Are Female Baby Boomers Ready for Retirement?

Due to their life-course socio-economic conditions, many female boomers may suffer large decreases in well-being as they head into retirement. Pension reforms which increase retirement age will disproportionately disadvantage those already in low income. While changes to the CPP will reduce losses from poor or sporadic labour force participation, these changes are too late to help the early boomer women. Likewise, while research suggests that improving retirement outcomes must begin with improved labour market conditions, inequitable conditions persist. Therefore, any current policy change will miss helping the early boomers. Finally, with increasing rates of chronic disease and longer lifespans, policy must aim toward health and wellness promotion, providing a wider range of integrated care options, and clear estimates of added costs so that Canadians can adequately prepare for retirement

Policy Brief No. 24 - Are Female Baby Boomers Ready for Retirement?

Due to their life-course socio-economic conditions, many female boomers may suffer large decreases in well-being as they head into retirement. Pension reforms which increase retirement age will disproportionately disadvantage those already in low income. While changes to the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) will reduce losses from poor or sporadic labour force participation, these changes are too late to help the early boomer women. Likewise, while research suggests that improving retirement outcomes must begin with improved labour market conditions, inequitable conditions persist. Therefore, any current policy change will miss helping the early boomers. Finally, with increasing rates of chronic disease and longer lifespans, policy must aim toward health and wellness promotion, providing a wider range of integrated care options, and clear estimates of added costs so that Canadians can adequately prepare for retirement

Research Brief No. 23 - Exiting Poverty in Canada

This study investigates the determinants of poverty duration in Canada, and examines which factors may affect women and men differently. It specifically focuses on poverty exit destinations: exits to just above the poverty line versus exits to further above the poverty line. Results show that nearly 25% of poverty spells end within 110% of the poverty line, meaning near poverty. The study also indicates that receiving social assistance, being an immigrant, being disabled, and having pre-school aged children are strongly associated with both a lower probability of exiting poverty, and a lower probability of exiting to higher income levels. Finally, gender differences in the probability of exiting poverty spells appear mainly in terms of education, employment, and changes in marital status

Self-employment and motherhood: Labor market outcomes of self-employment in early childhood years

Self-employment is a career choice that may offer the flexibility to take care of children whilst remaining active on the labor market, and can therefore be seen by mothers as an alternative to wage employment during early childhood years. Using data from the German Socio-Economic household panel (SOEP) between 1995 and 2018, we investigate the success of this strategy, by studying wage earnings and the labor force status of mothers seven years after childbirth, once the child reaches school age. Taking account of self-selection into self-employment, we find that the consequences of self-employment experience in the early years after childbirth are no different from being inactive in terms of hourly wage for mothers who return to wage employment, while each additional month of wage employment after childbirth increases this wage by 0.4%. However, each additional month of self-employment experience does increase the odds of being active in the labor market by 22%, compared to inactivity. Analogously, for each additional month of wage employment, the odds of being employed increase by 6%. Self-employment in the early years after child birth thereby seems to keep mothers attached to the labor market to a greater degree than does wage-employment

The trendiness of sleep: An empirical investigation into the cyclical nature of sleep time

Abstract Using Canadian time use data, we exploit exogenous variation in local unemployment Résumé En utilisant des données canadiennes sur l'utilisation du temps, nous exploitons les variations exogènes des taux de chômage locaux afin d'étudier la nature cyclique du temps de sommeil et montrons que le temps de sommeil des hommes et des femmes diminue lorsque l'économie fait relativement mieux. Nos résultats suggèrent que, lors d'une récession, les Canadiens dorment en moyenne 2 heures et 34 minutes de plus par semaine ou 22 minutes de plus par jour. Étant donné l'importance de l'effet de changements de temps de sommeil sur des mesures de fonctionnement cognitif telles que le temps de réaction et de

The trendiness of sleep: An empirical investigation into the cyclical nature of sleep time

Abstract Using Canadian time use data, we exploit variation in local unemployment rates to investigate the cyclical nature of sleep time and show that for both men and women, sleep time decreases when the economy is doing relatively better. Our results suggest that in a recession Canadians sleep an average of 2 hours and 34 minutes more per week, or 22 minutes more per day. Given the importance of even small changes in sleep time on measures of cognitive functioning such as reaction time and concentration, our findings may help explain the countercyclical nature of mortality. Further, as we find that sleep is affected by the same economic variables (notably the unemployment rate) that affect market work time, our results also contribute to the limited literature that shows that sleep time should not be treated as exogenously determined, but, like any other resource, determined by its relative cost