Capturing the heterogeneity of life courses improves the accuracy, detail and policy relevance of population and labour force
projections. Our study uses the microsimulation model microDEMS for Austria, which simulates individual life courses at a
high level of detail and in their family context. The model pays particular attention to educational attainment, health and
labour market participation. By maintaining the longitudinal consistency of labour market careers, including the tracking
of insurance periods, together with the implementation of detailed retirement rules, our model provides realistic representations
of retirement decisions. While we reproduce the demographic outcomes of official (Statistics Austria) population projections,
including international migration by region of birth, we integrate several additional dimensions, such as educational differentials
in mortality and fertility. MicroDEMS allows to consider a wide range of scenarios when assessing the sensitivity of results,
or to focus on the impact of policy changes targeted at specific population subgroups, such as mothers, immigrants, or people
with health impairments or lower educational levels. MicroDEMS is a detailed national version of the comparative microWELT
model. In this context, microDEMS is used for sensitivity analysis and case studies to assess potential specification bias
introduced in microWELT due to the neglect of institutional detail or the less detailed treatment of population heterogeneity,
such as in the case of international migration.
The aim of this study is to assess the impact of the ongoing harmonisation of the retirement age for women with that for men
on women's labour supply in Austria. According to the current legal framework, the standard retirement age for women will
be gradually raised from 60 to 65 years from 2024 onwards, with the retirement age being raised by 6 months each year. The
impact of the pension reform on women's labour supply is quantified using the dynamic microsimulation model microDEMS. This
model integrates demographic changes in line with official population projections and detailed labour market modelling. According
to our projections, the labour supply of women aged 60 to 64 increases by 87,000 in 2040 compared to a scenario in which the
retirement age remains unchanged. We compare our results with two alternative approaches: the more stylised microWELT simulation
model and a purely data-driven approach. While all methods produce very similar results in the long run, the detailed modelling
in microDEMS provides more plausible results during the transition period when the reform is gradually implemented. This is
because it allows for a realistic representation of pension paths, taking into account all relevant pension types and the
corresponding eligibility criteria, such as sufficient accumulated insurance periods. In contrast to a purely data-driven
approach, microDEMS modelling also has the advantage of explicitly representing and quantifying the components of the change
in labour supply.
This article presents a novel explanation why demand for redistribution on average does not respond to information on low
intergenerational mobility. Building on insights from behavioural economics, we expect that incentives to update perceptions
of intergenerational mobility change along the income distribution. Empirically, we conduct a survey experiment in Austria
and show that the average treatment effect of information on perceptions is mostly driven by higher income individuals while
low-income respondents hardly react. We replicate this result for the United States and Germany using data from two closely
related survey experiments (Alesina et al., 2018; Fehr et al., 2022). Thus, the frequently observed unresponsiveness of demand
for redistribution may result because the group which drives the effect on beliefs does not increase demand for redistribution
and may even decrease it. Indeed, despite the strong perception shift in the high-income group, the treatment effects on its
preferences are mostly zero and even negative for certain policies. At the same time, the group with the clearest incentives
to change its redistributive preferences, the low-income group, is systematically less inclined to update its perceptions
and thus their redistributive preferences are mostly unaffected and only partially increased in response to the treatment.
We suggest that different responses to information could be due to motivated beliefs, since high social mobility implies for
low-income earners that effort is more likely to pay off.
Der Privatkonkurs bietet überschuldeten Personen die Möglichkeit, eine Restschuldbefreiung zu erlangen. Von 1995 bis Ende
2021 wurden in Österreich insgesamt etwa 197.000 Privatkonkursanträge gestellt. Die jährliche Zahl der Anträge stieg bis Ende
der 2000er-Jahre kontinuierlich an. Seither lassen sich größere Sprünge in den Fallzahlen beobachten, vor allem im Zusammenhang
mit Reformen und Veränderungen der politischen Rahmenbedingungen, wie etwa in der COVID-19-Krise. In der Analyse zeigen sich
auch Zusammenhänge mit der Konjunktur und der Bevölkerungsdichte, wobei die Konkursquoten vor allem in urbanen Gebieten hoch
sind. Zur Untersuchung detaillierter kausaler Zusammenhänge sowie der Auswirkungen der rezenten Teuerungswelle sind jedoch
vertiefende Analysen erforderlich.
