Jonas Radl

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at University Carlos III de Madrid

We examine the association between parenting practices (discipline and support) and children’s cognitive effort. Cognitive effort is hard to measure; hence, little is known about effort dispositions, and how parenting practices affect effort. We analyse data from 1,148 fifth-grade students from Berlin and Madrid (around 11 years of age). Cognitive...

All around the world, school-entry cohorts are organized on an annual calendar so that the age of students in the same cohort differs by up to one year. It is a well-established finding that this age gap entails a consequential (dis)advantage for academic performance referred to as the relative age effect (RAE). This study contributes to a recent s...

A promising approach to pension policy preferences focuses on the influence of policy related information. We advance this research programme by examining the impact of information about future pension benefits, including whether information effects occur through priming, learning or both. Drawing on a novel, split-sample survey experiment in the U...

All around the world school entry cohorts are organized on an annual calendar, so that the age of students in the same cohort differs up to one year. It is a well-established finding that this age gap entails a consequential (dis)advantage for academic performance referred to as the relative age effect (RAE). This study contributes to a recent stra...

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...

Objectives This study reports the findings of the first cross-national survey experiment on the effects of information on the expected retirement age. Given the drawbacks of unrealistic retirement expectations, the study examines the impacts of nonpartisan information about future demographic aging and forecasted pension benefit levels. Methods An...

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 p...

The first goal of this study is to examine the capacity of prominent survey-based effort proxies to predict real effort provision in children. Do children who “talk the talk” of hard work also “walk the walk” and make costly effort investments? The second goal is to assess how objective and subjective effort measures are related under two condition...

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 conse...

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 growt...

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 toolkit...

Despite its benefits for prolonging careers, participation in training is far lower among older employees (age 50+) than among younger employees. This study analyses gender differences in older employees’ training participation. To investigate the predictors of training intensity, we examine two forms of training: formal educational programmes and...

The current landscape of retirement is changing dramatically as population aging becomes increasingly visible. This review of pressing retirement issues advocates research on (1) changing meanings of retirement; (2) impact of technology; (3) the role of housing in retirement; (4) human resource strategies; (5) adjustment to changing retirement poli...

This article examines the labour market outcomes of immigrants in Spain, a country that has become a migration destination only since the end of the 1990s. Differentiating between first and second generation of immigrant descent, we compare the labour market involvement of the main ethnic groups with the majority group. One particular focus is to u...

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 pr...

This study addresses the relationship between various family forms and the level of cognitive and non-cognitive skills among 15- to 16-year-old students. We measure cognitive skills using standardized scores in mathematics; non-cognitive abilities are captured by a composite measure of internal locus of control related to mathematics. A particular...

Despite a growing interest in the effects of job loss, research on its consequences for older workers and their economic situation in retirement remains scant. Using 30 years of data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we examine the incidence and consequences of job loss at ages 50 to 64, following displaced workers for up to 10 years aft...

Generally perceived as a symptom of economic and social progress, early retirement in Spain has long been supported by all relevant actors. However, in recent years—and especially since the great recession—it is widely seen as a problematic phenomenon in need of reversal. To promote active aging and cope with growing social security outlays, the in...

For more than three decades, many European and other affluent societies have been following a trend of fostering older workers’ exit from employment well before reaching formal retirement ages. Yet, faced with demographic aging, many countries have undergone a substantial change in their policies toward older workers, reflected in a shift to a poli...

In this study we examine the extent to which preschool education can reduce social background differentials in learning outcomes across countries; our focus is on whether the benefits of preschool attendance for children depend on other family inputs such as parents’ education and their pedagogical involvement during early childhood. We use the 201...

This paper 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...

Given the efforts in raising the statutory pension age in an aging Europe, this cross-national analysis investigates constrained retirement from a comparative perspective. Based on a conceptualization of retirement transitions as a multi-faceted phenomenon, the study distinguishes objective (external) constraints and the subjective self-assessment...

This chapter explores the socio-economic characteristics, job mobility and retirement attitudes of working pensioners in the Russian Federation. Working beyond pension age is a relatively common phenomenon in Russia where pensionable ages are low, old-age benefits are slim and pension benefits are fully compatible with labour earnings. These instit...

This paper examines how volunteering varies over the life course. Based on three theoretical explanations (resources, interests, and role substitution), we analyze how changing family characteristics, employment status, and educational attainment affects individual volunteering behavior. Drawing on longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic P...

Does the Great Recession impact inequality of educational outcomes? Although contributions on the effects of the global crisis on a number of social aspects have started to emerge (e.g., Grusky et al., 2011), little is known about how inequality of educational attainment is affected by macro level trends such as changes in the economic cycle or in...

Research on preschool education and day-care programs is gaining momentum since the discovery of its potential to reduce social inequalities in educational attainment. Much of this research relies on case studies to measure mid and long term effects of preschool attendance on academic performance and school transitions. In this paper we adopt a bro...

Background: In this paper we study the long-term consequences of parental divorce in a comparative perspective. Special attention is paid to the heterogeneity of the consequences of divorce for children’s educational attainment by parental education. Objective: The study attempts to establish whether the parental breakup penalty for tertiary educa...

Russia provides an interesting context for studying the labor market experiences of the elderly because of its experience with market transition, its looming growth in the elderly dependency ratio, and its unusual pension policies that do not penalize pensioners for working. We use data from twenty surveys of the Russian population conducted from F...

The monograph disseminates the very topical issue of retirement and its timing as the key to one of the greatest challenges facing ageing societies. Postponing retirement is now almost universally regarded as indispensable in order to relieve European welfare states from the demography-related financial pressures. This seminal study, derived from a...

La calidad del sistema educativo es determinante para el futuro de un país y el progreso de sus ciudadanos. Por ello, es clave contar con investigaciones que proporcionen un análisis profundo del estado de la educación y sugieran vías de mejora. El libro analiza la influencia del origen socioeconómico de los alumnos en su rendimiento académico y ha...

Education is one of the pillars of advanced society. the quality of an edu- cation system determines to a great extent the future possibilities of a soci- ety, as countries with effective education systems are better able to address the challenges of an increasingly globalised and more competitive world. In addition to the implications for the econ...

This article 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...

The relationship between gender and retirement in Spain is paradoxical. The female employment rate between the ages of 55 and 64 is slightly more than half that of the male rate, whilst the average retirement age amongst women is much higher. Using event-history analysis techniques, this paper analyses whether this puzzling gender difference is due...

The ageism debate has pointed to the persistence of negative age stereotypes that hinder the prolongation of working lives. However, the actual holders of discriminatory norms have remained largely anonymous because there is limited understanding of the pervasiveness of age norms. This article discusses arguments derived from life course and social...

Research on social stratification and the transmission of inequality has largely disregarded the role of inter-vivos transfers to adult children. At the same time, the role of social class has been neglected in the literature on intergenerational transfers. In an attempt to link the two research strands, the article assesses the association between...

Although there are numerous studies on the role of social connections in early working life, research that examines how social connectedness matters in the later stages of a career is scarce. The present study analyzes to what extent social connectedness affects the timing of the transition from work to retirement. We draw on data from the German S...

This article examines the determinants of men's retirement ages in Germany. In particular, it assesses the degree of control exercised by members of different social groups over the timing of their retirement, taking account of statutory retirement ages by the use of an event history model. The findings are based on micro-data provided by the Resea...

Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag untersucht die Strukturen sozialer Ungleichheit in der zeitlichen Gestaltung des Übergangs in den Ruhestand. Das Hauptinteresse gilt den Handlungsspielräumen von in Deutschland lebenden Männern beim Eintritt in den Altersrentenbezug. Die präsentierten Ergebnisse stützen sich auf Auswertungen des Scientific Use File Versi...

This article examines the determinants of men's retirement ages in Germany. In particular, it assesses the degree of control exercised by members of different social groups over the timing of their retirement, taking account of statutory retirement ages by the use of an event history model. The findings are based on micro-data provided by the Resea...

"Mit der Anhebung der Altersgrenzen haben sich die Rahmenbedingungen des Übergangs von der Erwerbsarbeit in den Ruhestand essentiell verändert. Durch die Einführung von Abschlägen für den vorzeitigen Renteneintritt erhält die Erforschung der Strukturen sozialer Ungleichheit im Verrentungsprozess sozialpolitische Relevanz. Vor diesem Hintergrund prä...