LEHRSTUHL FÜR

FINANZWISSENSCHAFT

Die sehr negativen Prognosen zur Beschäftigungswirkung der Einführung des Mindestlohns in Deutschland hätten sich nicht bewahrheitet, schrieben Oliver Bruttel, Arne Baumann und Matthias Dütsch in den PWP 3/2019. Andreas Knabe, Ronnie Schöb und Marcel Thum halten dem in diesem Beitrag entgegen, dass sich Prognosen und tatsächliche Beschäftigungswirkungen des Mindestlohns gar nicht wesentlich unterscheiden. Zum einen hätten sich die Beschäftigungsverluste bisher stark in einer Reduktion der Zahl der Arbeitsstunden je Beschäftigten niedergeschlagen. Zum anderen erhielten weiterhin viele Arbeitnehmer weniger als den Mindestlohn, was die bislang messbaren negativen Beschäftigungswirkungen mindere.

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Diese Studie untersucht Faktoren, die die teilweise starken Unterschiede in der Beschäftigungspflichtquote Schwerbehinderter zwischen den deutschen Bundesländern im Zeitraum von 2003 bis 2015 erklären können. Sie legt dabei besonderen Wert auf die Situation in Sachsen-Anhalt, das in diesem Zeitraum die deutschlandweit niedrigste Beschäftigungsquote aufweist. Die multivariate statistische Analyse liefert Hinweise darauf, dass der Erfüllungsgrad der Beschäftigungspflichtquote nach § 154 SGB IX in stärkerem Ausmaß von soziodemografischen als von ökonomischen Strukturmerkmalen der Länder bestimmt wird. Als Hauptdeterminante tritt in dem hier spezifizierten Modell der Anteil der (registrierten) Schwerbehinderten an der Gesamtbevölkerung hervor.

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We estimate household equivalence scales, i.e. the needs of additional adults and children relative to a single adult, using income satisfaction data from the German Socio-Economic Panel. We extend previous studies applying this approach by taking reference income into account. This allows separating needs-based from reference effects in the determination of income satisfaction. We show that this adjustment helps to overcome a bias causing an overestimation of adults' and an underestimation of children's needs-based equivalence weights. Our results indicate that controlling for income comparisons substantially increases children's equivalence weight relative to that of adults.

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Employment protection legislation (EPL) is an important determinant of workers’ perceived future labour market prospects as well as their subjective well-being. Recent studies indicate that it is not only a worker’s own level of protection, but also the employment protection of other workers that matters for individual prospects and well-being. We contribute to this literature by examining how such cross-effects on well-being are mediated by a workers’ perceived risk of job loss and future employability. We apply a structural model to data from the Third Wave of the European Quality of Life Survey, combined with summary indices from the OECD Employment Protection Database. Our results are indicative of cross-effects. Stricter protection for permanent workers (stricter regulation on the length and number of renewals of fixed-term contracts) is associated with lower (higher) perceived employability for both permanent workers and fixed-term workers. In addition, stricter protection for permanent workers is positively related to fixed-term workers’ perceived risk of job loss. We do find some evidence that EPL has significant indirect (cross-)effects on life satisfaction via the mediators. There are no indications for direct, non-mediated effects.

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Unemployment affects future working conditions and job security negatively, thus reducing life satisfaction after reemployment. These employment-related scars of unemployment should not matter anymore when a person has retired. Using German panel data, we analyze unemployed persons’ transition into retirement to test whether unemployment leaves scars beyond working life and thus for reasons that are not employment-related. We find that involuntary unemployment between the last job and retirement causes a loss in life satisfaction after retirement. People who influenced or even initiated unemployment, by contrast, show no scarring. The scarring effect goes beyond what can be explained by the income loss originating from reduced pensions. It shows up independently of whether the unemployment spell directly before retirement was the only experience of unemployment in a person’s career, or whether she had also experienced unemployment at earlier times. We do not find evidence that early retirement or involuntary retirement are the reasons why formerly unemployed retirees display unemployment scarring.

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