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This introduction to the special issue “Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Effort” highlights the relevance of effort as a research object and pinpoints the potential of various approaches to contribute to the advancement of knowledge on this multifaceted phenomenon. Addressing three dimensions of research – on the measurement, determinants, and consequences of effort –, the paper also gives an overview of the collection of articles in the special issue. In terms of measurement, we distinguish between self-reported invididual characteristics related to effort, on the one hand, and behavioral measures of effort referring to task performance on the other. Concerning determinants, we review the ways in which studies find incentives, personality characteristics, and family background to affect individual effort provisions. Finally, when it comes to consequences, we discuss effort as a source of legitimate entitlement to rewards, speaking to normative theories of justice, and effort as a driver of socio-economic achievement, referencing debates about the respective benefits of cognitive and non-cognitive skills. In concluding, the paper distills selected lessons learned for future research on effort.

This article analyzes the impact of marital status and spousal employment on the timing of retirement in Germany and Spain. Retirement behavior is examined by means of event–history models, with a competing risks framework being used to distinguish between voluntary and involuntary work-exit transitions. To take account of the role of social policies, we adopt a comparative approach. Data are drawn from a 2006 special retirement module implemented analogously in national labor force surveys. The results show that spousal labor market participation plays a large role in work-exit transitions, even when retirement is involuntary. This finding questions the widespread belief that coretirement is exclusively due to preference for joint retirement shared among spouses. Moreover, widows and widowers tend to retire prematurely in Germany, whereas no such effect could be found in Spain. This finding is explained by reference to specific economic incentives arising from national pension legislation.

This paper analyses social variability in retirement timing. It draws on a social stratification perspective, which arguably provides a richer theoretical framework than one-dimensional pull or push approaches. The first objective is to establish how class membership influences both the timing of retirement as well as the degree of accessibility to different pathways to retirement. The second objective is to elucidate the interplay of gender and class in work-exit dynamics. The empirical analysis uses data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) to estimate a series of event-history models for a sample of respondents from 11 Western European countries. The results show that social class exerts a strong influence on retirement processes, over and beyond other socio-economic characteristics, and especially on the risk of involuntary retirement. Employment constraints (push factors) and economic incentives (pull factors) affect workers in different class positions in markedly different ways. While there exist significant gender differences in retirement behaviour, these appear to be largely driven by women’s lower class positions. The article concludes that ill health and unemployment remain heavy obstacles to prolonging working life in contemporary Western Europe.

This article addresses the impact of economic climate, and particularly of the Great Recession, on the configuration of educational expectations among students around 14 years old. We analyze expectations regarding educational attainment conditional on school performance and compare our results across countries with varying levels of economic growth over time. We expect a changing economic environment to impact on (a) the average level of educational expectations, (b) the association between social background and expectations, and (c) the association between school grades and expectations. Using pooled data from TIMSS for the years 2003, 2007 and 2011 among 8th graders for 24 developed countries, we estimate a set of country-fixed effects and hierarchical random-slope linear regression models. Most notably, our results indicate that economic down times depress educational expectations, especially among average-performing students, and lead to a growth in educational inequalities by family background.

Policy toolkits provide useful information and can be drawn upon as guidance in different stages of the policy-making process. This chapter reviews existing policy toolkits on employment and ageing, aiming to distil a conceptual categorisation intended to inform research uptake strategies. As a basis, we develop a clear definition of policy toolkits and propose a typology of policy tools that consists of four types: (1) good practice, (2) social indicators, (3) programme evaluation and (4) forecasts, projections and simulations. We also describe the underlying relationship between research and policy-making, and provide a synthetic overview of toolkits available for ageing-related issues in the area of employment and pensions. We conclude with the observation that effective policy toolkits hinge on the prior formulation of clear policy goals and that different policy goals may not always be congruent with each other or be simultaneously achieved.

Gender discrimination is often regarded as an important driver of women’s disadvantage in the labour market, yet earlier studies show mixed results. However, because different studies employ different research designs, the estimates of discrimination cannot be compared across countries. By utilizing data from the first harmonized comparative field experiment on gender discrimination in hiring in six countries, we can directly compare employers’ callbacks to fictitious male and female applicants. The countries included vary in a number of key institutional, economic, and cultural dimensions, yet we found no sign of discrimination against women. This cross-national finding constitutes an important and robust piece of evidence. Second, we found discrimination against men in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and the UK, and no discrimination against men in Norway and the United States. However, in the pooled data the gender gradient hardly differs across countries. Our findings suggest that although employers operate in quite different institutional contexts, they regard female applicants as more suitable for jobs in female-dominated occupations, ceteris paribus, while we find no evidence that they regard male applicants as more suitable anywhere.

Gender discrimination is often regarded as an important driver of women’s disadvantage in the labour market, yet earlier studies show mixed results. However, because different studies employ different research designs, the estimates of discrimination cannot be compared across countries. By utilizing data from the first harmonized comparative field experiment on gender discrimination in hiring in six countries, we can directly compare employers’ callbacks to fictitious male and female applicants. The countries included vary in a number of key institutional, economic, and cultural dimensions, yet we found no sign of discrimination against women. This cross-national finding constitutes an important and robust piece of evidence. Second, we found discrimination against men in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and the UK, and no discrimination against men in Norway and the United States. However, in the pooled data the gender gradient hardly differs across countries. Our findings suggest that although employers operate in quite different institutional contexts, they regard female applicants as more suitable for jobs in female-dominated occupations, ceteris paribus, while we find no evidence that they regard male applicants as more suitable anywhere.

Can specific policies support the economic integration of immigrants? Despite the crucial importance of this question, existing evidence is inconclusive. Using data from the European Social Survey, we estimate the effects of integration and anti-discrimination policies, alongside social expenditure and labor market regulation, on the labor market performance of 6,176 non-European immigrants across 23 European countries. We make three contributions: 1) we investigate the distinct role of discrete policy areas for labor market integration outcomes, 2) we allow for heterogeneous effects of policies on immigrants with different characteristics, and 3) we examine immigrants’ occupational attainment while accounting for their selection into employment. We find that immigrants’ employment chances are negatively associated with national levels of expenditure on welfare benefits but positively associated with policies facilitating immigrant access to social security. We also find that labor market rigidity is negatively associated with immigrants’ occupational attainment, but we find little evidence that policies aimed at supporting the transferability of immigrants’ qualifications promote their occupational success. Our results strongly suggest that anti-discrimination policies are important for immigrant economic integration. Yet while these policies are associated with greater occupational success for all female immigrants, they seem to be only positively associated with the occupational attainment of higher-skilled and non-Muslim immigrant men. As this article suggests, anti-discrimination policies can foster immigrants’ labor market success, yet these policies currently fail to reach those who face the strongest anti-immigrant sentiments — that is, unskilled male immigrants and Muslim immigrant men.

Previous research unequivocally shows that immigrants are less successful in the labour market than the native-born population. However, little is known about whether ethnic inequality persists after retirement. We use data on 16 Western European countries from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC, 2004–2013) to provide the first comparative study of ethnic inequalities among the population aged 65 and older. We focus on the retirement income gap (RIG) between immigrants from non-European Union countries and relate its magnitude to country differences in welfare state arrangements. Ethnic inequality after retirement is substantial: after adjusting for key characteristics including age, education and occupational status, the average immigrant penalty across the 16 countries is 28 per cent for men and 29 per cent for women. Country-level regressions show that income gaps are smaller in countries where the pension system is more redistributive. We also find that easy access to long-term residence is associated with larger RIGs, at least for men. There is no clear evidence that immigrants’ access to social security programmes, welfare state transfers to working-age households or the strictness of employment protection legislation affect the size of the RIG