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Divorces and women's income: initial findings for the Czech Republic based on individual data
Janský, Petr ; Pertold, Filip ; Šatava, Jiří
In most cases, divorce leads to a radical change in life situation with many consequences for both divorcees. Nowadays nearly half of all marriages in the Czech Republic end in divorce and so this has been and will continue to be part of life for a significant proportion of the country's population. The consequences of divorce are highly influenced by the division of labour within the couple prior to their separation. There is a high level of division in most Czech families. Women spend much more time caring for children, relatives and the home, while men are largely focused on paid employment. We estimate that married women aged 20 to 70 who are neither studying nor in receipt of an old-age pension would see their net incomes fall by 20 % if they ceased to share income within their household (e.g. as a result of divorce and separation). Households led by divorced women report some of the lowest incomes per household member. The average income in a female-led divorced household is one fifth lower than in married households and a quarter lower than in households led by divorced men. Divorced women are, however, more economically active than married women; this is probably a reaction to their loss of income following divorce. Nevertheless this difference could also suggest that women who are economically active are less attractive as partners (Bertrand, 2016).
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Czech research centres' publication performance in the period 2009-2013, by field of research
Jurajda, Štěpán ; Kozubek, Stanislav ; Münich, Daniel ; Škoda, Samuel
Evaluating Czech research institutions is largely reduced to automatized scoring of R&D otputs. The sole exception is the practice of the Czech Academy of Sciences. The results of the government’s evaluation of research centres, in the form in which they are processed and officially presented to the public, have little informational value for the management of the R&D system and individual research workplaces. At the same time, the system (of data collection about the R&D results, verification and basic classification) offers several unused possibilities, to convey valuable information about the quantity and the quality of research workplaces' publication performance both to the academic community and to the broader public. Our overview exploits these possibilities for results published in journals listed in the Web of Science (WoS) database. The presented comparison is an update of the IDEA study (2015), the publication performance comparison of Czech research centres, mainly of universities and institutes of the Czech Academy of Sciences, in the period of 2009-2013. The underlying logic of the updated comparison, its advantages, disadvantages, limitations and shortcomings remain more or less the same as before, therefore we refer the reader to the detailed explanations in the aforementioned study. The main change from the previous comparison (besides shifting the five-year window by one year) is the usage of an alternative citation index: while our previous comparison differentiated results from journals by the Impact Factor index, the updated comparison uses the Article Influence Score, which weighs citations according to their importance.
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Impact of taxes and social benefits on income inequality and relative poverty in the Czech Republic
Janský, Petr ; Kalíšková, Klára ; Münich, Daniel
International comparisons have long shown that income inequality and the proportion of people at risk of relative poverty in the Czech Republic are among the lowest both in the EU and across the world's most developed countries (OECD). Data from representative surveys on household incomes and expenditures show that the Czech tax and social benefits system has rather little effect on income equality and the risk of poverty. Relatively low variation in gross income, for which the old-age pension system plays a key role, plays a greater part in maintaining the low rates of both measures. If besides direct taxes and social benefits we also take into account the effects of indirect taxation (value added tax and consumer taxes), then we find that the current system reduces income inequality relatively little, and in fact slightly increases the relative poverty risk. 80 % of those in relative poverty and 33 % of other individuals are in receipt of at least one social benefit. Only 38 % of total expenditures on state social support are spent on people who are at risk of relative income poverty. The most potentially effective benefits for reducing relative income inequality and overall poverty rates are benefits in material need (contributions towards basic living costs and accommodation). The most effective instrument for reducing the proportion of the population at risk of relative income poverty is child benefit.
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Self-confidence of a class and competition of the classmates for eight-year gymnasium
Federičová, Miroslava ; Pertold, Filip ; Smith, Michael
The Czech Republic belongs to a small group of European countries with an educational system that leads to a very early differentiation of pupils in schools according to their academic performance and socio-economic background. In the Czech Republic, 18% of pupils in the 5th grade apply for 8-year grammar schools (gymnasia in Czech) and go through the challenging process of preparing for entrance exams. Thus, on average 3 pupils in each classroom apply to these gymnasia, of which almost 2 pupils are admitted. Our analysis on data from a unique survey of schools shows that a presence of an extra classmate who is applying for gymnasia affects one’s self-confidence. The biggest negative impact we noted was in case of self-confidence of girls in mathematics. Decline in confidence (from the level in the fourth grade, that is before preparing for entrance exams) is about 7% of the student with at least two classmates who applied. As a control group, we use the class where no one has applied.
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Supporting families with children through the tax and welfare system
Šatava, Jiří
The state may provide financial assistance to families with dependent children either by reducing their tax burden or by increasing their welfare benefits. Both means of support increase their net wage, thus providing financial support. This paper provides an overview of financial support amounts provided to families with dependent children or families with the youngest child aged 1 to 3, and of measures limiting such support. The lower tax burden of families with children ensues from lower income tax, not from the social and health care security systems. Within this system, tax support provided to families with children is comparable to that provided to low-income families without children. Additional support provided to families with children includes tax benefits tied directly to children in the family, and tax credit for a dependent spouse. Should the tax system not provide such benefits, families with children, or rather families with a youngest child aged 1 to 3 would have a higher effective tax rate than childless families with comparable income.
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What does (a lack of) transparency in public procurement lead to?
Palguta, Ján ; Pertold, Filip
In 2006 a simplified regime for awarding public contracts was introduced, by means of a special procedure for "below threshold" contracts. Its aim was to enable smaller contracts to be awarded in a simpler and more flexible way. However, this change began to reduce competition and transparency, and gave contract awarders freedoms they could easily abuse. For this reason, the original maximum threshold for contracts that could be awarded via the simplified procedure (20 million CZK) was reduced to half that amount in 2012. Introducing these thresholds led, among other things, to contracts' estimated values being manipulated, and to prices being artificially "inflated" towards the threshold. These behaviours were most frequently observed in the building sector. As the number of public tenders rises and their estimated values cluster more and more closely to the legal threshold for the simplified procedure, inefficiency increases, i.e. the difference between the estimated and actual price of the tenders increases. This difference is up to 15 percentage points greater than in open competitions.
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Public financing for pre-school places pays off: a cost and benefit analysis
Kalíšková, Klára ; Münich, Daniel ; Pertold, Filip
Countrywide statistics suggest that the long-term shortage of places in state preschool institutions (kindergartens) has become gradually less severe over the past few years thanks to population decline, and that in future there will be sufficient places available at pre-schools. Nevertheless at a local level demand is still far outstripping supply in many places, and this is unlikely to change as internal migration and other demographic changes continue. Our analysis of financial costs and benefits reveals that the shortage of places in preschools in the past decade has led to an undeniable net loss for the public budget. Our analysis demonstrates that the net gain to the public budget from every additional place in pre-school is on average 10,000 crowns per year. Public financial support for pre-schools would not result in a loss even under very conservative estimates. On the contrary, the net gains are in fact far higher if the indirect and long-term consequences of supporting further places in pre-schools are taken into account.
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The effects of transition to secondary school, alcohol consumption and peer pressure on youth smoking
Pertold, Filip
This study provides further evidence for the debate on a possible smoking ban in restaurants and investigates the influence of peer pressure on smoking habits and alcohol consumption among young people. Teenagers often start smoking on a daily basis after moving from primary to secondary school. The results of the pan-European survey ESPAD indicate that more than 40% of\nyoung people in the Czech Republic smoke, which is one of the highest rates in the EU. This study looks at pupils' transition from primary to secondary school in order to identify the role peers play in young peoples' decisions to start smoking. The results of this study show that new classmates play a key role in influencing male secondary school students, but not their female counterparts. If half the students in a class smoke, a student entering that class is 10% more likely to become addicted to smoking. Classmates' influence is greatest among secondary school students who regularly visit bars and restaurants and drink alcohol. This means that youth smoking is to a certain extent encouraged by drinking alcohol in bars and restaurants. In other words, a ban on smoking in bars and restaurants, such as currently discussed, or stricter controls on the sale of alcohol to minors, could effectively reduce smoking among teenagers. The results also demonstrate that pupils' choice of secondary school has a significant knock-on effect not only on the skills and knowledge they gain, but also on smoking habits and their consumption of alcohol, which in turn affect their life expectancy and other health indicators.
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An international comparison of the quality of academic publication output in the Czech Republic
Jurajda, Štěpán ; Kozubek, Stanislav ; Münich, Daniel ; Škoda, Samuel
In our recent study (IDEA No. 5/20154) we have compared the publication output of various Czech research institutions by individual disciplines. The comparison was based on the relative output of institutions working in specific science branches within the Czech Republic, and had no way of indicating which institutions in the Czech Republic were on par with international research and which were lagging behind. Even though an institution is not at the top in its field within the Czech Republic, the quality of its research may still be on par with international research, as the particular branch of science is highly advanced in the Czech Republic. Therefore, this study is a first step toward comparing the research output of Czech institutions on an international level. We have compared the publication output of entire scientific fields in the Czech Republic to the same fields in other countries, basing our comparison on articles published in the years 2010–2014 and included in the Web of Science (WoS) database. The comparison includes eleven small and medium-sized countries, only one of which has English as its official language: five European countries belonging to the so-called former Soviet bloc, four Western European countries, and two non-European countries.
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Taxing top income earners in the Czech Republic: an IDEA for reform
Dušek, Libor ; Šatava, Jiří
The study brings new facts about the distribution of top incomes and the taxation of top income earners in the Czech Republic, derives optimal marginal tax rates on the top incomes, and proposes a specific systemic reform. The top one percent of the highest paid persons in the Czech Republic include those employees and business owners whose gross incomes exceed CZK 1,230 million per year. By international comparison, the Czech Republic exhibits low inequality of gross incomes. The top 10% of the income distribution accounts for 25.7% of total income, whereas in all developed countries for which comparable data is available this figure is significantly higher, between 28.2% and 46.3%. When it comes to the top one percent of the income distribution, the discrepancy compared with other developed countries is less pronounced. The top one percent accounts for 6.8% of total income, while for comparable countries it is between 5.4% and 19.7%.
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