Recent & Upcoming Talks | Simon Ress

The Influence of the German Statutory Minimum Wage’s Introduction on Individuals’ Health

Wed, 22 Sep 2021 08:00:00 +0000

Purpose: The introduction of the statutory minimum wage in Germany on January 1st. 2015 represents one of the sharpest interventions of labour market policy since world war II. Although influenced by many factors, employment and working conditions comprise important determinants for individual health like working hours, salary, workplace policies or company manners. Therefore, the question arises whether individual health is affected by introducing the minimum wage and if so through which channels this effect is mediated¹.

Methods: The survey Panel “Labour Market and Social Security” (PASS) allows for the identification of persons who were affected by the new minimum wage (treatment-group) as well as non-treaded (control-group). Using this characteristic, the calculation of the causal effect of the minimum wage on different health indicators of the treated by applying a Difference-in-Differences Propensity Score Matching (DiD-PSM) model². Methodologically the selection of the matching variables is based on the framework of the Rubin-Causal model for the identification of causal effects³.

Results: A positive causal effect of introducing the minimum wage is detected on the indicators “Health Satisfaction”, “Life satisfaction” and “Number of visits to the doctor”. Higher wage increases and extended observation periods have a larger impact on health.

Conclusions: The effects found empathize the relevance of the Health in All Policies (HiAP) concept.

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1 Hirsch Barry T, Kaufman Bruce E, Zelenska Tetyana. (2015): Minimum Wage Channels of Adjustment. In: Ind Relat 54 (02) , S. 199-239.

2 Lechner Michael. (2010): The Estimation of Causal Effects by Difference-in-Difference Methods. In: FNT in Econometrics 4 (03) ,S. 165-224.

3 Gangl Markus. (2010): Causal Inference in Sociological Research. In: Annu. Rev. Sociol. 36 (01) , S. 21-47.

Ökonomische Selektivität im politischen Engagement

Fri, 06 Mar 2020 14:00:00 +0000

In diesem Vortrag werden die Analysemethode und -ergebnisse des Einflusses ökonomischer Faktoren auf die Bereitschaft, zum politischen Engagement, vorgestellt.

Mit bürgerschaftlichem Engagement im Allgemeinen, zu dem auch politische Partizipation zählt, wird die Hoffnung verbunden, verschiedene gesellschaftliche Gruppen zu integrieren. Studien wiesen in der Vergangenheit darauf hin, dass sich die Partizipation in der Zivilgesellschaft zwar im Durchschnitt erhöht hat, bestimmte Formen jedoch rückläufig sind und sich auf bestimmte soziale Gruppen konzentrieren (Tesch-Römer et al. 2017; Bödeker 2012). Insbesondere im Bereich von politischem Engagement ist zu berücksichtigen, dass neben der sozialen Integration auch die Repräsentation einer breiten Masse der Bevölkerung in der Politik leidet, wenn einige soziale Gruppen unterproportional vertreten sind. Anhand der Daten des SOEPs wird geschätzt, wie das Einkommen auf die Bereitschaft und das Ausmaß, sich in Bürgerinitiativen, politischen Organisationen oder auf Ebene der Kommunalpolitik zu engagieren, wirkt. Dabei wird sowohl temporale als auch gruppenspezifische Heterogenität des Effekts zugelassen.

Mit Hilfe von Directed Acycling Graphs wird gemäß des Potential Outcome Models (Rubin 2005) eine geeignete Auswahl von Confounder-Variablen aus dem bisherigen Forschungsstand abgeleitet, sodass Gültigkeit der Conditional Independence Assumption angenommen und ein kausaler Effekt geschätzt werden kann. Modelliert wird die Schätzung mittels Difference-in-Differences Propensity Score Matching.

Sieg oder Schwächung der Gewerkschaften? Die Auswirkungen des allgemeinen gesetzlichen Mindestlohns auf die Gewerkschaftsmitgliedschaft.

Thu, 10 Oct 2019 19:46:55 +0000

The German Statutory Minimum Wage’s Impact on German Trade Unions’ Membership

Thu, 05 Sep 2019 14:38:09 +0000

This contribution scrutinizes how the 2015 introduction of a general minimum wage in Germany impacts on German trade unions’ membership by applying a difference-in-differences model on entries in and withdrawals from DGB affiliated unions.

The introduction of the statutory minimum wage in Germany in 2015 was a deep intervention in the autonomous negotiation of wages and working conditions by the trade unions and employer representatives. The ‘Act on the Strengthening of Free Collective Bargaining’ (Tarifautonomiestärkungsgesetz) was implemented in order to guarantee a decent hourly wage for the employees on the one hand and – according to its name – to strengthen the social partnership.

Trade unions welcomed the introduction of the statutory minimum wage and claimed it as a success of their mobilization efforts, which is remarkable regarding that until the early 2000s they rejected a statutory minimum wage because of its undermining effect on their claim to be the exclusive agent of workers’ interests. However, at least since the so called Hartz-reforms were taking effect in the mid of the 2000s, the low-wage sector enlarged rapidly and all efforts to strengthen the position of the unions in this sector could not substantially improve the working conditions and payments in some segments of the labour market. Without the power to directly exert pressure on the employer representatives in collective bargaining, the unions widened their repertory and started to advocate the introduction of a general statutory minimum wage in Germany. This action conflicts not only with the principle of autonomous wage setting by social partners, but also with the narrative that unions focus merely on their members’ benefits because the union density among workers who earned less than the proposed minimum wage was marginal.

This contradiction is resolved in a wider view according to which unions recognized that their (potential) members called increasingly for a statutory minimum wage as a political project. Thus, unions incrementally realigned their interest towards the introduction of a minimum wage in order to increase their attractively for old and new members in a time of decreasing number of trade unionists.

In consideration of the positive expectations of the unions regarding to the impact of their support of the minimum wage on membership development, the question arises if the empirical data matches these expectations. This paper seeks to answer this by the investigation of the patterns of entries in and withdrawals from unions of the Confederation of German Trade Unions (DGB) before and after the introduction of the general statutory minimum wage. Based on representative data from the panel ‘Labour Market and Social Security’ (PASS), a conditional logistic difference-in-differences propensity score model is used to isolate the effect of the minimum wage introduction on the fluctuation of union members.

Overall no causal effect of the introduction is found for the probability of leaving a union by people in the low-wage sector. However, a causal effect on the probability of entering a union is detected. The new minimum wage law reduces the likelihood by about half for employees in this sector. Based on this results, this study reveals that unions’ support for the minimum wage did not increased their attractiveness for the workers who directly benefited of its introduction. Contrary the odds to strengthen their position in this segment of the labour market decreased.

Prävention als neues Paradigma der Gesundheitspolitik in OECD-Ländern? Trends und Erklärungsfaktoren.

Thu, 27 Apr 2017 15:40:23 +0000