Travail et économie publique externe

Du 30/11/2017 de 12:30 à 13:45

VAN DEN BERG Gerard (University of BRISTOL)

Conditions Early in Life and the Ensuing Shape of the Age-Earnings Profile over the Full Working Life

Adverse conditions in utero and around birth are known to exert long-run effects on health and cognitive ability at high ages. We investigate at what ages these effects start to affect individual labor earnings. We distinguish between nutritional shortages early in life and exposure to stress without nutritional components. To this aim we consider various types of adverse contextual conditions in early life and we exploit the variation in temporal and regional exposure to these conditions, among birth cohorts in Germany born in 1935-1950. This includes bombardments on the civilian population and famines. We use population register data covering tens of millions of individuals, providing individual-merged records of birth place, birth date and the individual age-earnings profile over the full working life. These are merged with historical sources of daily bombardments per municipality and local food rations. The data volume as well as the daily recordings of exposure allow us to make precise inference on the ages at which effects on earnings are strongest.