Publikationsliste KOPS

Our article investigates the role of relative income distributions within couples for individuals’ retirement risks. It addresses the following questions: How does the share someone provides to the couple income affect that person’s retirement decision? What gender differences do we observe and what contextual factors can explain country differences? Our multilevel analyses draw on data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) study (2010–2016), comparing 26 countries. The results show that female main earners transition to retirement earlier than female secondary earners as they approach the official retirement age. This effect is even stronger in countries with more traditional gender norms. The opposite pattern is found for men, whereby male secondary earners retire earlier than male main earners in more gender traditional societies. We explain this finding on the basis of doing gender theories, which predict that gender-atypical behaviour in one area of life is compensated by traditional gender behaviour in other areas, especially in contexts with traditional gender norms. A further finding relates to the generosity of the country’s pension replacement rate, which shows to be a factor facilitating retirement especially for those with an equal earning partner.

Do France and Germany lead the euro zone? We argue that the governments of these two countries jointly and successfully used institutional as well as ideational leadership – both at the domestic as well as at the European levels – when creating the Economic and Monetary Union in the 1980s and 1990s. During the euro zone crisis, however, the two respective governments mainly relied on institutional leadership, but neglected the ideational component of leadership. In consequence, member states only agreed upon lowest common denominator solutions, leaving the institutional setup of the Economic and Monetary Union incomplete. More ideational engagement by the French and German governments and the investment of political capital, in our view, are necessary for the adoption of more far-ranging substantial reforms. This would make the euro zone – and more generally the European integration project – more resilient in the years to come.

In this paper, we take a novel approach to study the empirical relationship between public debate in the media and asylum acceptance rates in Europe from 2002–2016. In theory, an asylum seeker should experience the same likelihood of being granted refugee status from each of the 20 European countries we study. Yet, in practice, acceptance rates vary widely for nearly every asylum country of origin. We address this inconsistency with a data-driven approach by analyzing refugee-related news articles and data on asylum decisions across 20 Europe countries for more than 100 asylum seekers’ countries of origin. We find that: (i) public debate sentiment in the media is strongly associated with European countries’ diverging asylum practices, much more so than social, cultural or economic factors, and (ii) by combining different measures of public debate we can make out-of-sample predictions within 3% of true acceptance rates (on average). We conclude by discussing the practical implications of our findings for European asylum practices.

Using a unique and original dataset measuring preferences of adults for academic vs. vocational education in Switzerland, we explore differences between Swiss citizens and foreign residents regarding individual preferences for these different types of education. We find that first-generation foreigners exhibit stronger preferences for academic education, whereas the preferences of second-generation foreigners do not significantly differ from those of Swiss citizens. Further, variation across subgroups of foreigners based on their nationality indicates that cultural aspects matter to a certain extent as less well-integrated ethnic groups express stronger preferences for academic education and are also less likely to value the labour market outcomes of vocational education. Interestingly, the presence of a well-established VET system in the country of origin does not appear to strengthen preferences for vocational education in Switzerland. This might be related to less positive labour market outcomes for VET graduates’ countries of origin.

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dc.contributor.author: Manatschal, Anita; Wisthaler, Verena

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Using the Panel of Social Inequalities in Catalonia, Spain (PaD 2001–2012), this article investigates the relationship between perceptions of economic conditions and subjective well-being in times of prosperity and economic crisis. It also analyses how this relationship plays out across different social backgrounds. Periods of economic crisis and prosperity serve as a proxy for objective macroeconomic conditions. The Spanish region of Catalonia is a relevant setting because it faced one of the highest increases in inequality and unemployment in Europe as a result of the 2008 Economic Crisis. Our results show that perceived economic conditions matter beyond objective micro and macroeconomic realm and become a strong determinant of subjective well-being during a crisis, particularly for the middle class. However, contrary to our initial expectations, our results also show the existence of a close correlation between perceptions of economic conditions and subjective well-being for low social background individuals in times of economic prosperity, and an even stronger relationship in times of economic crisis. The article stipulates several potential explanations for these results.