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We examine the fertility impact of a family-based regularization policy granting temporary legal status to unauthorized immigrants based on their offspring's citizenship. The policy, enacted through a 2011 Royal Decree in Spain, allows for unauthorized parents of eligible nationalities to become temporary legal residents if they have a Spanish minor. Using data from the Spanish Labor Force Survey (2007–2016), along with a quasi-experimental approach that exploits the change in legal residency eligibility requirements, we show that the policy has significantly increased the childbearing likelihood of eligible mothers, even though the overall increase in fertility nationwide remains trivial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dual character of the Spanish labor market, with permanent workers on the one hand and less favored peripheral workers on the other, became more pronounced following the deregulation of temporary employment. This paper uses the Spanish Labor Force Survey to assess whether, as predicted by labor market segmentation theories, temporary employment is non-transitional (permanent) and involuntary. An analysis of the rates and dynamics of transitions into and out of temporary employment across different groups of working-age respondents shows that much of Spanish temporary employment is involuntary, with temporary workers having limited opportunities for advancement. The evidence points to the need for public policy to address problems posed by the trap that temporary employment has apparently become for growing numbers of workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine how the recession that started in December 2007 in the United States impacted wealth accumulation and inequality among Spanish households. We find that overall wealth dropped by 15 percent between 2008 and 2011, with losses concentrating among households in the mid and top wealth quintiles. The most hard hit wealth components were business assets, primary home equity, and durable assets, which declined by 40 percent, 23 percent and 19 percent, respectively. Wealth losses among all households were likely sustained by restricted access to credit. Nonetheless, in part due to their more diversified wealth portfolios, households in the top wealth quintile amassed a greater share of the country’s wealth during the recession. Consequently, wealth inequality, which receded during the expansionary years of 2002 through 2005, rose by 2008 and continued its trend in 2011. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recession that started in the United States in December 2007 has had a significant impact on the Spanish economy through a large increase of the unemployment rate and the bursting of the housing and financial bubbles. We explore how the crisis and changes in the labor, housing, and financial markets might have impacted retirement patterns of Spanish men and women nearing retirement age. We find that the recession primarily reduced women's retirement likelihood by 27%. The effect, which was associated with the labor market deterioration, as captured by higher unemployment rates, was circumscribed to women already at work, who chose to stay at work longer. In contrast, for the most part, men's retirement likelihood did not change with the labor, housing, and financial market fluctuations. Overall, the findings suggest that working women might have prolonged their working lives to make up for lost household income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of the many advantages of homeownership for immigrants and for the communities where immigrants reside, a variety of countries have implemented policies that facilitate immigrant homeownership. Although these policies hinge on immigration status, the link between immigration status and homeownership is yet to be carefully explored. Using a recent survey of immigrants in Spain, we find that permanent residents from the EU15 enjoy the highest homeownership rates, even after accounting for a wide range of individual and family characteristics known to impact housing ownership. Permanent residents from countries outside the EU15, temporary residents and undocumented immigrants are, respectively, 12, 29, and 33 percentage-points less likely to own a home than permanent residents from the EU15. Overall, the findings highlight the differences in homeownership by immigrant status, possibly reflecting differences in cultural adaptation and integration across immigrants in the host country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How immigration affects the labor market of the host country is a topic of major concern for many immigrant-receiving nations. Spain is no exception, as a consequence of the rapid increase in immigrant flows experienced over the past few decades. We assess the impact of immigration on Spanish natives' incomes by estimating the net immigration surplus (IS) under the assumption of perfect and imperfect substitutabilities between immigrant and native labor of similar educational attainment. To address the imperfect substitutability between immigrant and native labor, we use information on the occupational distribution of immigrants and natives of similar educational attainment to learn about the equivalency of skilled immigrants to skilled and unskilled natives. The results show that the magnitude of the IS significantly rises with the degree of imperfect substitutability between immigrant and native labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a preliminary analysis of the employment and occupational assimilation of recent immigrant waves to the Spanish labour market as their residencies lengthen. Using Spanish data from the 2001 Population Census and the 2002 Earnings Structure Survey, we find evidence of immigrant employment and occupational assimilation significantly varying by gender, origin and educational attainment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the determinants of Spanish employers' reliance on temporary workers and their temporary to permanent conversions. Legal framework behind the temporary employment growth of Spain; Data on the aspects of the labor market; Recruitment and selection of employees for permanency.

This paper examines the impact that the European Union (EU) has exerted on Spanish economic activity. The empirical analysis is conducted using variance decompositions and historical decompositions derived from a near vector autoregressive (VAR) model. The near VAR includes the exchange rate, the EU's inflation rate and output, and Spain's inflation rate, output, money supply and interest rate. The estimation period begins in 1987, the year after Spain joined the EU, and ends in 1997. The main finding of the analysis is that the EU has significant impacts on the Spanish economy. The paper finds that shocks to EU output explain up to 63% of Spanish output. At longer time horizons, shocks to the EU's inflation rate and output combine to explain over 50% of the forecast error variance in Spanish inflation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-border medical care, defined as care facilitated by a local health provider under pre-established regional agreements, as in the case of European Union (EU) citizens accessing care within EU countries, has been on the rise. Unlike medical tourism, typically sought by patients through their own volition and paid for out-of-pocket, cross-border medical care is often reimbursable or paid for directly by the responsible government. Yet, because nations vary in the extent of health coverage offered to their residents, these expenditures are often only partially reimbursed. The resulting financial burden for some countries can be large and not reciprocal, straining regional and country-level finances. We analyze the effectiveness of a legislative measure adopted by a Spanish region in January 2012 with the purpose of curbing cross-border medical care. Using a comprehensive administrative dataset of all medical procedures performed in the country between 2008 and 2015, we find that the measure led to a drastic drop in the number of foreigners' hospitalizations and a reduction of 4.8 million euros/trimester in costs. Finally, the decrease in hospitalizations did not disproportionally affect patients based on their gender, age, or origin, although it fostered a reduction in readmissions., (© 2022 The Authors. Health Economics published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

To contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries around the globe have adopted social distancing measures. Yet, establishing the causal effect of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) is difficult because they do not occur arbitrarily. We exploit a quasi-random source of variation for identification purposes -namely, regional differences in the placement on the pandemic curve following an unexpected and nationwide lockdown. Our results reveal that regions where the outbreak had just started when the lockdown was implemented had 1.62 fewer daily deaths per 100,000 inhabitants when compared to regions for which the lockdown arrived 10+ days after the pandemic's outbreak. As a result, a total of 4,642 total deaths (232 deaths/daily) could have been avoided by the end of our period of study -a figure representing 23% of registered deaths in Spain at the time. We rule out differential pre-COVID mortality trends and self-distancing behaviors across the compared regions prior to the swift lockdown, which was also uniformly observed nationwide. In addition, we provide supporting evidence for contagion deceleration as the main mechanism behind the effectiveness of the early adoption of NPIs in lowering the death rate, rather than an increased healthcare capacity., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors report no declarations of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)