Preventing a Scarring Start into the Labor Market: Integration Strategies for Young Persons with Disabilities

PURPOSE

Sociodemographic and structural conditions have consequences for the labor market participation of young persons with disabilities (YPWD) in vocational rehabilitation (VR). As the type of program determines the labor market chances, we analyze the processes of selecting active labor market programs (ALMP) in VR. Which factors determine the allocation to (1) programs in general and (2) moreover, the allocation to specific programs?

MATERIALS AND METHODS

We conduct logistic (1) and multinomial regression (2) using register data of the German Federal Employment Agency. Besides variables on the micro level, we control for a wide range of structural and organizational influences. The sample comprises VR and employment biographies of 255,009 YPWD accepted to VR between 2010 and 2015. Program participation is restricted to start 180 days after VR acceptance.

RESULTS

Sociodemographic factors, like age and the status before entering VR as well as the local apprenticeship market as a structural condition, highly influence the general allocation to ALMP. For the allocation to specific ALMP, sociodemographics (age, education, type of disability, status before entering VR) are highly relevant. Furthermore, structural conditions (regional structure of subsidized vocational training and of the apprenticeship market as well as local work possibilities on a special labor market for PWD) and - to a lesser extent - re-organization processes at the FEA (NEO, VR cohort) are important determinants.

CONCLUSION

(Automatic) paths into VR programs for especially persons with mental disabilities in sheltered workshop are clearly shown. Furthermore, it is somewhat questionable that YPWD participate more often in sheltered workshops in regions where sheltered work possibilities are more common, as well as where NEO was implemented locally; and participate more often in company-external vocational training where VR service providers are commissioned to a greater extent.

Sickness absence due to mandatory COVID-19 certificates in the workplace

BACKGROUND

As vaccines for COVID-19 became available, many countries introduced an obligation in 2021 for employees to prove their COVID-19 status at work, known in Germany as the 3G rule (vaccinated, recovered, tested). In view of the controversial debate, there was concern that employees might try to avoid providing mandatory COVID-19 certificates by taking sick leave. The aim of this study was to investigate whether mandatory COVID-19 tests in the workplace led to such an evasive response.

METHOD

For an empirical panel analysis, we collected data from official sources and combined aggregated health insurance data on sick leave, epidemiological data on laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 infections, and vaccination rates for the German states from September 2021 to January 2022. We used a regional panel data analysis to estimate the impact of the mandatory COVID-19 certificates at the workplace on workers' sick leave. The regional vaccination rate reflected differences in treatment intensity.

RESULTS

This study contributes to the limited evidence on the potential impact of introducing mandatory COVID-19 certificates at the workplace on sickness absence rates. In fact, our results showed that after controlling for infection rates, a one percentage point lower vaccination rate led to a 0.021 percentage point increase in the sickness absence rate when the 3G rule came into effect. This effect was measured with high statistical precision. In addition, in robustness checks, we controlled for a number of other possible influencing factors that may have affected sickness behaviours, such as time-varying labour market situations. However, the results remained robust.

CONCLUSIONS

The results of our empirical panel analysis implied that mandatory COVID-19 certificates in the workplace led to evasive responses and to additional days of sick leave of a relevant magnitude. Testing obligations were meant to help contain the epidemic. However, when introducing controversial obligations, it is important to consider evasive responses and to design the rules appropriately and communicate them convincingly.

Persistence of commuting habits: context effects in Germany

In this study, I investigate the commuting behavior of workers in Germany. Using comprehensive geo-referenced administrative employee and firm data, I can calculate the exact commuting time and the distance between workers' residence and workplace locations. Based on a behavioral economic approach (Simonson and Tveresky in J Mark Res 29:281-295, 1992), I show that individual commuting decisions are influenced by wages and individual heterogeneity as well as depending on the context individuals observed in the past. In particular, my results show that previously observed commutes have an impact on subsequent commuting behavior: workers choose longer commuting times in the region they recently moved to when the average commute in the region they left was longer. The results indicate that while selectivity and sorting do not influence the effect of the context, the inclusion of individual fixed effects is crucial.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00168-023-01223-4.

Adolescent school injuries and classroom sex compositions in German secondary schools

BACKGROUND

School injuries are an important adolescent health problem. Previous research suggests that relevant risk behaviors for school injuries, risk-taking and aggression, are highly susceptible to peer effects. Specifically, evidence suggests that the ratio of men and women in peer groups (sex ratio) affects individuals' propensity for aggression and risk-taking. However, potential associations of classroom sex ratios with adolescent school injury risks have not been studied so far. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the association of classroom sex compositions with adolescent school injuries.

METHODS

We investigate the association of classroom sex ratios with school injuries in a longitudinal survey dataset containing 13,131 observations from 9,204 adolescent students (ages 13-16) from secondary schools in Germany. The data also allow us to identify injuries due to aggressive behavior and analyze these injuries in detail. We use multilevel logistic regression models to analyze risks of both overall and aggression-related school injuries.

RESULTS

Adolescent students' risk for school injuries is significantly and positively associated with male-skewed classroom sex ratios (OR = 1.012, p=0.012). Specifically, the risk of sustaining a school injury increases by 33.5 percent when moving from the 10th to the 90th classroom sex ratio percentile. Moreover, we find an even stronger positive association between male-dominated classrooms and aggression-related injury risks (OR = 1.022, p=0.010). Compared to classroom sex ratios at the 10th percentile, the risk of an aggression-related injury is 78 percent higher in classrooms with a sex ratio at the 90th percentile. Finally, we find that both boys' and girls' injury risks equally increase with a higher proportion of male students in their classroom.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings indicate that sex composition of classrooms is an important contextual factor for adolescent school injuries, in particular school injuries resulting from aggression. These findings illustrate the need to integrate a contextual perspective on school injuries among adolescent students both into research and into intervention planning.

Distributional effects of macroeconomic shocks in real-time: A novel method applied to the COVID-19 crisis in Germany

The highly dynamic nature of the COVID-19 crisis poses an unprecedented challenge to policy makers around the world to take appropriate income-stabilizing countermeasures. To properly design such policy measures, it is important to quantify their effects in real-time. However, data on the relevant outcomes at the micro level is usually only available with considerable time lags. In this paper, we propose a novel method to assess the distributional consequences of macroeconomic shocks and policy responses in real-time and provide the first application to Germany in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, our approach combines different economic models estimated on firm- and household-level data: a VAR-model for output expectations, a structural labor demand model, and a tax-benefit microsimulation model. Our findings show that as of September 2020 the COVID-19 shock translates into a noticeable reduction in gross labor income across the entire income distribution. However, the tax benefit system and discretionary policy responses to the crisis act as important income stabilizers, since the effect on the distribution of disposable household incomes turns progressive: the bottom two deciles actually gain income, the middle deciles are hardly affected, and only the upper deciles lose income.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10888-021-09489-4.

Self-selection of Asylum Seekers: Evidence From Germany

I examine the pattern of selection on education of asylum seekers recently arrived in Germany from five key source countries: Afghanistan, Albania, Iraq, Serbia, and Syria. The analysis relies on original individual-level data collected in Germany combined with surveys conducted at origin. The results reveal a positive pattern of selection on education for asylum seekers who were able to flee Iraq and Syria, and the selection is neutral for individuals seeking asylum from Afghanistan and negative for asylum seekers from Albania and Serbia. I provide an interpretation of these patterns based on differences in the expected length of stay at destination, the migration costs faced by asylum seekers to reach Germany, and the size of migration networks at destination.