Gerard J. van den Berg

We study the effect of economic conditions early in life on the occurrence of type‐2 diabetes in adulthood using contextual economic indicators and within‐sibling pair variation. We use data from Lifelines: a longitudinal cohort study and biobank including 51,270 siblings born in the Netherlands from 1950 onward. Sibling fixed‐effects account for selective fertility. To identify type‐2 diabetes we use biomarkers on the hemoglobin A1c concentration and fasting glucose in the blood. We find that adverse economic conditions around birth increase the probability of type‐2 diabetes later in life both in males and in females. Inference based on self‐reported diabetes leads to biased results, incorrectly suggesting the absence of an effect. The same applies to inference that does not account for selective fertility.

Labor market policies, such as training and sanctions, are commonly used to bring workers back to work. By analogy to medical treatments, exposure to these tools can have side effects. We study the effects on health using individual‐level population registers on labor market outcomes, drug prescriptions, and sickness absence, comparing outcomes before and after exposure to training and sanctions. Training improves cardiovascular and mental health, and lowers sickness absence. This is likely to be the result of the instantaneous features of participation, such as the adoption of a more rigorous daily routine, rather than improved employment prospects. Benefits sanctions cause a short‐run deterioration of mental health.

Background The COVID-19 crisis has caused profound impact on societal, economic, and healthcare systems. The nature and distribution of these impacts, especially over longer periods of time, is still in need of further investigation. We aim to examine the prevalence of and determinants for poor labour market outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic among adult workers in the Northern Netherlands. Methods We conducted a longitudinal study based on data from the Lifelines COVID-19 cohort. Data from 23 waves (March 2020 - November 2021) were used. Participants were workers between 18 and 64 years of age (n = 22,378). Dependent variables were labour market outcomes, i.e., unemployment, hours of work, quality of work and sickness absence. Independent variables are sociodemographic and work characteristics, pre-existing health conditions, COVID-19 …

Het is belangrijk en urgent dat de planbureaus de effecten van investeringen in wetenschap systematisch gaan evalueren met een ander instrumentarium. De huidige modelmatige aanpak is daarvoor ongeschikt. De waarde van investeringen in wetenschap wordt daardoor nu niet systematisch meegenomen bij beleidsevaluaties of het evalueren van partijprogramma’s. Hierdoor wordt investeren in wetenschap onterecht als een kostenpost gezien.

Background A growing body of literature demonstrates that exposure to events, such as natural disasters, accidents, or adverse life events, may increase the risk of physical and psychological distress. Despite this understanding, little is known about the health consequences of consistent exposure to human-made crises. To address this issue, we examine the long-term health effects of mining-induced earthquakes in the Northern Netherlands and study the heterogeneity of the effect across socioeconomic status (SES). Methods Large-scale individual health data is from the Dutch Lifelines biobank and cohort study with 148,700 participants from the Northern Netherlands. Earthquake data is from Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute. The main health outcomes are housing-related stress, depression, anxiety, and self-assessed health. The key independent variable is …

Until the mid 1960s, the UK experienced regular measles epidemics, with the vast majority of children being infected in early childhood. The introduction of a measles vaccine substantially reduced its incidence. The first part of this paper examines the long-term human capital and health effects of this change in the early childhood disease environment. The second part investigates interactions between the vaccination campaign and individuals' endowments as captured using molecular genetic data, shedding light on complementarities between public health investments and individual endowments. We use two identification approaches, based on the nationwide introduction of the vaccine in 1968 and local vaccination trials in 1966. Our results show that exposure to the vaccination in early childhood positively affects adult height, but only among those with high genetic endowments for height. We find no effects on years of education; neither a direct effect, nor evidence of complementarities.

This paper provides a structural analysis of the role of job vacancy referrals (VRs) by Employment Agencies in the job search behavior of unemployed individuals, incorporating in- stitutional features of the monitoring of search behavior by the agencies. Notably, rejections of VRs may lead to sanctions (temporary benefits reductions) while workers may report sick to avoid those. We estimate models using German administrative data from social security records linked with caseworker recorded data on VRs, sick reporting and sanctions. The anal- ysis highlights the influence of aspects of the health care system on unemployment durations. We estimate that for around 25% of unemployed workers, removing the channel that enables strategic sick reporting reduces the mean unemployment duration by 8 days.

We mailed brochures to 10,000 randomly chosen employed German workers who were eligible for a subsidized occupational training program called WeGebAU, informing them about the importance of skills‐upgrading training in general and about WeGebAU in particular. Using survey and register data, we estimate effects of the informational brochure on awareness of the program, on take‐up of WeGebAU and other training, and on subsequent employment. The brochure more than doubles awareness of the program. There are no effects on WeGebAU take‐up, but participation in other (unsubsidized) training increases among employees aged under 45. Short‐term labor market outcomes are not affected.

This paper provides a structural analysis of the role of job vacancy referrals (VRs) by public employment agencies in the job search behavior of unemployed individuals, incorporating institutional features of the monitoring of search behavior by the agencies. Notably, rejections of VRs may lead to sanctions (temporary benefits reductions) while workers may report sick to avoid those. We estimate models using German administrative data from social security records linked with caseworker recorded data on VRs, sick reporting and sanctions. The analysis highlights the influence of aspects of the health care system on unemployment durations. We estimate that for around 25% of unemployed workers, removing the channel that enables strategic sick reporting reduces the mean unemployment duration by 4 days.

Background On average, educated people are healthier, wealthier and have higher life expectancy than those with less education. Numerous studies have attempted to determine whether education causes differences in later health outcomes or whether another factor ultimately causes differences in education and subsequent outcomes. Previous studies have used a range of natural experiments to provide causal evidence. Here we compare two natural experiments: a policy reform, raising the school leaving age in the UK in 1972; and Mendelian randomization. Methods We used data from 334 974 participants of the UK Biobank, sampled between 2006 and 2010. We estimated the effect of an additional year of education on 25 outcomes, including mortality, measures of morbidity and health, ageing and income, using multivariable adjustment, the policy reform and …

Predictions of whether newly unemployed individuals will become long-term unemployed are important for the planning and policy mix of unemployment insurance agencies. We analyze unique data on three sources of information on the probability of re-employment within 6 months (RE6), for the same individuals sampled from the inflow into unemployment. First, they were asked for their perceived probability of RE6. Second, their caseworkers revealed whether they expected RE6. Third, random-forest machine learning methods are trained on administrative data on the full inflow, to predict individual RE6. We compare the predictive performance of these measures and consider whether combinations improve this performance. We show that self-reported and caseworker assessments sometimes contain information not captured by the machine learning algorithm.

Maternal sugar consumption in utero may have a variety of effects on offspring. We exploit the abolishment of the rationing of sweet confectionery in the UK on April 24, 1949, and its subsequent reintroduction some months later, in an era of otherwise uninterrupted rationing of confectionery (1942-1953), sugar (1940-1953) and many other foods, and we consider effects on late-life cardiovascular disease, BMI, height, type-2 diabetes and the intake of sugar, fat and carbohydrates, as well as cognitive outcomes and birth weight. We use individual-level data from the UK Biobank for cohorts born between April 1947-May 1952. We also explore whether one's genetic "predisposition" to the outcome can moderate the effects of prenatal sugar exposure. We find that prenatal exposure to derationing increases education and reduces BMI and sugar consumption at higher ages, in line with the "developmental origins" explanatory framework, and that the sugar effects are stronger for those who are genetically "predisposed" to sugar consumption.

Epigenetics Communications is proud to announce the introduction of a new section entitled ‘Epigenetics and Society’(EaS). EaS offers a forum for researcher from various disciplines to engage with the theoretical, interdisciplinary, ethical, social and political dimensions of epigenetics. Authors, within and beyond academia, are invited to submit manuscripts of original research, reviews or perspectives/correspondences dealing with these different facets of epigenetics. The EaS section is meant to provide an opportunity for sharing work across disciplinary borders in ways that both illuminate the science-society intersections around epigenetics and promote their operationalization in multidisciplinary and collaborative scientific practices. The EaS section provides a forum for novel contributions on a number of key dimensions of epigenetic research. First, this concerns studies of the Ethical, Legal and Social Aspects …

Public employment services try to smooth transitions between jobs and shorten unemployment durations. Our paper contributes to the sparse literature on pre-unemployment interventions. We conducted a field experiment in five German labor market agencies, where we randomly assigned individuals into treatment groups. First, we investigate in as far an intended early conclusion of an integration agreements between not yet-unemployed jobseekers and their caseworkers contribute to continued employment (either at the current firm or at another employer) and helps to avoid unemployment. Second, we investigate if an action plan form aimed at activating job seekers even before their first meeting with a caseworker had an effect on these outcomes. We find in average no systematic effects of both instruments (and their interaction) on the risks to exit the state as a not-yet unemployed job-seeker, exit the current employment relationship, take-up a new job, or enter unemployment. However, we find a slightly higher share of recalls among those with early integration agreements.

We propose and implement a new method to estimate treatment effects in settings where individuals need to be in a certain state (e.g., unemployment) to be eligible for a treatment, treatments may commence at different points in time, and the outcome of interest is realized after the individual left the initial state. An example concerns the effect of training on earnings in subsequent employment. Any evaluation needs to take into account that some of those who are not trained at a certain time in unemployment will leave unemployment before training while others will be trained later. We are interested in effects of the treatment at a certain elapsed duration compared to “no treatment at any subsequent duration.” We prove identification under unconfoundedness and propose inverse probability weighting estimators. A key feature is that weights given to outcome observations of nontreated depend on the remaining time in …

This paper studies the impact of a daycare reform on children’s mental and physical health development in Sweden. The reform effectively reduced daycare fees by a significant amount and went along with an expansion of supply. We draw on a unique set of comprehensive individual-level healthcare register data over the period 1999–2008. By exploiting variation in reform exposure by birth cohort, we estimate short and medium-run effects on child health at different ages. We find a significant reduction in mental disorders in the medium-run for children affected by the reform. The reform leads to strong and immediate increases in probabilities of diagnosis with physical health conditions that fade out as children get older. Sub-sample analyses indicate that the reform effects are strongly associated with children from disadvantaged backgrounds. An analysis of healthcare utilization shows that affected children have …

Analyses of twin mortality often use models with dependent unobserved frailty terms capturing genetic and childhood environmental determinants. This ignores that mortality rates can be co-dependent due to bereavement effects, that is, to a causal effect of the loss of the co-twin on the mortality rate of the surviving twin. We develop a novel approach based on a model incorporating both types of dependence. We prove identification and we estimate models with Danish register data on twin pairs. Among men, losing an identical co-twin at age 75 causally reduces the remaining lifetime on average by more than a year. This bereavement effect is less severe among non-identical twins. The results are relevant for the assessment of the economic component of bereavement effects in general. Furthermore, estimates of correlations between the frailty terms by zygosity and the ensuing relative importance of genetic …

The reintegration of young welfare recipients into the labour market is a major policy objective in many European countries. In this context, monitoring and sanctions are commonly used policy tools. We analyse the impact of strict sanctions for young welfare recipients whose institutional setting features sanctions for non‐compliance with job‐search requirements that effectively cancel benefits for a period of 3 months after detection. We consider effects on job‐search outcomes and on dropping out of the labour force, using administrative data on a large inflow sample. We estimate multivariate duration models taking selection on unobservables into account. Our results indicate an increased job entry rate at the expense of an increased withdrawal from the labour force and lower entry wages. Combining quantitative with qualitative evidence reveals that the latter side‐effects of sanctions can have dramatic …

Public employment service (PES) agencies and caseworkers (CWs) often have substantial leeway in the design and implementation of active labor market policies for the unemployed, and they use policies to a varying extent. We estimate regime effects which capture how CW and PES affect outcomes through different policy intensities. These operate potentially on all forward-looking job seekers regardless of actual treatment exposure. We consider regime effects for two sets of programs, supporting (“carrots”) and restricting (“sticks”) programs, and contrast regime and treatment effects on unemployment durations, employment, and post-unemployment earnings using register data that contain PES and caseworker identifiers for about 130,000 job spells. Regime effects are important: earnings are higher in a PES if carrot-type programs are used more intensively and stick-type programs are used less intensively …

In der Grundsicherung sollen die Jobcenter mit allen erwerbsfähigen Leistungsberechtigten eine Eingliederungsvereinbarung abschließen. Die Vereinbarung legt Rechte und Pflichten beider Vertragsparteien fest. Sie regelt insbesondere, welche Bemühungen Arbeitsuchende in welcher Häufigkeit und mit welchen Nachweispflichten erbringen sollen und mit welchen Leistungen das Jobcenter sie unterstützt, damit sie ihren Lebensunterhalt künftig möglichst unabhängig vom Arbeitslosengeld-II-Bezug finanzieren können. Zudem ist die Eingliederungsvereinbarung eine Basis für mögliche Kürzungen des Arbeitslosengeldes II aufgrund sogenannter Pflichtverletzungen. Fraglich ist, inwieweit Eingliederungsvereinbarungen zur Integration von Arbeitssuchenden in den Arbeitsmarkt beitragen. In einem Modellprojekt wurde in sieben Jobcentern daher zufällig festgelegt, ob Arbeitslose in den ersten sechs Monaten des Bezugs von Arbeitslosengeld II a) eine übliche Eingliederungsvereinbarung mit Rechtsfolgenbelehrung, b) eine Eingliederungsvereinbarung ohne Rechtsfolgenbelehrung oder aber c) noch keine Eingliederungsvereinbarung erhalten sollten. Aufgrund der zufälligen Zuweisung unterscheidet sich die Zusammensetzung der drei Gruppen in Bezug auf relevante beobachtete Merkmale nicht. [...]