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We study the short-, medium-, and long-run employment effects of a substantial change in Germany's parental leave benefit program. In 2007, a means-tested parental leave transfer program that paid benefits for up to 2 years was replaced with an earnings-related transfer that paid benefits for up to 1 year. The reform changed the regulation for prior benefit recipients and added benefits for those who were not eligible before. Although long-run labor force participation did not change substantially—the reform sped up mothers' labor market return after their benefits expired. Likely pathways for this substantial reform effect are changes in social norms and in mothers' preferences for economic independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: To examine whether inactive nurses are willing to return to nursing during the COVID‐19 pandemic, the reasons for or against their decision and further, possibly relevant factors. Design: Cross‐sectional online survey. Methods: We developed a questionnaire, addressing registration, professional experiences, anticipations, and internal and external factors that might affect the decision of inactive nurses to return to nursing during the pandemic. Between 27 April and 15 June 2020, we recruited participants in Germany via social networks, organizations and institutions and asked them to forward the link to wherever other inactive nurses might be reached. Results: Three hundred and thirty‐two participants (73% female) could be included in the analysis. The majority of the participants (n = 262, 79%) were general nurses. The main reason for registering was 'want to do my bit to manage the crisis' (n = 73, 22.8%). More than two thirds of the participants (n = 230, 69%) were not or not yet registered. One hundred and twelve (49%) out of 220 participants, who gave reasons why they did not register, selected they 'could not see a necessity at that time'. The few inactive nurses who were deployed reported a variety of experiences. Conclusions: Different factors influence the nurses' decision to register or not. A critical factor for their decision was previous experiences that had made them leave the job and prevented a return—even for a limited time in a special situation. Impact From the responses of the participants in this study, it can be deduced that: negative experiences made while working in nursing influence the willingness to volunteer for a deployment; only one‐third of the inactive nurses would be willing to return to the nursing profession to help manage the Corona pandemic; policymakers and nursing leaders should not rely on the availability of inactive nurses in a crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: COVID-19 has a direct impact on the employment of older people. This adds to the challenge of ageism. The World Health Organization has started a worldwide campaign to combat ageism and has called for more research and evidence-based strategies that have the potential to be scaled up. This study specifically aims to identify solutions to combat the adverse effects of COVID-19 on the global ageing workforce. Methods: We present 15 case studies from different countries and report on what those countries are doing or not doing to address the impact of COVID-19 on ageing workers. Results: We provide examples of how COVID-19 influences older people's ability to work and stay healthy, and offer case studies of what governments, organizations or individuals can do to help ensure older people can obtain, maintain and, potentially, expand their current work. Case studies come from Australia, Austria, Canada, China, Germany, Israel, Japan, Nigeria, Romania, Singapore, Sweden, South Korea, Thailand, United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (US). Across the countries, the impact of COVID-19 on older workers is shown as widening inequalities. A particular challenge has arisen because of a large proportion of older people, often with limited education and working in the informal sector within rural areas, e.g. in Nigeria, Thailand and China. Remedies to the particular disadvantage experienced by older workers in the context of COVID are presented. These range from funding support to encouraging business continuity, innovative product and service developments, community action, new business models and localized, national and international actions. The case studies can be seen as frequently fitting within strategies that have been proven to work in reducing ageism within the workplace. They include policy and laws that have increased benefits to workers during lockdowns (most countries); educational activities such as coaching seniorpreneurship (e,g, Australia); intergenerational contact interventions such as younger Thai people who moved back to rural areas and sharing their digital knowledge with older people and where older people reciprocate by teaching the younger people farming knowledge. Conclusion: Global sharing of this knowledge among international, national and local governments and organizations, businesses, policy makers and health and human resources experts will further understanding of the issues that are faced by older workers. This will facilitate the replication or scalability of solutions as called for in the WHO call to combat ageism in 2021. We suggest that policy makers, business owners, researchers and international organisations build on the case studies by investing in evidence-based strategies to create inclusive workplaces. Such action will thus help to challenge ageism, reduce inequity, improve business continuity and add to the quality of life of older workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has shown that women providing family care tend to decrease paid work. We take the opposite perspective and examine how current and previous family care tasks influence women's likelihood to (re-)enter employment or to increase working hours. Family care is defined as caring for an ill, disabled or frail elderly partner, parent, or other family member. Using German Socio-Economic Panel data, we apply Cox shared frailty regression modeling to analyze transitions (1) into paid work and (2) from part-time to full-time work among women aged 25–59. The results indicate that in the German policy context, part-time working women providing extensive family care have a lower propensity to increase working hours. When family care ends, the likelihood that part-time working women change to full-time does not increase. Homemaking women's likelihood of entering the workforce is not influenced by either current or previous family care tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We measure and explain the decoupling of GDP and employment growth in Germany as an illustrative example of parameter instability strengthened by the Great Recession. • We apply a full unobserved components model for a time-varying parameter estimation, establishing permanent as well as transitory reasons for the decoupling. • We find that the GDP-employment linkage has permanently loosened after the Great Recession, mainly because of sectoral change. • Instead, employment growth corresponding to labour market tightness, labour supply, wages and working time increased remarkably. This paper investigates the time-varying relationship between German output and employment growth, in particular their decoupling in recent years. We estimate a correlated unobserved components model that allows for persistent and cyclical time variation in the employment-GDP linkage as well as an additional employment component beyond the one linked to GDP. Controlling for the latter yields a more precise classification of what is a jobless recovery or a labour hoarding recession. We find that the comovement of employment and GDP has loosened permanently since the Great Recession while the comovement with other variables than GDP has become tighter. The decoupling goes hand in hand with the change of the sectoral composition of the economy, especially the rise of the service sector. Beyond that, high labour market tightness and at the same time high labour supply carried recent employment growth. The industry mix, wages and working time had a smaller influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Balancing parenthood and employment can be challenging and distressing, particularly for single mothers. At the same time, transitioning to employment can improve the financial situations of single mothers and provide them with access to social networks, which can have beneficial effects on their health and well-being. Currently, however, it is not well understood whether the overall impact of employment on single mothers is positive or negative, and to what extent it differs from the impact of employment on partnered mothers. Building on the literature on work-family conflict, we investigate the differential effects of employment transitions on the health and well-being of single mothers and partnered mothers. Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (1992–2016), we apply panel regression techniques that address the potential endogeneity of maternal employment, as well as the dynamic nature of the relationship between employment transitions and maternal health and well-being. We find that employment has a positive impact on single mothers, and that single mothers benefit from employment significantly more than partnered mothers. Surprisingly, income does not appear to be an important driver of these results. Overall, our findings suggest that employment plays a key role in the well-being of single mothers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the implementation of the activation approach, formulated by the American political scientist Lawrence Mead and the British sociologist Anthony Giddens, the labor market policy has been reformed in Germany and many other industrialized countries, since the mid-1990s. A fundamental component of the realignment is that welfare payments are tied more strictly than previously to the acceptance of employment. While in the U.S.A., the new labor market policy is characterized by the 'workfare' motto, in Germany, the foundations of the activation are formulated with the guiding principle 'support and demand'. Nevertheless, due to the shortage of public funds subsidies were cut sharply in recession phases but not increased adequately during the periods of economic recovery. As a result, the promotional elements of the activation concept are far outweighed by enforcement measures, leaving the unemployed to accept less attractive non-standard work. However, even with favorable economic conditions, even a relatively small number of atypical employees successfully made the transition to regular full-time employment. Therefore, in order to facilitate career advancement additional support would be required, which will not end with the recruitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The aim of this study was to examine the prospective associations between baseline job strain and 10-year cumulative incidence of longterm sickness absence (LTSA) in the German workforce. Methods: This study used longitudinal data from the 2001 to 2011 waves of The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) (n = 9794). Kaplan-Meier survival curves and Cox proportional hazard regression models were used to examine the prospective association between job strain and incidence of LTSA. Results: High strain [hazard ratio (HR) = 1.28, 95% confidence interval (95% CI) = 1.12 to 1.46] and passive jobs (H R = 1.14, 95% C I= 1.01 to 1.30) were significantly associated with LTSA after full adjustment for covariates, with greater risk in the older participants (>45) in passive (HR = 1 .3 3, 95% CI = 1 .0 8 to 1.63) and high strain (HR = 1.56, 95% CI = 1.27 to 1.92) jobs. Conclusion: Jobs with low control over work were associated with LTSA in German workers. More studies using longitudinal employment data, and more detailed job strain measures are warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article applies a modified Multiple-Streams Approach (MSA) to the German Hartz IV labor market reform, probably the most far-reaching policy project since unification, which many theoretical approaches have substantial difficulties explaining. Empirically, the article provides the first encompassing explanation of the Hartz IV reform by putting together the empirical pieces of the overall puzzle. Theoretically, the article demonstrates that the extension of the MSA by Herweg, Huß, and Zohlnhöfer (HHZ) is fruitful regarding the adaptation of the MSA for decision making and regarding their hypotheses and operational definitions which allow a rigorous empirical analysis and provide the possibility to prove the MSA wrong. In contrast, HHZ's adaptation to parliamentary systems turn out to be less suitable for the case. Moreover, the point at which the political stream is considered to be ready for coupling needs reconsideration. It is argued that it suffices that some key political actors become interested in a proposal; in contrast, the necessary majorities for an adoption of the proposal need not be forthcoming already because these can still be organized during decision-coupling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how institutional differences matter to the quality of a nation’s jobs; job quality is conceived as a dimension of a national economy’s social performance and thus defined in accordance with civic principles. Focus is on the two archetypical varieties of capitalism, the United States and Germany. Using data from a 2009 telephone survey of U.S. and German workers, we find that the overall attainment of civic principles, as perceived by workers, is no different in Germany than in the United States, even though the German institutional environment should be more conducive to them. This is due to higher worker expectations in Germany and a tendency for employer practices to compensate for the weaker (liberal) institutional environment in the United States. Once these are controlled, German workers report substantially more positive outcomes. We find that institutional differences also matter in how various employer practices are adopted and hence have indirect as well as direct implications. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The "big trade-off," described by Arthur Okun some thirty years ago, is back again: equality or efficiency, or to put it differently, modern highly developed economies and societies have to choose between the Scylla of income inequality and the Charybdis of unemployment. Furthermore, it looks like the continental European economies—foremost Germany and France—sided with more egalitarian ends accepting higher unemployment while the liberal economies such as the United States and the United Kingdom chose higher inequality for lower unemployment. In this paper it is argued that the trade-off is not a supply-side necessity to maintain work effort in a situation of incomplete contracts, but is a politico-economic issue of particular interest groups seeking rents. However, unlike in Mancur Olson's seminal approach, it is not the trade unions that are forming distributional coalitions on the labor market, but rather the meritocracy which is happy to use Keynesian-type demand management to advance their material interests by pursuing a "meritocratically optimal rate of unemployment" (MORU). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I examine patterns of joblessness among immigrant men and women from 33 countries of origin now living in Britain, Germany and Sweden. Access to welfare, access to the labor market, job segregation and institutional support for women's employment define distinct policy configurations in these three destinations. Findings show that gaps in joblessness between immigrants and the native-born are larger in Sweden than in Britain and Germany, net of human capital, socio-demographic characteristics and sending country. However, long-settled immigrants have more similar outcomes across the three countries than recent newcomers. Also, immigrant women in Sweden work at higher absolute rates than immigrant women elsewhere. This suggests that gendered employment policies in destination countries are a crucial dimension of immigrant economic incorporation. Ultimately, such policies also shape the fiscal impact of immigration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we attempt to renew the interest in marginal employment subsidies. Such subsidies are paid only for a firm's additional employment exceeding some reference level and create larger employment stimuli at lower fiscal costs than general wage subsidies for all workers. If the hiring of a new employee also entails subsidizing an incumbent worker (double marginal subsidization), the replacement of regular paid workers by outsourcing employment to newly established firms – a standard critique of marginal employment subsidies – can be avoided. This additional subsidy reduces the incentive to crowd out regular employment and results in even larger employment effects. Applying the subsidy scheme to the low-skill labor market in Germany, we show that employment can be substantially increased without imposing additional fiscal burden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using behavioral theories, this article analyzes whether religion influences married women in Germany in their decision to supply labor. Gender roles and accompanying attitudes toward the division of labor among spouses might differ across religious groups depending on the groups’ strictness. Examining data from the GSOEP, the findings suggest that denominational affiliation itself only weakly influences women’s labor participation decisions. However, women who participate regularly in religious activities are less inclined towards paid employment. Furthermore, there is evidence that the presence of a spouse with a strong belief also affects a woman’s supply of labor negatively. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article deals with consequences of different educational and labour market regimes for the matching of people to jobs. It differentiates between flexibly coordinated, planned and deregulated societies, focusing on the Federal Republic of Germany, the German Democratic Republic and the United States of America. The empirical analyses are based on the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). The analyses confirm most of the hypotheses. In all three countries, many employees have to deal with a mismatch between their qualification and the requirements of their jobs. The number of employees with a mismatch is considerably higher in the United States. However, this applies especially to young employees. In Germany, young people have a much better chance of using most of their qualifications in their first jobs, but their position in the labour market will worsen as they grow older. As expected, overqualified people earn considerably less than their colleagues who are working in adequate jobs. However, education is still worthwhile even if one is overqualified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the patterns of male nonagricultural self-employment in France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom. It is argued that the development of self-employment in these four countries is based on specific institutional and economic frameworks resulting in different opportunities and incentives for taking up self-employment These differences affect the relevance of individual resources like education and work experience. The empirical analyses are based on national Labor Force Surveys. Although we find a remarkable number of common general patterns in self-employment in all four countries, the findings also indicate that educational requirements and the relevance of age-related experience differ fundamentally among the four countries and along industrial branches. Specific regulations and general settings in single branches and countries result in distinct opportunities for self employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the Dutch approach to unemployment as a possible solution to German labor market woes. Features of the Dutch labor market; Basis for the Dutch policy of wage moderation; Steps in social security reform; Goal of the shift to active labor policy by the Dutch government.

The Federal Republic of Germany and the U.S. are most similar for mobility from father's to son's first occupation. We believe this reflects the fact that transmission of resources from the family of origin to the ports of entry into the labor market is the same for the two societies. Thus similar nuclear family structures will have a similar effect on education level and on starting position. The labor market, however, is a more complex mechanism; it reacts to individually achieved resources and moreover has very different features from one society to another, owing to legislative provisions or various hierarchical structures that link job changes to specific career trajectories. This is an effect not only of the differences in hierarchical structure as observed in the case of France and the Federal Republic, but also of differences in the correlation between education and entry positions and further mobility chances in different societies or in different contexts. Movements within the occupational hierarchy and positional privileges as one goes up the occupational ladder seem to be much more structured in the Federal Republic. The American and, in part, the French system are characterized by primarily symmetric mobility, with cases of upward career mobility balanced out by cases of downward mobility.

Government legislation, in the form of the Quota Scheme, has proved ineffective in improving the employment opportunities of disabled people in Great Britain and strenuous efforts have been made by the organisation responsible for its implementation-the Manpower Services Commission-to abolish it. In West Germany, however, most organisations employ their quota of disabled people, although this is set at 6%-double the level required of British employers.. Is German legislation in this area really more effective? If so, why should this be? And what are the implications for policy in Great Britain? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]