Assessing Hypothetical Scenarios for Estimating Labor Supply Responses: Evidence from a Pension Reform

Fuchs-Schündeln, Nicola, Jonas Jessen, Pinchuan Ong and Jessica Pan

No 21946, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: We assess whether survey responses to hypothetical policy scenarios can recover actual labor supply responses from policy variation. We study the German Mütter- rente, a pension benefit crediting parents for child-rearing, benchmarking against Artmann et al. (forthcoming). Surveying mothers and fathers about a hypothetical reform modeled on that expansion, we find that mothers expect to reduce their labor supply, with an implied marginal propensity to earn of−0.65—close to the quasi-experimental estimate of−0.54. The response is sensible across subgroups, falls mainly on the extensive margin, and spills over to fathers. In the aggregate, spousal predictions match partners’ own reports.

JEL-codes: D10 D84 H55 J22 J26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-09
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP21946 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21946

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP21946

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().