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on Demographic Economics |
| By: | Huang, Wei (Harvard University); Lei, Xiaoyan (Peking University); Sun, Ang (Renmin University of China) |
| Abstract: | The rise in education of women relative to men is an emerging worldwide phenomenon in recent decades. This paper investigates the impact of the birth control policies on teenage girls' education attainment. The estimates suggest that the policies explain 30 percent of the education increase for women born in 1945-1980 and 50 percent of the gender gap narrowing in China. Further analysis provides some suggestive evidence for potential mechanisms, including the policy-induced expectations for labor and marriage market and subjective attitudes on children and gender-equality. These findings highlight the role of fertility policies in women's empowerment of last century. |
| Keywords: | One-Child Policy, education of girls, expectation |
| JEL: | D84 I20 J13 J16 J18 |
| Date: | 2015–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9301&r=all |
| By: | Currie, Janet (Princeton University); Schwandt, Hannes (Princeton University) |
| Abstract: | Scholars have been examining the relationship between fertility and unemployment for more than a century. Most studies find that fertility falls with unemployment in the short run, but it is not known whether these negative effects persist since women may simply postpone child bearing to better economics times. Using over 140 million U.S. birth records for the period 1975 to 2010, we analyze both the short and long-run effects of unemployment on fertility. We follow fixed cohorts of U.S. born women defined by their own state and year of birth, and relate their fertility to the unemployment rate experienced by each cohort at different ages. We focus on conceptions that result in a live birth. We find that women in their early 20s are most affected by high unemployment rates in the short-run and that the negative effects on fertility grow over time. A one percentage point increase in the unemployment rate experienced between the ages of 20 and 24 reduces the short-run fertility of women in this age range by 6 conceptions per 1,000 women. When we follow these women to age 40, we find that a one percentage point increase in the unemployment rate experienced at 20 to 24 leads to an overall loss of 14.2 conceptions. This long-run effect is driven largely by women who remain childless and thus do not have either first births or higher order births. |
| Keywords: | fertility, unemployment |
| JEL: | J6 J11 J12 J13 |
| Date: | 2015–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9299&r=all |
| By: | Conzo, Pierluigi; Fuochi, Giulia; Mencarini,Letizia (University of Turin) |
| Abstract: | There is a growing number of studies focusing on the role of fertility in subjective well-being in developed countries while developing countries have been rarely taken into account. We investigate the empirical relationship between fertility and life satisfaction in rural Ethiopia, the largest landlocked country in Africa providing the unique opportunity of panel data availability. Our results suggest that older men benefit the most in terms of life satisfaction from the investment in children, the latter being instead detrimental for women’s subjective well being in reproductive age. In particular, consistently with the related socio-economic theories, we find that the number of children ever born plays a positive role for men’s life satisfaction in older age. Conversely, a new birth produces the opposite effect especially for young women. We argue that this mismatch has two complementary explanations: on the one hand, rather than a source of (labour) support young children represent a burden which traditionally falls on women’s shoulders in the short run; on the other hand, in poor rural areas children can be thought as a valuable long-term investment in a lifecycle perspective. Endogeneity issues are addressed by controlling for lagged life satisfaction in OLS regressions, through fixed effects and the IV approach. |
| Date: | 2015–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uto:dipeco:201524&r=all |
| By: | Cascio, Elizabeth U. (Dartmouth College); Haider, Steven J. (Michigan State University); Nielsen, Helena Skyt (Aarhus University) |
| Abstract: | Numerous countries have enacted policies to promote the labor force participation of women around the years of childbearing, and unsurprisingly, many research articles have been devoted to evaluating their effectiveness. Perhaps more surprisingly, however, six such articles were submitted independently over several months to Labour Economics and subsequently made it through the normal review process. These articles are collected in the Special Section that follows. This article provides additional background to facilitate the understanding of the policies that are evaluated in the Special Section articles and, more importantly, a discussion of what can be learned from the articles as a collection. Taken together, the articles are quite informative in demonstrating how the effectiveness of policies can vary across different national contexts and how this variation itself can be usefully examined with the standard theoretical framework. |
| Keywords: | childcare, parental leave |
| JEL: | J13 J22 |
| Date: | 2015–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9297&r=all |
| By: | Fassio, Claudio; Montobbio, Fabio; Venturini, Alessandra (University of Turin) |
| Abstract: | This paper uses the French and the UK Labour Force Surveys and German Microcensus to estimate the effects of the different components of the labour force on innovation at the sectoral level between 1994 and 2005, focusing in particular on the contribution of migrant workers. We adopt a production function approach in which we control for the usual determinants of innovation, such as R&D investments, stock of patents and openness to trade. To address for the possible endogeneity of migrants we implement instrumental variable strategies using both two-stage least squares with external instruments and GMM-SYS with internal ones. In addition we also account for the possible endogeneity of native workers and instrument them accordingly. Our results show that highly educated migrants have a positive effect on innovation even if the effect is smaller relative to the one of the educated natives. Moreover this positive effect seems to be confined to the high tech sectors and among highly educated migrants from other European countries. |
| Date: | 2015–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uto:labeco:201507&r=all |
| By: | De Paola, Maria (University of Calabria); Scoppa, Vincenzo (University of Calabria) |
| Abstract: | Using data on about 35,000 professional tennis matches, we test whether men and women react differently to psychological pressure arising from the outcomes of sequential stages in a competition. We show that, with respect to males, females losing the first set are much more likely to play poorly the second set, choking under the pressure of falling behind and receiving negative feedback. The gender differential is stronger in high stakes matches. On the other hand, when players are tied in the third set we do not find any gender difference in players' reactions: this suggests that females do not tend to choke if they do not lag behind. These results are robust controlling for measures of abilities and fitness of players, such as players' rankings, players' ex-ante winning probability, players' rest, players' and tournaments' fixed effects. |
| Keywords: | gender differences, psychological pressure, choking under pressure, feedback, tennis |
| JEL: | J16 D03 L83 |
| Date: | 2015–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9315&r=all |