Suchergebnisse

A társadalom idősödése a köztudatban fenyegető veszélyként él, mert megváltoztatja az eltartottak és eltartók arányát, ellehetetleníti a nyugdíjrendszert és az egészségügyet. Tanulmányunkban amellett érvelünk, hogy e veszély semlegesíthető. A korszerkezet változása ugyanis egy sor korszerkezet-érzékeny folyamatot indít be, melyek lezajlása a társadalom reakcióitól függően ellensúlyozhatja, vagy épp felerősítheti a közvetlen létszámhatásokat. Az idősödés két népesedési folyamat eredménye: a javuló halandóságé és a csökkenő termékenységé. A halandóság javulása nem feltétlenül növeli az eltartottak számát, együtt jár ugyanis az aktív kor és az időskor határának kitolódásával. Az elmúlt huszonöt évben úgy emelkedett a munkaerőpiac elhagyásának átlagos életkora négy és fél évnyit, hogy a mindenkori kilépési életkorban mért hátralévő élettartam gyakorlatilag nem változott. Ez a folyamat összefüggésbe hozható a nyugdíjkorhatár közelébe érő korcsoportok javuló iskolázottságával, és figyelembe véve az elmúlt negyedszázad felsőoktatási expanzióját, tovább folytatható. Ami a csökkenő termékenységet illeti, az alacsonyabb gyermekszám rontja ugyan a jövőbeni aktív kori létszámokat, de egyben lehetőséget teremt a ma aktív korúak fokozottabb munkavállalására és megtakarításaik növelésére. Amennyiben a kisebb termékenységű korcsoportok a lehetőséget kihasználva többet dolgoznak és többet takarítanak meg, a korszerkezet változása nem feltétlenül fogja vissza a növekedést és nem feltétlenül rontja az életszínvonalat. A 2010-es kiinduló állapot azonban nem sok jóval kecsegtet. Amennyiben nem nőnek a megtakarítások, a korszerkezet változásának hozzájárulása az életszínvonal növekedéséhez a 2020-as évek közepétől jelentős mértékben negatív lesz.

There seems to be a general consent in the expert community that Hungarian social policy provides poorly targeted benefits and services that are prone to Mattheweffects. Our results confirm this observation but we also find that the data offer an alternative interpretation of what the Hungarian welfare state is actually doing. Instead of supporting the poor it reallocates resources from the working age population to children and elderly people. It functions as an intermediary between overlapping generations that seek to finance their lifecycle by exploiting the opportunity offered by the very overlap, the fact that contemporaries are of different age. In a cross-sectional framework we analyse reallocations by age and income simultaneously and assess the relative importance of these two variables in explaining the access and contribution to public benefits. Our data from 2010 (based on EU-SILC and the Household Budget Survey) covers public transfers (cash and in-kind) and both direct and indirect taxes. We compare the importance of age and income in explaining transfers and taxes in a regression-analysis framework by studying causal importance (comparing coefficients) and dispersion importance of the variables (using Shapley-value decomposition). We find that income is irrelevant in explaining access to benefits and services but age is important. On the contribution side, income proves as important as age. This qualifies our description of the Hungarian welfare system: it serves as a channel through which affluent people in their working age support people in inactive age of all income groups.

Background: While the importance of unpaid household labour is recognised in total economic output, little is known about the demographics of household production and consumption. Objective: Our goal is to give a comprehensive estimation on the value of household production and its consumption by age and gender and analyse nonmarket economic transfers in 14 European countries based on publicly available harmonised data. Methods: We introduce a novel imputation method of harmonised European time use (HETUS) data to the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) in order to assign time spent on home production to consumers in households and estimate time transfers. Moreover, monetary values are attributed to household production activities using data on earnings from the Structure of Earnings Survey (SES). Results: We show that the nonmarket economic life cycle of men differs from that of women. The gender gap in household production is not evenly distributed over the life cycle. Women of working age contribute the most in net terms, while the main beneficiaries of household goods and services are children and to a lesser extent adult men. These patterns are similar across countries, with variations in the gender- and age-specific levels of home production and consumption. Conclusions: In Europe, in the national economy, intergenerational flows are important in sustaining both childhood and old age. In contrast, in the household economy, intergenerational transfers flow mostly towards children. Contribution: We add a new focus to the research on household production: While keeping the gender aspect, we demonstrate the importance of the life cycle component in household production.

While the importance of unpaid household labour in total economic output is recognized, little is known about the demographics of its production and consumption. Our goal is to give a comprehensive estimation on the value of production and consumption of unpaid labour by age and gender and analyse non-market economic transfers in 14 European countries, which represent about 80 per cent of the population of the European Union. Our calculations are based on publicly available harmonised data. We introduce a novel imputation method of harmonised European time use data (HETUS) to the EU income survey (EU-SILC) in order to assign time spent on home production to consumers in households. Monetary values are attributed to unpaid labour activities using harmonised data on earnings (SES). Apart from pointing out key country specific results, we make two important observations on the age patterns of non-market economic activity. First, the economic lifecycle of men and women differ. The gender gap in household production is not evenly distributed over the lifecycle and cohorts of working age women contribute the most in net terms. Secondly, the main beneficiaries of unpaid household labour are children, not adult men, nor the elderly. In contrast with the national economy, in which intergenerational flows are important in sustaining both childhood and old age, working age people almost exclusively support only children in the household economies of Europe. Older cohorts consume household goods and services mostly produced by them. With our analysis we add a new focus to the research on home production. While keeping the gender aspect, we demonstrate the importance of the lifecycle component of unpaid household labour.