Adam Okulicz-Kozaryn (p)

Duncan Roth

The effect of social transfers and social capital on subjective wellbeing of elderly


We investigate the effect of social transfers (especially pension) and
social capital (especially volunteering) on subjective wellbeing (SWB) of
elderly using the latest wave 6 of Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in
Europe (SHARE). We find that the effect of volunteering on SWB is not much
smaller or even about as large as that of pensions. The most SWB stems from
volunteering about every week, but there is already a substantial effect even if one volunteers only about every month.
We also find that the higher the income or wealth, but not pension, the lower
the effect of volunteering. High European pensions may be unsustainable in the long run--we argue that promotion of volunteering is one way to increase elderly's subjective wellbeing amidst tightening budgets.

We will also explore cross country differences in the relationship.

Duncan Roth (p), Gabriel Ahlfeldt , Tobias Seidel

Adam Okulicz-Kozaryn

We estimate the spatially differential effects of a nationally uniform minimum wage that was introduced in Germany in 2015. To this end, we use a micro data set covering the universe of employed and unemployed individuals in Germany from 2011 to 2016 and a difference‐in‐differences based identification strategy that controls for heterogeneity in pre‐treatment outcome trends. We find that the policy led to spatial wage convergence, in particular in the left tail of the distribution, without reducing relative employment in low‐wage regions within the first two years.