Replication data for: The Role of Non-Contributory Pensions on Internal Mobility in Spain

To study the impact of non-contributory pensions on mobility decisions of working-age individuals we gather data from a variety of sources. The individual level data come from the 2nd quarters of the Spanish Labor Force Survey (Encuesta de Poblaciόn Activa, EPA, Spanish Statistical Institute, 2017a), which provides labor market status and province of residence at the time of the survey, t+1, as well as one year before, at time t. Information on migratory flows between provinces is gathered from the Residential Variations Statistics (Estadistica de Variaciones Residenciales, EVR, Spanish Statistical Institute 2017b). As noted earlier, we use the 1988 flows to weigh average provincial traits based on the relevance of the alternative locations, which include all other provinces, in that base year. Our key regressor is the share of the province’s population that are old-age non-contributory pensioners, which we gather from the Labor Statistics Yearbook of the Employment and Social Security Ministry (2017) and from the Population Statistics of the Spanish National Statistical Institute (2017c). We compile information on the number of beneficiaries of the so-called assistance pensions (from the 1981 Law) and the more recent non-contributory pensions (implemented by the 1991 Law). <br>We also gather data from various sources to account for the role played by the province’s economy, labor and housing markets, and its population composition. Annual provincial employment rates capturing changes in labor market conditions are derived from the Spanish National Statistics Institute (2017d). The share of the population 65 plus over total provincial population is also obtained from the Spanish National Statistics Institute (2017c). We include controls for the share of the province’s population earning unemployment benefits (computed using the Encuesta de Población Activa, EPA). Lastly, in our robustness checks, we experiment with including data on the employment share in the construction sector from the Spanish National Statistics Institute (2017d), the share of the population 65 years of age and above with a primary education or less (also computed using the Encuesta de Población Activa, EPA), provincial housing prices gathered from the Spanish Ministry of Development (Ministerio de Fomento, 2017), as well as provincial per capita GDP, which we deflate, along with its housing prices, using the province’s consumer price index are gathered from the Instituto Nacional de Estadistica (2017e).<br>See references in the main paper<br>