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The at-risk-of-poverty rate, the relative income poverty indicator applied in the EU, can be highly sensitive to the equivalence scale used to transform household income to an equivalent for individuals. This study applies two well-established approaches to estimate the equivalence scale: an 'objective' one, based on consumption expenditures available in the national Household Budget Survey, and a 'subjective' one, based on the Minimum Income Question available in EU-Statistics on Income and Living Conditions data. The aim is to contrast the two estimated equivalence scales in the Czech Republic in the 2006-2016 period with the OECD-modified scale applied uniformly for decades across the EU countries. Our findings suggest that the adult weight in the equivalence scale is decreasing over time, while the child weight is relatively stable under both approaches. The estimated weights are lower than the officially applied ones, with the exception of the expenditure-based adult weight, which is very close to the OECD-modified weight. Applying the estimated scales affects the income poverty rate and leads to different rates than the official ones: while the trend of the rates is similar when the two estimated scales are used, the official income poverty rate deviates from those two.

When developing anti-poverty policies, policy makers need accurate data on the prevalence of poverty. In this paper, we focus on subjective poverty, a concept which has been largely neglected in literature, yet remains a conceptually appealing way to define poverty. The primary goal of this study is to re-examine the concept of subjective poverty measurement and to estimate trends in subjective poverty rates in the European Union. Our estimations are based on a minimum income question using data from a representative survey, EU-SILC, and we find a decreasing trend in subjective poverty in 16 of 28 countries. Conversely, the official relative income poverty indicator exhibits increasing trends in eleven countries, with decreasing trends in only four countries. We believe that these trends may reflect changes in societies which have not been previously captured, and our results thus enrich the existing data on general poverty trends in the EU.

Empirical literature offers a number of studies suggesting that living conditions in childhood can significantly influence achievements and living conditions in adulthood. The aim of this paper is to answer the question: To what extent is the intergenerational transmission of poverty associated with social mobility (in terms of educational and occupational intergenerational mobility) in the European Union (and Iceland, Switzerland and Norway)? Our analyses are based on EU-SILC 2011, ‘Intergenerational transmission of disadvantages’ module microdata. Interpretations of the findings are based on the ordered logit models estimated at European and country levels. The results suggest that both educational and occupational mobility are in a statistically significant positive relationship with the intergenerational transmission of poverty (proxied by a change in the perceived financial stress of the household).

This paper contributes to the debate about the impact of the transition to subjective well-being. After reviewing the relevant literature the authors draw on the surveys of the European Values Study between 1991 and 2008 to describe the trends in life satisfaction in 13 "Western" and 11 "Eastern" countries. The analysis finds that life satisfaction levels in transition countries have come to approach those in the West: the "rather unhappy" 1990s were followed by the "rather happy" 2000s. The correlation between life satisfaction and GDP reflects this process of convergence: the two separate lines in 1991 merge to become a single continuum later on. The characteristics of respondents are however more important than GDP, and a regression of life satisfactions with basic demographic and stratification variables shows their reinforcing effect in both Eastern and Western countries. As a result, the explained variance of life satisfaction was increasing. The findings of other surveys reporting on developments of attitudes since 2008 vary but are far from proving a uniform negative impact of economic recession on life satisfaction. The paper concludes by suggesting that various surveys have to be compared in order to obtain more reliable information on the development and factors of subjective well-being.

This thesis adopts three stepwise perspectives to look at earnings inequality. It applies Czech data from two surveys, Microcensus and Living Conditions, covering the period 1988-2008, and European dataset EU-SILC 2008 and 2009 for international comparisons. The first essay "Personal Earnings Inequality" analyzes personal earnings distribution in the Czech Republic since the early transition from communism, using relative distribution method. The trend of "hollowing of the middle" was confirmed in the early transition, but this phenomenon later subsided. Earnings polarization was apparent for all sex and education subgroups between 1988 and 1996. In international comparison, earnings of men and highly educated are more homogenous than earnings of their counterparts in most analyzed countries. The second essay "Gender Wage Gap" quantifies the structure of gender wage gaps in four Central-East European countries (CEE), using the Heckman regression model and Oaxaca- Blinder decomposition. The observed gender wage gap is substantially higher in the Czech Republic and Slovakia than in Hungary and Poland. A relatively small but positive part of the observed gender wage gap can be explained by gender differences in characteristics in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, with a high contribution of job...

We analyze labor market flows and unemployment in the Czech Republic (CR), Slovakia and Poland over the period 2004-2007. Relative involvement of working-age population in gross labor market flows is approximately five times lower in central Europe than in the U.S. /UK. Yet, compared to neighboring countries, the CR suffers more from unemployment rigidity, as evidenced most convincingly by a relatively weakernet flowof workers from unemployment to employment. This net flow alone would cut the unemployment rate in Poland more than twice as fast as in the CR. The CR lags behind in creating jobs forthe unemployed, particularly for men, individuals with primary education, and for the 55-65 age group.

The European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) set of surveys are an important source of comparative statistical data. EU-SILC provides data on income, living conditions, poverty and social exclusion, material deprivation: topics of growing interest to scholars in Europe and elsewhere. EU-SILC surveys are fielded in 29 European countries and coordinated by Eurostat. Although the survey is harmonised, the individual level microdata consists of many dissimilarities across participating countries because of different national conditions, methods of data collection and/or data processing. The aim of this article is to discuss the opportunities and limitations of EU-SILC datasets. In addition to discussing the development, methodology and basic pitfalls of EU-SILC, this article focuses on (a) income variables, (b) differences in income among countries and (c) impact of income differentials on data comparability. The main problems of income data may be summarised as follows. 1) Some countries use registers to report income variables while others obtain this information from interviews, and this difference lowers their comparability. 2) The incidence of negative or zero values makes the construction of poverty and inequality measures difficult. 3) There are national differences in the net-to-gross income conversion procedure. This study shows using a four country analysis that the net-to-gross conversion procedure overestimates gross wages in two countries and underestimates it in two others. Notwithstanding these methodological issues, EU-SILC is an important resource for the comparative study of income.

This study analyses the income distribution within couples in the Czech Republic and ten European countries using the EU-SILC 2005 database. Data from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) database supplement the analysis with previous period (1986 - 2000). Women, on average, contribute less to a couple's income than men. Among the included countries, within-couple income inequality tends to be lower in the new EU member states than in the old ones, with the Czech Republic being the exception. Within-couple income inequality has two crucial factors: employment of female partners and, subsequently, their wages. In the context of the first, the inter-generational transmission of the traditional model of the family proved to have a significant negative impact on the female employment decision mainly in the old EU member states. Finally, gender wage gaps between men and women who live in a couple were examined and compared with the gender wage gaps for single individuals. The gender wage gap proved to be higher for cohabiting individuals than for singles even after adjusting for gender differences in individual and job characteristics.

This paper analyzes the inequality of personal earnings in the Czech Republic since the early transition from communism, using relative distribution method. It applies data from two surveys, Microcensus and Living Conditions, covering the period from 1988 to 2008. The trend suggested by many recent empirics, hollowing of the middle, was confirmed in the early stages of transition, but later subsided. Earnings polarization was apparent for all sex and education subgroups between the years 1988 and 1996. For international comparison the European dataset EU-SILC 2008 has been used, focusing on four countries: Austria, Germany, Hungary, and Poland. Earnings distributions by gender and education have been analyzed, establishing that male earnings distribution is more homogenous than female, and earnings of highly educated people are more concentrated in the middle than earnings of less educated people.

This paper aims to quantify the impact of the minimum wage on labour market performance in the Czech Republic. Using regional data for 1995-2004, it estimates the effect of the minimum wage adjusted for regional wage differential on the regional unemployment. Consequently, using detail individual data from 2004/2005, we analyze the annual hikes in the minimum wage that allow us to estimate employment probabilities for workers with wage level at, or close to, the new minimum wage. The aim is to reveal whether the most endangered groups of workers exhibited significantly different employment probabilities. Our results reveal that the minimum wage has had a significant impact on increasing regional unemployment and reducing the employment probabilities of low-paid workers.

This paper aims to quantify the impact of social benefits on labor market participation in the Czech Republic. It applies the logistic regression to estimate the probability of labor market participation depending on social benefits related to net wage of the individuals, controlling for individual and household characteristics (age, presence of spouse and children etc.). The work disincentives via social benefits do exist and proved to be relatively strong. When trying to understand the reasons for recently decreasing participation rate in the Czech Republic, the often called generous Czech social benefit system appears to be relevant.

Employment or, more precisely, participation of women on the labor market is one of the most apparent gender inequalities on the labor market. Economic theories explaining the segregation can be divided into three broader categories: neo-classic and human capital theories, theory of discrimination and finally institutional theory and labor market segmentation theory. The elimination of causes of these inequalities by appropriate policies implementation would help the better use of women working potential and the higher labor market effectivity. There are applied several policies in the Czech Republic which not only does not support the female participation but have rather negative influence. In this study, I investigate the impact of the two policy means, which can negatively influence the labor supply of women in the Czech Republic. First, joint taxation of spouses was enabled. The marginal tax-rate of women increases very often in case of profiting spouses; women might therefore lower their labor supply. Second, the system of the parental leave influences the female participation. The current Czech system can create significant barrier to women in entry and return to the labor market. Therefore, it leads to an excessive loss of the women human capital which markedly lowers their further employability.

Problems of women labor market is currently one of the most discussed issues. The member states of the European Union are supposed to perform an effort to increase female employment rate for which, namely the support of women's participation, is needed. In this study, I investigate the impact of the two policy means, which negatively influence the labor supply of women in the Czech Republic. First, joint taxation of spouses was enabled. The marginal tax-rate of women increases very often; women might therefore lower their labor supply. Second, the system of the parental leave influences the female participation. The current Czech system can create significant barrier to women in entry and return to the labor market. Therefore, it leads to an excessive loss of the women human capital. Better accessibility of part time jobs could ease the re-entry of women to the labor market. However, part-time work is also connected to various negative factors, especially the lower wages. The last part of my thesis analyzes the wage gap between the men and women. The decrease of the gender pay gap does not mean that the position of women has improved because it can be caused by participation lowering of women with potentially low wage. The pay gap consists of several components which stem not only from discrimination but...

The phenomenon of the Wage curve, discovered by Blanchflower and Oswald, has shown a remarkable persistence in time and across different countries. It relates the regional unemployment rate negatively to the absolute level of wages. This work examines the presence of the wage curve in the Czech Republic by two different models using district level data. A panel model is constructed for 2008-2017 and a cross-sectional model with additional control variables is specified for 2011. The data on average wage in this work are related to specific employees with multiple sources of income. The wage curve is then found with a coefficient of -0.42 for the longitudinal analysis and -0.78 for isolated cross- section. However, after including fixed regional effects in the panel model, the wage-unemployment elasticity diminishes to zero. The other part of this work studies the convergence in the Czech Republic district wage levels. By means of σ and β convergence indicators, it is concluded that the wages converged in the period of 2008-2017, with a faster rate in years 2013-2017. JEL Classification J22, J31, J51, R15 Keywords Wage curve, Unemployment, Regional wage, Czech Republic, Labor economics, Wage conver- gence Title The Wage Curve and Regional Salary Differen- tials in the Czech Republic Author's e-mail...

This thesis examines whether in the United States among young college gradu- ates in male-dominated dominated job fields the the gender wage differential is reversed, i.e, women earn more than similar men. The thesis further adds two additional hypotheses that narrow the examination down to large employers and singles. To evaluate those hypotheses the thesis estimates linear regression models for each of the male-dominated job field and each hypothesis using data from 2017 National Survey of College Graduates (NSCG). Although the results revealed that in IT and mathematics and in physical sciences women earned more than similar men, with the effects being more pro- found among those working for large employers and among singles, the results were not statistically significant. Those results are, however, still important in context of societal narrative and gender wage gap literature, since they do not hint any potential discrimination of women in male-dominated fields. JEL Classification J31, J38, J70 Keywords United States, gender wage gap, gender wage differential, gender inequality, discrimination, college, men, women

The gender job satisfaction paradox is a phenomenon occurring when despite their disadvantaged labour market position, women consistently report higher levels of job satisfaction than men. This thesis aims to verify the presence of a gender paradox of job satisfaction, analyze the labor conditions and job per- ceptions of workers in the Czech Republic to provide employers a sense of job aspects making male and female workers more productive, motivated and satis- fied. The study uses sub-sample of employees from International Social Survey Programme data from 2015. The study applies four regression models to reveal the relationship between job satisfaction and gender, other socio-demographic factors and various work aspects. The outcomes revealed some significant dif- ferences between males and females, specifically discrimination based on sex or disadvantage of women regarding income and access to leading positions. De- spite the theory of gender paradox, predicting women to be more satisfied at work than men, the analysis showed the opposite. This study discovered, that the most relevant aspects of work, that affect the overall job satisfaction are relations with co-workers and management, interesting job, independence at work and specifically for men having subordinate(s), working on weekends,...

Unemployment rate is a key macroeconomic indicator of a state's prosperity. This study aims to investigate the effect of ex-prisoners on unemployment rate at times of low rate of unemployment. The subjects of interest are those released from prison upon serving their sentence and their integration into the labour market. Currently, formerly incarcerated individuals are often socially rejected and discriminated by the public, which usually results in their return to prison. Thus, as a means to prevent recidivism, it is important to reintegrate them back into the society. In this vein, this study also examines the effect of unemployment rates and ex-prisoners on the recidivism rate in the Czech Republic in 1992 to 2018. For the 2014 to 2018 period, it further investigates this effect (i.e. of unemployment rates and ex-prisoners on recidivism rates) by month across 13 regions (there is no prison in the Zlín region). It uses the data provided by the Prison Services Yearbooks, as well as data from the Czech Statistical Office and the Integrated Portal of the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs for information specifically regarding the main macroeconomic indicators of the Czech Republic. The results of the various models run indicate no significant effect of released prisoners on unemployment rate....

This paper explores the implications of tax policy on the migration habits of the wealthiest of tax paying groups in certain U.S. states, and quantifies those implications for readers so they have a better understanding of how human behavior and tax systems interact. This is done so by examining the general phenomena of tax related migration as it manifests itself in specific real- world examples. As such, this paper projects the number of high-income taxpayers lost based on increases to the rates of personal income tax, and the associated tax dollar gains/losses (i.e. to what extent are top-tax bracket filers "voting with their feet"?). The paper provides calculations for three different rates of population sensitivity, and the corresponding numbers of lost tax payers in relation to a tax increase. The paper then goes on to show the diminishing returns of tax rate increases on top-tax bracket payers by calculating the amount of time needed for migration to completely offset the original gains from the high rate of taxation. The findings of this paper, which examine the states of New York, California, and Connecticut, conclude that these states will exhaust tax gains from a 5% income tax increases on top-tax bracket payers in the long term (46 - 142 years), and further concentrate their top-tax...

National and cross-national data from EU-SILC surveys are used for various comparisons: of different indicators of poverty; of this data source with administrative data; of the time of remaining in poverty according to various indicators; of the situation in the Czech Republic with EU countries. The advantages of the “subjective” poverty indicator based on reporting on make ends meet are stressed.

UNIVERZITA KARLOVA V PRAZE FAKULTA SOCIÁLNÍCH VĚD Institut ekonomických studií Jindřich Matoušek Flexicurity on the Czech Labour Market: An Application in European Context Abstract of Bachelor Thesis Praha 2011 Abstract During the course of my bachelor thesis, I deal with a concept of flexicurity in the Czech Republic. The concept merges two apparently opposite components of labour market, i.e. flexibility and security. Furthermore, this approach has been spontaneously developed in Denmark and the Netherlands and became an inherent part of socio-legal labour market policies promoted by European Union at the beginning of the twentieth century. First part of this paper reviews a situation of both components of flexicurity in the Czech Republic at the time when this thesis is formed. It describes the evolution of unemployment as well as the degree of flexibility and security on the Czech labour market and compares them with current situation in the rest of European states. Second part analyses flexible forms of employment in the Czech Republic, such as part-time jobs and its microeconomic implications. In the final section, I focus on the evaluation of elements which affected the unemployment rate in the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2008. Title: Flexicurity on the Czech Labour Market: An Application in European...

This bachelor thesis studies social policies across Europe and models that can be detected among social security systems. Analysis of models is based on earlier studies that had examined the EU member states before the states of Eastern Europe joined in 2004. In this thesis the author extended the theory to examine current situation, when the European Union comprises 27 members. With an emphasis on social policy, social models are set in the context of strategies that the European Commission issued as incentives for social reform. Part of this work is the evaluation of social models and their possible convergence to the European social model.