Magne Mogstad

Steinar Holden og Knut Røed har et svakt faglig grunnlag for sitt forslag om å beholde den midlertidige ekstra arbeidsgiveravgiften.

https://www.dn.no/innlegg/ulikhet/ssb/forskning/innlegg-ssb-om-ulikhet-ulike-perspektiver-gir-nyanserte-svar/2-1-1218843

NBER Working Paper Series Doi: https://doi.org/10.3386/w29000

NBER Working Paper Series

NBER Working Paper Series Doi: https://doi.org/10.3386/w30447

NBER Working Paper Series Doi: https://doi.org/10.3386/w29549

BFI Working Papers 121

Memorandum from Department of Economics, University of Oslo

NBER Working Paper Series Doi: https://doi.org/10.3386/w27802

Memorandum from Department of Economics, University of Oslo

Department of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics

Almost one third of women worldwide report some form of physical or sexual violence by a partner in their lifetime, yet little is known about the mental health and well-being effects for either victims or their children. We study the costs associated with domestic violence (DV) in the context of Norway, where we can link offenders to victims and their children over time. Our difference-in-differences framework uses those who will be victimized in the future as controls. We find that a DV report involving the police is associated with large changes in the home environment, including marital dissolution and a corresponding decline in financial resources. A DV report increases mental health visits by 35% for victims and by 19% for their children in the year of the event, effects which taper off over time for the victim, but not for children. Victims also experience more doctor visits, lower employment, reduced earnings and a higher use of disability insurance while their children are more likely to receive child protective services and commit a crime. Using a complementary RD design, we find that a DV report results in declines both in children’s test scores and completion of the first year of high school.

NBER Working Paper Series

http://www.voxeu.org/

Discussion Papers

Reinhardt Lecture, Princeton University

North American Summer Meeting of the Econometric Society

Discussion Papers

Foredrag i Finansdepartementet

University of Zurich Empirical Micro Seminar

University of Edinburgh seminar

NBER Working Paper Series Doi: https://doi.org/10.3386/w29519

Global Priorities Institute Workshop

LSE STICERD, Applications Seminar

Tinbergen Institute seminar

Norwegian-German Public Economics Workshop

Statistisk sentralbyrå (SSB)

Formålet med denne rapporten er å beskrive utviklingen i ulikhet i Norge i perioden 2001–2018. Rapporten beskriver ulikhet i inntekt og formue, fordelingen av skattebyrden og graden av progressivitet i skatte- og avgiftssystemet. I tillegg sammenlignes fordelingen av skattebyrden og progressiviteten i skatte- og avgiftssystemet i Norge med fordelingen av skattebyrden og progressiviteten i skatte- og avgiftssystemet i USA. Rapporten supplerer den offisielle inntekts-, formues- og skattestatistikken med ny informasjon om inntekts- og formuesfordelingen i Norge ved å sammenlikne målene for inntekt, formue og skatt som benyttes i offisiell statistikk med mer fullstendige mål for inntekt og formue. I målingen av inntekt inkluderes følgende tre inntektskomponenter som er utelatt fra inntektsmålene som benyttes i offisiell statistikk: (i) personlige eieres andel av tilbakeholdte overskudd i private selskaper; (ii) verdien av boligtjenester for boligeierhushold; og (iii) kapitalgevinster på bolig og annen fast eiendom og verdipapirer (unntatt aksjer). I tillegg belyser vi fordelingseffekten av verdien av kommunale tjenester ved å studere ulikhet i fordelingen av et utvidet inntektsmål som inkluderer verdien av kommunale tjenester. I målingen av formue benyttes et mål for boligformue som er basert på faktiske markedsverdier (observert i transaksjonsdata) i stedet for beregnede verdier fra skattemeldingen.

NBER Working Paper Series Doi: https://doi.org/10.3386/w28269

Penn State Economics of Education seminar

Western University Applied Economics/Econometrics seminar

Discussion Papers

Foredrag for Finanskomiteen - Stortinget.

Institute for Applied Microeconomics of the University of Bonn

CESifo Working Papers

NBER Working Paper Series Doi: https://doi.org/10.3386/w27368

NBER Working Paper Series Doi: https://doi.org/10.3386/w27807

BFI Working Papers

BFI Working Papers

It is often desired to rank different populations according to the value of some feature of each population. For example, it may be desired to rank neighborhoods according to some measure of intergenerational mobility or countries according to some measure of academic achievement. These rankings are invariably computed using estimates rather than the true values of these features. As a result, there may be considerable uncertainty concerning the rank of each population. In this paper, we consider the problem of accounting for such uncertainty by constructing confidence sets for the rank of each population. We consider both the problem of constructing marginal confidence sets for the rank of a particular population as well as simultaneous confidence sets for the ranks of all populations. We show how to construct such confidence sets under weak assumptions. An important feature of all of our constructions is that they remain computationally feasible even when the number of populations is very large. We apply our theoretical results to re-examine the rankings of both neighborhoods in the United States in terms of intergenerational mobility and developed countries in terms of academic achievement. The conclusions about which countries do best and worst at reading, math, and science are fairly robust to accounting for uncertainty. By comparison, several celebrated findings about intergenerational mobility in the United states are not robust to taking uncertainty into account.

BFI Working Papers Doi: https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3656674

Memorandum from Department of Economics, University of Oslo 02

Invited Seminar at MIT

Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business

NBER Working Paper Series Doi: https://doi.org/10.3386/w28269

University College London, Applied Online Micro Seminar

Discussion Papers

UAB Bellaterra Macro Seminar (w/applied)

Labor Lunch

CEMFI Empirical Micro Workshop

ASSA Conference

Cowles Seminar

Bristol Workshops on Economic Policy Interventions and Behaviour, June 17, 2019

Ca’Foscari University of Venice Seminar, June 10, 2019

CPB Workshop, June 11, 2019

NBER Working Paper Series

Empirical researchers often combine multiple instruments for a single treatment using two stage least squares (2SLS). When treatment effects are heterogeneous, a common justification for including multiple instruments is that the 2SLS estimand can still be interpreted as a positivelyweighted average of local average treatment effects (LATEs). This justification requires the wellknown monotonicity condition. However, we show that with more than one instrument, this condition can only be satisfied if choice behavior is effectively homogenous. Based on this finding, we consider the use of multiple instruments under a weaker, partial monotonicity condition. This condition is implied by standard choice theory and allows for richer heterogeneity. First, we show that the weaker partial monotonicity condition can still suffice for the 2SLS estimand to be a positively-weighted average of LATEs. We characterize a simple sufficient and necessary condition that empirical researchers can check to ensure positive weights. Second, we develop a general method for using multiple instruments to identify a wide range of causal parameters other than LATEs. The method allows researchers to combine multiple instruments to obtain more informative empirical conclusions than one would obtain by using each instrument separately.

UC3M A&E Seminar, June 7, 2019

University of Oslo Workshop on Inequality in Honor of Rolf Aaberge

Seminar at Bologna University

CESifo Conference. Economics of Education, Munich, 30-31 August 2019

UPF Labor/Public/Development Seminar Series

University of Oslo Workshop on Inequality in Honor of Rolf Aaberge

Discussion Papers

Discussion Papers

NBER Working Paper Series

High school vocational education has a controversial history in the United States, largely due to a perceived tradeoff between teaching readily deployable occupational skills versus shunting mostly disadvantaged students away from the educational and career flexibility afforded by general academic courses. We study the effects of a nationwide high school reform in Norway that aimed to move beyond this tradeoff. Reform 94, implemented in one step in the fall of 1994, integrated more general education into the vocational track, offered vocational students a pathway to college through a supplementary semester of academic courses, and sought to improve the quality of the vocational track through greater access to apprenticeships. We identify the impacts of the reform through a difference-in-discontinuity research design, comparing students born just before and after the reform’s birthdate eligibility cutoff to students born around the same cutoff in placebo years. Linking multiple administrative registries covering the entire Norwegian population, we find that the reform substantially increased initial enrollment in the vocational track, but with different subsequent outcomes for different groups. More men complete the vocational track at the expense of academic diplomas, but this has no detectable impact on college-going and leads to reduced criminal activity and higher earnings in adulthood, especially among disadvantaged men. For disadvantaged women, the initial surge in vocational enrollment leads to fewer high school dropouts and more vocational degrees with the college-prep supplement, and hence an increase in the share of college-eligible women; however, this translates into only small and insignificant increases in college completion and adult earnings. We show that men overwhelmingly pursue vocational education in higher-paying skilled trade fields, while women almost exclusively pursue vocational education in lower-paying service-based fields, which helps in interpreting some of these results. Overall, the reform succeeded at improving social mobility, particularly among men, but it somewhat exacerbated the gender gap in adult earnings.

Seminar at University of Lausanne

Labor and Public Economics Seminar

Seminar

BoI/CEPR/IZA Annual Symposium in Labour Economics 2019

CPB Workshop, June 12, 2019

NBER Working Paper Series

The primary goal of our paper is to quantify the importance of imperfect competition in the U.S. labor market by estimating the size of rents earned by American firms and workers from ongoing employment relationships. To this end, we construct a matched employer-employee panel data set by combining the universe of U.S. business and worker tax records for the period 2001-2015. We describe several important features of the U.S. labor market, including the size of firm-specific wage premiums, the sorting of workers to firms, the production complementarities between high ability workers and productive firms, and the pass-through of firm and market shocks to workers' wages. Guided by these empirical results, we develop, identify and estimate an equilibrium model of the labor market with two-sided heterogeneity where workers view firms as imperfect substitutes because of heterogeneous preferences over non-wage job characteristics. The model allows us to draw inference about imperfect competition, compensating differentials and rent sharing. We also use the model to quantify the relevance of non-wage job characteristics and imperfect competition for inequality and tax policy, to assess the economic determinants of worker sorting, and to offer a unifying explanation of key empirical features of the U.S. labor market.

Institutt for samfunnsøkonomi

Using quasi-random assignment of criminal cases to judges, we estimate large incarceration spillovers in criminal and brother networks. When a defendant is sent to prison, there are 51 and 32 percentage point reductions in the probability his criminal network members and younger brothers will be charged with a crime, respectively, over the ensuing four years. Correlational evidence misleadingly finds small positive effects. These spillovers are of first order importance for policy, as the network reductions in future crimes committed are larger than the direct effect on the incarcerated defendant.

Copenhagen Business School, Finance Seminar, June 7, 2018

Uppsala University, Labor Economics Workshop, June 3, 2018

the National Bureau of Economic Research

CAGE Seminars in Applied Economics, Econometrics and Public Policy, University of Warwick.

SciencesPO, Departmental Seminar

Norges Handelshøyskole

Understanding whether, and in what situations, time spent in prison is criminogenic or preventive has proven challenging due to data availability and correlated unobservables. This paper overcomes these challenges in the context of Norway’s criminal justice system, offering new insights into how incarceration affects subsequent crime and employment. We construct a panel dataset containing the criminal behavior and labor market outcomes of the entire population, and exploit the random assignment of criminal cases to judges who differ systematically in their stringency in sentencing defendants to prison. Using judge stringency as an instrumental variable, we find that imprisonment discourages further criminal behavior, and that the reduction extends beyond incapacitation. Incarceration decreases the probability an individual will reoffend within 5 years by 29 percentage points, and reduces the number of offenses over this same period by 11 criminal charges. In comparison, OLS shows positive associations between incarceration and subsequent criminal behavior. This Sharp contrast suggests the high rates of recidivism among ex-convicts is due to selection, and not a consequence of the experience of being in prison. Exploring factors that may explain the preventive effect of incarceration, we find the decline in crime is driven by individuals who were not working prior to incarceration. Among these individuals, imprisonment increases participation in programs directed at improving employability and reducing recidivism, and ultimately, raises employment and earnings while discouraging further criminal behavior. For previously employed individuals, while there is no effect on recidivism, there is a lasting negative effect on employment. Contrary to the widely embraced ‘nothing works’ doctrine, these findings demonstrate that time spent in prison with a focus on rehabilitation can indeed be preventive for a large segment of the criminal population.

Penn State, Econometrics Seminar, September 25, 2018

CReAM - Seminar in Applied Economics Series

CEPR/IZA Annual Labour Economics Symposium

Georgetown University, Econometrics Seminar

Norges Handelshøyskole

Using quasi-random assignment of criminal cases to judges, we estimate large incarceration spillovers in criminal and brother networks. When a defendant is sent to prison, there are 51 and 32 percentage point reductions in the probability his criminal network members and younger brothers will be charged with a crime, respectively, over the ensuing four years. Correlational evidence misleadingly finds small positive effects. These spillovers are of first order importance for policy, as the network reductions in future crimes committed are larger than the direct effect on the incarcerated defendant.

Empirical Micro Workshop

Imperfect Competition and Rent Sharing in the U.S. Labor Market", Banca d’ Italia, Seminar

The FAIR Inaugural Conference 18.-19. June 2018

Cornell University, Joint Labor Economics, Public Economics & PAM Workshop

World Bank, Research Department Seminar, September 13, 2018

University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics Seminar, June 5, 2018

Lund University, Seminar in Health, Labour and Family Economics

Department of Economics, University of Oslo

This paper studies how and why the adoption of information communication technology (ICT) affects bilateral trade flows. The context is a public program in Norway which rolled out broadband access points leading to plausibly exogenous variation in the availability and adoption of broadband internet by firms. We find that broadband internet makes trade patterns more sensitive to distance and economic size, and show that these results are consistent with a model of international trade with variable elasticity of demand and information frictions. Our findings shed light on the so-called “distance puzzle” in international trade.

NBER Working Paper Series

We propose a method for using instrumental variables (IV) to draw inference about causal effects for individuals other than those affected by the instrument at hand. Policy relevance and external validity turns on the ability to do this reliably. Our method exploits the insight that both the IV estimand and many treatment parameters can be expressed as weighted averages of the same underlying marginal treatment effects. Since the weights are known or identified, knowledge of the IV estimand generally places some restrictions on the unknown marginal treatment effects, and hence on the values of the treatment parameters of interest. We show how to extract information about the average effect of interest from the IV estimand, and, more generally, from a class of IV-like estimands that includes the two stage least squares and ordinary least squares estimands, among many others. Our method has several applications. First, it can be used to construct nonparametric bounds on the average causal effect of a hypothetical policy change. Second, our method allows the researcher to flexibly incorporate shape restrictions and parametric assumptions, thereby enabling extrapolation of the average effects for compliers to the average effects for different or larger populations. Third, our method can be used to test model specification and hypotheses about behavior, such as no selection bias and/or no selection on gain. To accommodate these diverse applications, we devise a novel inference procedure that is designed to exploit the convexity of our setting. We develop uniformly valid tests that allow for an infinite number of IV--like estimands and a general convex parameter space. We apply our method to analyze the effects of price subsidies on the adoption and usage of an antimalarial bed net in Kenya.

UIUC Applied Microeconomics Seminar

Universitetet i Bergen

Statistisk sentralbyrå (SSB)

Strong intergenerational correlations in wealth have fueled a long-standing debate over why children of wealthy parents tend to be well off themselves. We investigate the role of family background in determining children's wealth accumulation and investor behavior as adults. Our research design allows us to credibly control for genetic differences in abilities and preferences and to identify the effects of exogenous changes in specific dimensions of family background. The analysis is made possible by linking Korean-born children who were adopted at infancy by Norwegian parents to a population panel data set with detailed information on disaggregated wealth portfolios and socioeconomic characteristics. The mechanism by which these Korean-Norwegian adoptees were assigned to adoptive families is known and effectively random. We use the quasi-random assignment to estimate the causal effects from an adoptee being raised in one type of family versus another. Our findings show that family background matters significantly for children's accumulation of wealth and investor behavior as adults, even when removing the genetic connection between children and the parents raising them. In particular, adoptees raised by wealthy parents are more likely to be well off themselves, whereas adoptees' stock market participation and portfolio risk are increasing in the financial risk taking of their adoptive parents. These intergenerational causal links are not driven primarily by inter vivos transfers or bequests. The detailed nature of our data allows us to explore other mechanisms, assess the generalizability of the lessons from adoptees, and compare our findings to results from behavioral genetics decompositions.

Samfunnsøkonomen 129(4) p. 26-27

Aftenposten (morgenutg. : trykt utg.)

Aftenposten (morgenutg. : trykt utg.)

Aftenposten (morgenutg. : trykt utg.)

Aftenposten (morgenutg. : trykt utg.)

Aftenposten (morgenutg. : trykt utg.)

Aftenposten (morgenutg. : trykt utg.)

Aftenposten (morgenutg. : trykt utg.)

Aftenposten (morgenutg. : trykt utg.)

Samfunnsøkonomen 128(9) p. 34-35

Institutt for samfunnsøkonomi

What do the education premiums look like over the life cycle? What is the impact of schooling on lifetime earnings? How does the internal rate of return compare with opportunity cost of funds? To what extent do progressive taxes attenuate the incentives to invest in education? This paper exploits Norwegian population panel data with nearly career long earnings histories to answer these important questions. We provide a detailed picture of the causal relationship between schooling and earnings over the life cycle, following individuals over their working lifespan. To account for endogeneity of schooling, we apply three commonly used identification strategies. Our estimates show that additional schooling gives higher lifetime earnings and steeper age-earnings profile, in line with predictions from human capital theory. These estimates imply an internal rate of return of around 10 percent, after taking into account income taxes and earnings-related pension entitlements. Under standard conditions, this finding suggests it was financially profitable to take additional schooling because the rates of return were substantially higher than the market interest rates. By comparison, Mincer regressions understate substantially the rates of return. We explore the reasons for this downward bias, finding that it is driven by Mincer’s assumptions of no earnings while in school and exogenous post-schooling employment.

Statistisk sentralbyrå (SSB)

Why do individuals choose different types of post-secondary education, and what are the labor market consequences of those choices? We show that answering these questions is difficult because individuals choose between several unordered alternatives. Even with a valid instrument for every type of education, instrumental variables estimation of the payoffs require information about individuals' ranking of education types or strong additional assumptions, like constant effects or restrictive preferences. These identification results motivate and guide our empirical analysis of the choice of and payoff to field of study. Our context is Norway's post-secondary education system where a centralized admission process covers almost all universities and colleges. This process creates credible instruments from discontinuities which effectively randomize applicants near unpredictable admission cutoffs into different fields of study. At the same time, it provides us with strategy-proof measures of individuals' ranking of fields. Taken together, this allows us to estimate the payoffs to different fields while correcting for selection bias and keeping the next-best alternatives as measured at the time of application fixed. We find that different fields have widely different payoffs, even after accounting for institutional differences and quality of peer groups. For many fields the payoffs rival the college wage premiums, suggesting the choice of field is potentially as important as the decision to enroll in college. The estimated payoffs are consistent with individuals choosing fields in which they have comparative advantage. We also test and reject assumptions of constant effects or restrictive preferences, suggesting that information on next-best alternatives is essential to identify payoffs to field of study

Samfunnsøkonomen 128(6) p. 24-24

Barne -, ungdoms- og familie direktoratet

Statistisk sentralbyrå (SSB)

When is one distribution (of income, consumption, or some other economic variable) more equal or better than another? This question has proven difficult to answer in situations where distribution functions intersect and no unambiguous ranking can be attained without introducing weaker criteria than second-degree stochastic dominance. The conventional approach in empirical work is to adopt some summary statistics, with no explicit reason being given for preferring one measure rather than another. In this paper, we develop a theory for ranking distribution functions. Our theory offers a general framework to unambiguously rank any set of distribution functions and quantify the social welfare level of a dominating distribution as compared to a dominated distribution. The framework is based on two complementary sequences of nested dominance criteria. The first (second) sequence extends second-degree stochastic dominance by placing more emphasis on differences that occur in the lower (upper) part of the distribution. These sequences of dominance criteria characterize two separate systems of nested subfamilies of social welfare functions. This allows us to identify the least restrictive social preferences that give an unambiguous ranking of any set of distribution functions. We also provide an axiomatization of the sequences of dominance criteria and the corresponding subfamilies of social welfare functions. To perform inference, we develop asymptotic distribution theory for empirical dominance criteria where it is demonstrated that the associated empirical processes converge in distribution to Gaussian processes. The usefulness of our framework is illustrated with two empirical applications; the first assesses the social welfare implications of changes in household income distributions over the business cycle, while the second ranks the actual and counterfactual outcome distributions from a policy experiment.

Institutt for Økonomi Working Paper Series

CESIfO

Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

Norges Handelshøyskole

This paper provides evidence on the returns to schooling in current and lifetime earnings. We use these results to assess the importance of life-cycle bias in earnings regressions using current earnings as proxy for lifetime earnings. To account for the endogeneity of schooling, we apply three commonly used identification strategies. Our estimates demonstrate a strong life-cycle bias, often exceeding the bias from assuming that schooling is exogenous. We also find that the cross-section estimates of the returns to schooling are highly sensitive to the age composition of the sample. They tend to increase with mean age, reflecting that higher educated workers experience more rapid earnings growth through most of the life-cycle. We further show that the returns to schooling in lifetime earnings are relatively low compared to what previous evidence based on cross-section data suggest.

CESifo

Norges Handelshøyskole

We demonstrate how age-adjusted inequality measures can be used to evaluate whether changes in inequality over time are because of changes in the age structure. In particular, we explore the hypothesis that the substantial rise in earnings inequality since the early 1980s is driven by the large baby boom cohorts approaching the peak of the age-earnings profile. Using administrative data on earnings for every Norwegian male over the period 1967-2004, we find that the impact of age adjustments on the trend in inequality is highly sensitive to the method used: while the most widely used age-adjusted inequality measure indicates that the rise in inequality in the 1980s and 1990s is indeed driven partly by the baby boom, a new and improved age-adjusted measure indicates the opposite, namely that the rise in inequality was even larger than what the inequality measures unadjusted for age reveal.

Norges Handelshøyskole

Differences in individual wealth holdings are widely viewed as a driving force of economic inequality. However, as this finding relies on cross-section data, a concern is that one confuses older with wealthier. We propose a new method to adjust for age effects in cross-sections, which eliminates wealth inequality due to age, yet preserves inequality arising from other factors. Using a new cross-country comparable database, we examine the impact of age adjustments on wealth inequality across countries and over time. We find that the most widely used method yield a substantially different picture of age adjusted wealth inequality than our method.

Institutt for samfunnsøkonomi, NHH

VG : Verdens gang p. 47-47

Statistisk sentralbyrå (SSB)

Inequality: New Directions

Økonomisk institutt, Universitetet i Oslo

Statistisk sentralbyrå (SSB)

There is a heated debate in the US and Canada, as well as in many European countries, about a move towards subsidized, universally accessible child care. At the same time, studies on universal child care and child development are scarce, limited to short-run outcomes, and the findings are mixed. We analyze the introduction of subsidized, universally accessible child care in Norway, addressing the impact on the long-run outcomes of children. Our precise difference-in-difference estimates show that child care had strong positive effects on children's educational attainment and labor market participation, and also reduced welfare dependency. 17,500 new child care places produces around 6,200 additional years of education. In line with these results, we find that children exposed to child care delay child bearing and family formation as adults. Subsample estimations by child's sex and mother's education suggest that good access to subsidized child care levels the playing field. A battery of specification checks support our empirical strategy.

Seminar

Statistisk sentralbyrå (SSB)

Kommunene produserer tjenester innenfor forskjellige tjenesteytende sektorer, som administrasjon, utdanning, barnehager, helsestell, sosiale tjenester, kultur og infrastruktur. Variasjoner i pengebruken per innbygger innenfor disse sektorene skyldes at kommunene har forskjellige inntekter og bundne kostnader (utgiftsbehov) og ikke minst at prioriteringen i pengebruken er forskjellig. Ved å formulere og estimere modeller for kommunenes økonomiske atferd kan en oppnå verdifull innsikt om hvilken effekt hver av disse faktorene har hatt for observerte forskjeller i kommunes økonomiske atferd. Modellene som blir benyttet til slike analyser kan deles i to grupper og omtales som partielle og simultane modeller. Mens partielle modeller behandler sektorene hver for seg, tar de simultane analysene hensyn til sammenhenger som må gjelde på tvers av sektorene under bibetingelsen om at utgiftene pluss netto driftsresultat er lik inntektene. På grunn av budsjettbetingelsen som kommunene står overfor er ressurbruken i de forskjellige sektorene gjensidig avhengig av hverandre, noe som det blir tatt hensyn til i de simultane analysene, men ikke i de partielle analysene. Med bundne kostnader (utgiftsbehov) menes kostnader for å yte lovpålagte tjenester og innfri minstestandarder i tjenestetilbudet. Høyt utgiftsbehov kan enten skyldes høye enhetskostnader eller høyt behov/etterspørsel i befolkningen. For eksempel vil en kommune med relativt mange gamle over 90 år få høyt utgiftsbehov i eldreomsorgen. Utgiftsbehov i eldreomsorgen vil imidlertid også påvirke hvor mye ressurser som kan disponeres innenfor andre sektorer, som f.eks. utdanning.

Økonomiske analyser 22(4) p. 28-39

De tradisjonelle fattigdomsstudiene i Norge og OECD-landene er basert på landsspesifikke inntektsgrenser for fattigdom. Inntektene er da justert for kjøpekraftsfordelene ved å tilhøre et stort hushold med flere inntektstakere framfor et lite hushold med én inntektstaker. Inntektene og fattigdomsgrensene er imidlertid ikke justert for geografiske levekostnadsforskjeller. Geografiske kostnadsforskjeller medfører at personer som lever i økonomiske pressområder trenger høyere inntekter enn personer som lever i områder med lave levekostnader, dersom inntektene skal kunne finansiere samme kvantum av varer og tjenester. De tradisjonelle fattigdomsstudiene med landsspesifikke fattigdomsgrenser vil derfor underestimere antall fattige i områder med høye levekostnader og overestimere antall fattige i områder med lave levekostnader. I denne studien benytter vi både landsspesifikke og regionspesifikke fattigdomsgrenser, der regionene består av kommuner som er gruppert etter boligpriser og geografisk tilhørighet. Basert på en slik tilnærming viser resultatene på grunnlag av data fra 2001 at det er store geografiske variasjoner i anslaget på andelen fattige, både på fylkesnivå og kommunenivå. Oslo er det fylket i landet som har den høyeste andelen fattige, uavhengig om vi benytter en region- eller landsspesifikk fattigdomsgrense. Ved å benytte regionspesifikke fattigdomsgrenser reduseres andelen fattige i alle fylker utenom Akershus og Oslo, sett i forhold til det vi finner ved å bruke en felles fattigdomsgrense for hele landet.