Qquillaccori García López to defend her PhD
Tomorrow, Tuesday 25 August, Qquillaccori García López will hold a trial lecture on a prescribed topic and defend her thesis for the PhD degree at NHH.
Title of thesis
“Essays on Public Economics”
Across OECD countries, including Norway, women earn less in the labour market, take on more unpaid care, and retire with lower pensions than men. Because pension systems are based on formal market work, inequalities during working life can follow women into retirement.
In her thesis, Qquillaccori García López examines how social insurance policies can address the consequences of the unequal distribution of care responsibilities.
The first chapter compares two approaches to narrowing the gender pension gap: compensating mothers for care-related career breaks or encouraging female employment after birth. Both have been implemented in Norway. The corrective policy reduces the pension gap but also induces beneficiaries to retire earlier. The preventive policy raises mothers’ lifetime earnings and is more cost-effective, but these gains do not translate into higher pension benefits because of how they are calculated.
The second chapter examines whether awarding pension credits to mothers early on can discourage them from working. Studying the introduction of childcare pension credits in Norway in 1992, the research finds no effect on maternal employment or earnings, despite a substantial increase in future pension wealth. The findings highlight the importance of timing in pension reform.
The third chapter turns to paid carers and studies a 2012 Spanish reform targeting domestic workers, who were predominantly informally employed. The reform lowered the cost of formal employment and reduced informality in the sector by roughly half. However, it also lowered the contributions of formal workers and therefore their future benefits, revealing a trade-off between expanding coverage and preserving contribution standards.
Taken together, the dissertation shows how the design of social insurance and pension policies can shape the consequences of unequal care responsibilities throughout working life and into retirement.
Prescribed topic for the trial lecture
“What counts as work, and why does it matter? The economics of paid, unpaid, and informal work”
Trial lecture
10:15, Aud. Karl Borch, NHH
Defense
12:15, Aud. Karl Borch, NHH
Members of the evaluation committee
Associate Professor Jonna Olsson (chair of the committee), Department of Economics, NHH
Assistant Professor Laura Khoury, Université Paris Dauphine-PSL
Professor Peter Haan, Freie Universität Berlin
Supervisors
Professor Aline Bütikofer (main supervisor), Department of Economics, NHH
Postdoctoral Researcher Andreas Haller, Department of Economics, NHH