models for the completion of tertiary education. Results: The results show that parental divorce is negatively associated with children's tertiary education attainment. Across the 14 countries considered in this study, children of separated parents have a probability of achieving a university degree that is on average seven percentage points lower than that of children from intact families. The breakup penalty is stronger for children of highly educated parents, and is independent of the degree of diffusion of divorce. In countries with early selection into educational tracks, divorce appears to have more negative consequences for the children of poorly educated mothers. Conclusions: For children in most countries, parental divorce is associated with a lower probability of attaining a university degree. The divorce penalty is larger for children with highly educated parents. This equalizing pattern is accentuated in countries with a comprehensive educational system. Comments: Future research on the heterogeneous consequences of parental divorce should addressthe issue of self-selection into divorce, which might lead to an overestimation of the negative effect of divorce on students with highly educated parents. It should also further investigate the micro mechanisms underlying the divorce penalty

Parenting practices and children's cognitive effort: a laboratory study

We examine the association between parenting practices (discipline and support) and children's cognitive effort. Cognitive effort is hard to measure; hence, little is known in general about effort dispositions, and in particular about the influence of parenting practices on effort. We present data from a study on almost 1,400 fifth grade students from Berlin and Madrid. Cognitive effort is measured with tests of executive function. The students do the tests under an unincentivised and incentivised condition. We study two effort-related outcomes: "effort direction" - the child's decision to voluntarily do a real-effort task &- and "effort intensity" - the child's performance on the task. Results indicate that both parental discipline and support are associated with effort direction and the presence of incentives moderates this association. However, only parental discipline is (weakly) associated with effort intensity. We conclude that parenting practices primarily influence deliberative rather than instinctual types of cognitive effort.This research has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 758600)

A model of indirect crowding

The introduction of material rewards has often been proposed to improve the participation of disadvantaged people in areas such as education, politics, and sustainability. But people differ in their intrinsic motivation to exert effort on a given task. And, as the literature on "crowding" effects emphasizes, introducing incentives can sometimes alter intrinsic motivation, or its association with effort. We introduce a distinction between "direct" crowding, which directly affects intrinsic motivation, and "indirect" crowding, which affects the relationship between intrinsic motivation and effort. The former is intriguing, but likely of limited generalizability. The latter, we argue, is of greater prevalence. We present a simple model of indirect crowding, building on extant cognitive and social scientific approaches. The model shows that if the marginal costs increase quickly (relative to the marginal benefits), then increasing material incentives leads to "indirect crowding out": individuals with low intrinsic motivation increase effort at a greater rate than highly motivated individuals. Conversely, if marginal costs increase slowly relative to marginal benefits, "indirect crowding in" occurs, with highly motivated individuals pulling away from lesser motivated ones. However, this result only holds if total benefit is the sum of intrinsic and extrinsic benefit. If intrinsic and extrinsic benefit are multiplicative, only crowding in can occur. The model demonstrates that introducing or increasing extrinsic rewards may inadvertently increase inequality, with implications for policy makers

Month of birth and cognitive effort: a laboratory study of the relative age effect among fifth graders

All around the world school entry cohorts are organized on an annual calendar, so that the age of students in the same cohort differs up to one year. It is a well-established finding that this age gap entails a consequential (dis)advantage for academic performance referred to as the relative age effect (RAE). This study contributes to a recent strand of research that has turned to investigate the RAE on non-academic outcomes such as personality traits. An experimental setup is used to assess the willingness to exert cognitive effort in a sample of 798 fifth grade students enrolled in the Spanish educational system, characterized by strict enrolment rules. After controlling for cognitive ability, we observe that older students outwork their youngest peers by two-fifths of a standard deviation, but only when rewards for performance are in place. Implications for sociological research on educational inequality and policy are discussed.This research has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 758600)

The Influence of Marital Status and Spousal Employment on Retirement Behavior in Germany and Spain

This article analyzes the impact of marital status and spousal employment on the timing of retirement in Germany and Spain. Retirement behavior is examined by means of event–history models, with a competing risks framework being used to distinguish between voluntary and involuntary work-exit transitions. To take account of the role of social policies, we adopt a comparative approach. Data are drawn from a 2006 special retirement module implemented analogously in national labor force surveys. The results show that spousal labor market participation plays a large role in work-exit transitions, even when retirement is involuntary. This finding questions the widespread belief that coretirement is exclusively due to preference for joint retirement shared among spouses. Moreover, widows and widowers tend to retire prematurely in Germany, whereas no such effect could be found in Spain. This finding is explained by reference to specific economic incentives arising from national pension legislation

Effort and dynamics of educational inequality: Evidence from a laboratory study among primary school children

If opportunities were equal, effort would be the main driver of individual success. However, in real life, people do not start the “race of life” with the same endowments. Thus, the study of Inequality of Opportunity in the tradition of John Roemer is dedicated to measuring the share of achievements that is determined by effort – viewed as the only “legitimate” source that is under individual control – versus by circumstances – that is, the “illegitimate” sources of achievement beyond by the individual’s influence. However, effort is often measured either merely as the residual that is left after controlling for a vector of circumstances (such as socioeconomic background, race or gender) or with imperfect proxies such as self-reported psychological traits or attitudes towards learning. The aim of the paper is twofold: First, it intends to assess the importance of “real effort” for determining academic performance in contrast to circumstances. Using an accurate measure of cognitive effort, measured in the lab, we can compare its impact on school grades in Math and Spanish with the effect of having highly educated parents or high IQ. Second, the paper explores the role of teachers’ perception of student effort in their academic grades. We expect that the perception of the teachers will be very relevant for academic performance. Furthermore, we argue that although teachers’ perception of student effort is not the most accurate measure of effort, it might be an important mediator between cognitive effort and academic grades. Data stems from a lab experiment carried out with 380 5th grade students from primary schools in the metropolitan area of Madrid, Spain, during the school year 2019/2020. The schools were randomly selected from a sample stratified by neighborhood income quartile and type of school. All the students carried out three real-effort tasks adopted from economics and psychology (i.e. the Simon, AX and Slider tasks), covering different executive functions. This multidimensional measure of cognitive effort ensures a comprehensive approach to effort that minimizes the influence of ability. We also gathered information on various “circumstances” of the students – such as parental education, gender and IQ (Raven’s Progressive Matrices). Provisional results indicate that effort exerts a sizeable influence on student grades, similar to IQ in the magnitude of its predictive power. Nevertheless, the association between teachers’ perception of student effort and school grades is significantly larger, comparable with the effect of having parents with tertiary education. Furthermore, we find evidence that teachers’ perception of student effort is an important mediator between cognitive effort and school grades, although, interestingly, the magnitude varies depending on the subject.Funding Acknowledgement: This research has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 758600)

Zwischen Frühverrentung und Regelaltersrente: die Sozialstruktur des Rentenzugangs

"Mit der Anhebung der Altersgrenzen haben sich die Rahmenbedingungen des Übergangs von der Erwerbsarbeit in den Ruhestand essentiell verändert. Durch die Einführung von Abschlägen für den vorzeitigen Renteneintritt erhält die Erforschung der Strukturen sozialer Ungleichheit im Verrentungsprozess sozialpolitische Relevanz. Vor diesem Hintergrund präsentiert der Vortrag Ergebnisse einer empirischen Untersuchung zu den Bestimmungsfaktoren des Renteneintrittsalters. Im Zentrum des lebenslaufsoziologischen Forschungsansatzes stehen die Handlungsoptionen und Entscheidungsgründe der Akteure beim Timing des Rentenübergangs. Die Datenbasis der Analyse bildet der Scientific Use File Versichertenrentenzugang 2004, der vom Forschungsdatenzentrum der Rentenversicherung aus prozessproduzierten Daten erstellt wurde. In der Modellbildung wird der Übergang von Männern der Rentenzugangskohorte 2004 in den Altersrentenbezug ereignisanalytisch rekonstruiert. Dazu wird ein Piecewise Constant Exponential Model geschätzt, das der Bedeutung der rentenrechtlichen Altersgrenzen Rechnung trägt. Die Mehrheit der Rentenzugänge erfolgt mit 60, 63 oder 65 Jahren. Die multivariate Datenanalyse belegt, dass sich das Renteneintrittsrisiko mit steigender Anzahl an Entgeltpunkten erhöht. Während sich in frühen Renteneintritten - etwa nach Altersteilzeit - überwiegend eine hohe Freizeitpräferenz offenbart, zeigt sich eine Minderheit resistent gegenüber bestehenden Frühverrentungsanreizen. Der Zusammenhang zwischen der Bildung der Beschäftigten und der Erwerbsneigung entspricht einschlägigen Befunden zur betrieblichen Ausgliederung älterer Arbeitnehmer und verweist weiterhin auf den Einfluss lebenslaufbezogener Normen. Bezüglich der Handlungsspielräume der Akteure werden soziale Ungleichheiten sichtbar. Wie das hohe Renteneintrittsrisiko nach vorhergehender Arbeitslosigkeit demonstriert, bestehen vor allem für ältere Arbeitnehmer mit geringem Humankapital wenige Alternativen zum frühzeitigen Ruhestand. Auch gesundheitliche Probleme beschleunigen den Renteneintritt. Hingegen müssen Versicherte mit untypischen Erwerbsbiografien ihre Verrentung aufgrund der Zugangsvoraussetzungen der GRV mitunter aufschieben. Insgesamt belegt die starke Abhängigkeit des Renteneintrittsalters vom letzten sozialrechtlichen Status, dass die Akteure über die verschiedenen institutionalisierten Renteneintrittspfade mit hoher Bestimmtheit in die entsprechenden Rentenarten geführt werden." (Autorenreferat

Material incentives drive gender differences in cognitive effort among children

Academic performance relies on effort and varies by gender. However, it is not clear at what age nor under what circumstances gender differences in effort arise. Using behavioral real-effort measures from 806 fifth-grade students, we find no gender differences in cognitive effort in the absence of rewards. However, boys exert more effort than girls when materially incentivized. Adding a status incentive on top of material rewards does not further increase the gender gap. While boys achieve superior performance through more proactive control and faster reaction speed, we find no gender differences in overall accuracy. Girls' preferences for a more prudent approach pay off only when reactive control is elicited. These findings are robust to controlling for key personality traits and cognitive ability (fluid intelligence). The results have important implications for understanding gender divides in education and learning

The Difference Between Saying and Doing: Comparing Subjective and Objective Measures of Effort Among Fifth Graders

The first goal of this study is to examine the capacity of prominent survey-based effort proxies to predict real effort provision in children. Do children who "talk the talk" of hard work also "walk the walk" and make costly effort investments? The second goal is to assess how objective and subjective effort measures are related under two conditions: intrinsic (nonincentivized) motivation and extrinsic (incentivized) motivation. We measure objective "real" effort using three tasks and subjective self-reported effort using four psychological characteristics (conscientiousness, need for cognition, locus of control and delay of gratification) to understand to what extent material incentives affect the cognitive effort of children with different self-reported personalities. Data stem from real-effort experiments carried out with 420 fifth grade students from primary schools in Madrid, Spain. We find that some of the subjective and objective effort measures are positively correlated. Yet the power of personality to predict real effort is only moderate, but greater and more so in the extrinsic than the intrinsic motivation condition. In particular, need for cognition and conscientiousness are the most relevant correlates of objective effort. Overall, we find there is a big difference between saying and doing when it comes to exerting effort, and this difference is even larger when there are no direct material incentives in place to reward effort provision