Klaus F. Zimmermann

• CEO at Global Labor Organization (GLO)

A prominent gender stereotype claims that “boys are better at learning mathematics than girls.” Confronted with such a parental attitude, how does this affect the well‐being of 11‐ to 18‐year‐old students in Chinese middle schools? Although well‐being has often been shown to be not much gender‐diverse, the intergenerational consequences of such ste...

This article examines the wage earnings of refugee immigrants in Sweden. Using administrative employer–employee data from 1990 onward, approximately 100,000 refugee immigrants who arrived between 1980 and 1996 and were granted asylum are compared to a matched sample of native-born workers. Employing recentered influence function (RIF) quantile regr...

A scarce literature deals with the consumption implications of cultural assimilation and integration, ethnic clustering and diasporas, the marginal propensity to consume, home production and allocation of time, ethnic consumption, migration, and trade, as well as native consumption responses. Consumption patterns reflect how migrants integrate into...

Background The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 no longer a global health emergency on 5th May 2023; however, the impact of COVID-19 on life expectancy throughout the pandemic period is not clear. This study aimed to quantify and decompose the changes in life expectancy during 2019–2023 and corresponding age and gender disparities in 27...

Call for Papers - Special Issue on Population Change: Effects on the Environment, Society and Economy Guest Editors: Christopher F. Baum, Boston College, USA Sergio Scicchitano, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy Anzelika Zaiceva, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy Klaus F. Zimmermann, UNU-MERIT, Maastricht University, The Netherlands...

Previous research on internal mobility has neglected the role of local identity contrary to studies analyzing international migration. Examining social identity and labor market outcomes in China, the country with the largest internal mobility in the world, closes the gap. Instrumental variable estimation and careful robustness checks suggest that...

Whether the ‘healthy migrant effect’ exhibits different patterns in mortality and morbidity and how such patterns change during the life course have not been adequately understood in the literature. Using the datasets of the Australian Bureau of Statistics, this study presents an in-depth investigation of the healthy migrant effect and its age vari...

The expected year-on-year intrinsic mortality variations/changes are largely overlooked in the existing research when estimating the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on mortality patterns. To fill this gap, this study provides a new assessment of the loss of life expectancy caused by COVID-19 in 27 countries considering both the actual and the expec...

Migrant health constitutes an important public health issue; however, variations in the ‘healthy migrant effect’ among migrants of different nativity are not adequately understood. To fill this gap, this study examines the life expectancy (LE) and healthy life expectancy (HLE) of the Australian-born population and eight major migrant groups in Aust...

The role of ethnic clustering in ethnic identity formation has remained unexplored, mainly due to missing detailed data. This study closes the knowledge gap for Germany by employing a unique combination of datasets, the survey data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and disaggregated information at low geographical levels from the last two but st...

The role of ethnic clustering in ethnic identity formation has remained unexplored, mainly due to missing detailed data. This study closes the knowledge gap for Germany by employing a unique combination of datasets, the survey data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and disaggregated information at low geographical levels from the last two but st...

Background Since vaccination is the decisive factor for controlling the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to understand the process of vaccination success which is not well understood on a global level. The study is the first to judge the now completed "first wave" of the vaccination efforts. The analysis is very relevant for the understanding why...

Our large-scale experiment with 542 families from rural Bangladesh finds substantial intergenerational persistence of economic preferences. Both mothers’ and fathers’ risk, time, and social preferences are significantly (and largely to the same degree) positively correlated with their children’s economic preferences, even when controlling for perso...

China has seen a massive higher education expansion, which the literature has dated to the 1999–2008 period with quantitative and qualitative outcomes. However, the consequences for the publication success of Chinese authors worldwide are not well studied. We review the respective Chinese higher education policies and document the dramatic rise in...

While under communism the identity-providing religion was suppressed, religiosity is strong today even among the youth in post-communist countries. This provides an appropriate background to investigate how external and internal religiosity relate to risky behaviors like smoking, drinking, and drugs among the young. This study shows that not religi...

Because vaccinations are crucial to containing the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to identify the key factors behind successful immunisation campaigns. This column shows that pandemic pressures, economic strength, educational advancement, and political regimes can affect vaccination uptake, given vaccine availability. While democratic regimes i...

Forthcoming: Journal of Economics, Management and Religion (JEMAR)

Since vaccination is the decisive factor for controlling the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to understand the process to vaccination success. We identify a variety of factors playing a crucial role including the availability of vaccines, pandemic pressures, economic strength (GDP), educational development and political regimes. Examining the sp...

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More democratic countries are often expected to fail at providing a fast, strong, and effective response when facing a crisis such as COVID-19. This could result in higher infections and more negative health effects, but hard evidence to prove this claim is missing for the new disease. Studying the association with five different democracy measures...

Throughout history, border walls and fences have been built for defense, to claim land, to signal power, and to control migration. The costs of fortifications are large while the benefits are questionable. The recent trend of building walls and fences signals a paradox: In spite of the anti-immigration rhetoric of policymakers, there is little evid...

Previous research has found identity to be relevant for international migration, but has neglected internal mobility as in the case of the great Chinese migration. However, the context of the identities of migrants and their adaption in the migration process is likely to be quite different. The gap is closed by examining social assimilation and the...

The paper initiates a research agenda to study new developments of the effects of sexual orientation and gender identity on the labour market performance of individuals. It presents a selection of the small previous literature to establish the important spectrum of topics and identify important challenges to compare them to the papers in the specia...

Economic preferences are important for lifetime outcomes such as educational achievements, health status, or labor market success. We present a holistic view of how economic preferences are related within families. In an experiment with 544 families (and 1,999 individuals) from rural Bangladesh we find a large degree of intergenerational persistenc...

Originating in China, the coronavirus has reached the world at different speeds and levels of strength. This paper provides an initial understanding of some driving factors and their consequences. Since transmission requires people, the human factor behind globalisation is essential. Globalisation, a major force behind global well‐being and equalit...

This reference paper describes the sampling and contents of the IZA Evaluation Dataset Survey and outlines its vast potential for research in labor economics. The data have been part of a unique IZA project to connect administrative data from the German Federal Employment Agency with innovative survey data to study the out-mobility of individuals t...

Does globalization increases or decreases the size of government (“compensation” versus “efficiency” hypothesis)? The debate is re-visited with innovative bureaucracy and globalization indicators using panel data for the unexplored period 2000–2016. Robust evidence suggests that global competition reduces public employment.

Economists explain individual behavior by market prices, total income, and preferences through a utility evaluation of alternative actions. A new research agenda adds an identity variable that depends on the individual’s actions, its assigned social categories, and the actions of others. Social norms related to expected behavior in social groups ca...

Estimating the effect of ethnic capital on human capital investment decisions is complicated by the endogeneity of immigrants’ location choice, unobserved local correlates and the reflection problem. We exploit the institutional setting of a rare immigrant settlement policy in Germany, that generates quasi-random assignment across regions, and iden...

The gap between scientific insights and societal perceptions of international migration is large. It stems, at least in part, from the complexity of the matter and the fears raised by the unknown. This chapter reflects upon these issues against the background of post-World War II migration and migration policy in Germany. It argues that providing r...

preliminary: This handbook provides an integrated picture of knowledge about the economic and social behaviors and interactions of human beings on markets, in households, in companies and in societies. With a core basis in labor economics, human resources, demography and econometrics, it contains a large and complete summary and evaluation of the s...

Central banks need to be concerned about wages since they are a major driver of inflation. Rising wages are needed to signal directions for market adjustments to ensure growth. Wage growth is driven by relative scarcity, labor productivity and expectations about inflation and future growth. Migration plays a significant role to balance wages across...

Economic preferences – like time, risk and social preferences – have been shown to be very influential for real-life outcomes, such as educational achievements, labor market outcomes, or health status. We contribute to the recent literature that has examined how and when economic preferences are formed, putting particular emphasis on the role of in...

This contribution investigates the opportunities of migration for developing countries. The benefits of migration for sending countries are often undervalued. But migrants may foster trade, remittances, innovations, investments back home, and even return home at some time with better human capital. Functioning diasporas can lead to stable factors o...

Introduction to: Giulietti, C. & Zimmermann, K.F., Eds., (2017). Demand for Labor. The Neglected Side of the Market, Daniel S. Hamermesh. Oxford University Press, New York: pp. 1-8.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the current state of the single European labor market (SELM), its related risks and opportunities, and identify useful measures for reaching the goal of increased European labor mobility. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted an online survey among European labor market experts (IZA...

We sketch a visionary strategy for Europe in which full employment is quickly regained, where income inequality is reduced and the economies are more sustainable. We name this scenario “vibrant.” It is contrasted with what would happen if present policies continue within the European Union (EU) and its member states. In the vibrant scenario, full e...

The stark reality is that the EU, in its present form, is unlikely to survive the next 10–25 years. The EU of today, which provides for long-term peace and prosperity, faces an existential threat linked to recent voting in elections and referendums. Euroscepticism appears to have almost doubled in the period 2006–2016, from roughly 12% to 30% of th...

This paper takes a global, long-run perspective on the recent debate about secular stagnation, which has so far mainly focused on the short term. The analysis is motivated by observing the interplay between the economic and demographic transition that has occurred in the developed world over the past 150 years. To the extent that high growth rates...

Challenged by Migration: Europe's Options This paper examines the migration and labor mobility in the European Union and elaborates on their importance for the existence of the EU. Against all measures of success, the current public debate seems to suggest that the political consensus that migration is beneficial is broken. This comes with a crisis...

A substantial literature claims that the strong increase in inequality over the last decade in Western industrial countries such as the United States (US) would lead to increasing tensions between different socio-economic groups which might in turn hamper economic growth. The population’s fading hopes regarding the outlook on the future seem to con...

This contribution investigates the opportunities that migration provides for developing countries. The benefits of migration for sending countries are often undervalued. But migrants can foster trade, remittances, innovations, and investments back home, and even return home at some point with better human capital. Functioning diasporas can lead to...

This paper reviews the effect of natural disasters on human mobility or migration. Although there is an increase in natural disasters and migration recently and more patterns to observe, the relationship remains complex. While some authors find that disasters increase migration, others show that they have only a marginal or no effect or are even ne...

Well-being is the ultimate objective of any labour movement. For long, efforts have concentrated on the provision of jobs and decent work conditions. Recently, however, labour economics has been focussing on health, in general, and mental health, in particular. It is time for labour economists to study this challenging issue. Typically, work is not...

This chapter investigates the two-way relationship between population aging and international migration. After documenting the trends for both, we review the supply-push and demand-pull determinants of migration, focusing particularly on the role of age and aging. We subsequently analyze the implications of migration in the context of aging for lab...

We analyse the reservation wages of first- and second-generation migrants, based on rich survey data of the unemployed in Germany. Our results confirm the hypothesis that reservation wages increase over migrant generations and over time, suggesting that the mobility benefit of immigration may be limited in time.

The Journal of Population Economics is celebrating its 30th birthday. When the first issue was published, population economics was non-existent as a field. Hence, the aim has been to provide a high-quality outlet to publishing excellent theoretical and applied research in all areas of population economics. The article summarizes key developments in...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new field and suggest a new research agenda. Design/methodology/approach Combine ethnicity, migration and international relations into a new thinking. Provide a typology of diaspora and a thorough evaluation of its role and the roles of the home and host countries. Findings Diaspora economics is...

As has been found in previous studies, the labor market performance of individuals is often affected by demographic determinants like cohort size, age, marriage status and family size. While most of this analysis was studied for earnings, the paper investigates the issue for labor mobility. Mobility is measured here by the number of new employers a...

The non-stationarity of many macroeconomic time-series has lead to an increased demand for economic models that are able to generate fragile equilibria. For instance, the natural unemployment rate is allowed to shift over time depending on past unemployment. Actually, many European unemployment series seem to exhibit a unit root or persistence. Thi...

Following a century scarred by the frontlines and atrocities of two World Wars and a split by the Iron Curtain during the Cold War, the demise of Communist rule in Central Eastern Europe followed by integration and enlargement of the European Union (EU) have been among the greatest achievements of Europeans in modern history. The EU single labor ma...

The eastern enlargements of the European Union (EU) in 2004, 2007 and 2013 created a labor market with more than half a billion people, third only to India and China in terms of population size and matched only by the United States in economic size. Along with the free movement of capital, goods and services, the acquis communautaire, basic legisla...

Almost a decade has passed since the Eastern enlargement of the European Union (EU) in 2004. Germany has been a special case among the old member states of the EU for at least two reasons. First, the country restricted access to its labor markets for workers from the New Member States (NMS) until 2011, and second, the German labor market weathered...

The eastern enlargements of the EU in 2004 and 2007 have stimulated the mobility of workers from the new EU8 and EU2 countries. A significant proportion of these migrants stayed abroad only temporarily, and the Great recession may have triggered return intentions. However, a return may be postponed if the economic situation in a sending region is p...

The fall of socialism in Central and Eastern Europe restored ordinary citizens' rights and freedoms and ended their political and social isolation. While the freedom of movement was quickly embraced, civil society revival lagged due to the eroded civic norms, declining social capital, and worsening economic conditions. In this paper, we examine the...

This volume extends and deepens our knowledge about cross-border mobility and its role in an enlarged EU. More specifically, its main purpose is to enlighten the growing and yet rather uninformed debate about the role of post-enlargement migration for economic adjustment in the crisis-stricken labor markets of the Eurozone and the EU as a whole. Th...

This paper reviews the effect of natural disasters on human mobility or migration. Although there is an increase of natural disasters and migration recently and more patterns to observe, the relationship remains complex. While some authors find that disasters increase migration, others show that they have only a marginal or no effect or are even ne...

Purpose: Introduce a new field and suggest a new research agenda.Findings: Diaspora economics is more than a new word for migration economics. It opens a new strand to political economy. Diaspora is perceived to be a well-defined group of migrants and their offspring with a joined cultural identity and ongoing identification with the country or cul...

To contribute to a scarce literature, in particular for developing and emerging economies, we study the nature of measured risk attitudes and their consequences for migration. We also investigate whether substantial changes in the risk environment influence risk tolerance. Using the 2009 RUMiC data for China, we find that rural-urban migrants and t...

The paper investigates the impact of remittances on the relative concerns of households in rural China. Using the Rural to Urban Migration in China (RUMiC) dataset we estimate a series of subjective well-being functions to simultaneously explore relative concerns with respect to income and remittances. Our results show that although rural household...

While a growing literature has analyzed the effects of parental migration on the educational outcomes of children left behind, this study is the first to highlight the importance of sibling interactions in such a context. Using panel data from the RUMiC Survey, we find that sibling influence on school performance is stronger among left-behind child...

The massive influx of refugees, the largest since World War II, will have consequences on Germany’s society, welfare institutions and labour market. Great challenges exist–mainly in terms of successful integration. But these young and motivated people may help alleviate the predicted demographic disruptions in the long run, especially if integratio...

This paper reviews the effect of environmental disasters on migration. Although there is an increase of environmental disasters and migration over the past years, the relationship is complex. While some authors find that environmental disasters increase migration, others show that they have only a marginal or no effect or are even negative. Migrati...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent to which the authors can use internet search data in order to capture the impact of the 2008 Financial and Economic Crisis on well-being. Design/methodology/approach – The authors look at the G8 countries with a special focus on USA and Germany and investigate whether internet search...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to recommend the use of internet data for social sciences with a special focus on human resources issues. It discusses the potentials and challenges of internet data for social sciences. The authors present a selection of the relevant literature to establish the wide spectrum of topics, which can be reached wi...

Young people have been among those most affected by the recent financial crisis. Vocational education and training (VET) is often viewed as the silver bullet for the youth joblessness problem. In this article, the authors provide a better understanding of VET in industrialized countries, proposing a typology with three types of vocational systems:...