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on Demographic Economics |
| By: | Maya Rossin-Slater; Miriam Wüst |
| Abstract: | We study the impact of targeted high quality preschool over the life cycle and across generations, and examine its interaction with a health intervention during infancy. Using administrative data from Denmark together with variation in the timing of program implementation between 1933 and 1960, we find lasting benefits of access to preschool at age 3 on outcomes through age 65 -- educational attainment increases, income rises (for men), and the probability of survival increases (for women). Further, the benefits persist to the next generation, who experience higher educational attainment by age 25. However, exposure to a nurse home visiting program in infancy reduces the added value of preschool. The positive effect of preschool is lowered by 85 percent for years of schooling (of the first generation) and by 86 percent for adult income among men. |
| JEL: | H51 H53 I18 I3 J13 |
| Date: | 2016–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22700&r=dem |
| By: | Giuliana Giuliani (European University Institute); Ann-Zofie Duvander (University of Stockholm) |
| Abstract: | In 2008, Sweden introduced a cash-for-care benefit consisting of a flat-rate sum paid by municipalities to parents of children between the ages of one and three who did not use publicly subsidized childcare. The main object of the reform was to increase parents’ ‘freedom to choose’, but the policy was criticized because of its potentially negative effects on gender equality and mothers’ employment. This study focuses on the effects of cash-for-care on female employment in Sweden. The study shows that the adoption of this policy had negative effects on female employment rates and female employment growth rates in non-urban areas. Cash-for-care was abolished in Sweden in 2016, but similar policies are still in place in other Scandinavian countries. This research contributes to the debate on family policy and its developments, in particular in Scandinavian countries. |
| Keywords: | cash-for-care, family policy, female employment |
| JEL: | J13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sek:iacpro:4106714&r=dem |
| By: | Eleonora Bottino (ING Direct Madrid, Spain); Teresa García-Muñoz (Campus la Cartuja s/n, E-18011 Granada, Spain); Praveen Kujal (Middlesex University and Economic Science Institute, Chapman University) |
| Abstract: | We explore gender biases towards delegation in a modified (delegation) dictator game. Under compulsory delegation and no (gender) revelation no significant gender differences are observed for choices made by principals. Male agents share little with the recipients, meanwhile, female (agents) are not responsive to the incentive scheme and return less to the dictator. However, a clear dichotomy in female behavior is observed under gender revelation. As principals, females behave similar to their male counterparts and appoint as agents those who return more to them. On the other hand, as agents’ females show greater redistributive concerns relative to their male counterparts in the early periods even though it is detrimental to them over time. This results in both male and female principals delegating more to male agents over time. |
| Keywords: | Dictator game, delegation, gender |
| JEL: | J01 J16 J7 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:chu:wpaper:16-22&r=dem |
| By: | Richey, Jeremiah; Tromp, Nikolas |
| Abstract: | We investigate changes in black-white wage gaps across wage distributions for young men and women in the U.S. between 1990 and 2011. Gaps are decomposed into composition and structural effects using a semi-parametric framework. Further, we investigate the roles of occupational choice and self-selection. We find a fall in the composition effect shrinks the wage gap at the lower end of the distribution for men and women. Conversely, an increase in the composition effect for men, and an increase in the structural effect for women, drives a widening of the wage gap at the upper end of the wage distribution. |
| Keywords: | Black-white wage gaps, Discrimination, Decompositions |
| JEL: | C14 J31 J71 |
| Date: | 2016–09–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:74335&r=dem |
| By: | Elaine L. Hill (Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry); David J.G. Slusky (Department of Economics, The University of Kansas;) |
| Abstract: | Virtually all parents want their children to succeed academically. How to achieve this goal, though, is far from clear. Specifically, the temporal spacing between adjacent births has been shown to affect educational outcomes. While many of these studies have produced substantial and statistically significant results, these results have been relatively narrow in their application due to data limitations. Using Colorado birth certificates matched to schooling outcomes, we investigate the relationship between birth spacing and educational attainment. We instrument birth spacing with a previous pregnancy that did not result in a live birth. We find no overall effect of spacing on either the first or second children’s grade 3-10 test scores. Stratifying by the sexes of the children, we find that when the first child is a boy and the second a girl, an extra year of spacing increases the first child’s math, reading, and writing test scores by 0.07-0.08 SD, while there is no impact on the second child. This is the first study to do such an analysis using matched large scale birth and elementary to high school administrative data, and to leverage a very large data set to stratify our results by the sexes of the children. . |
| Keywords: | human capital, educational attainment, birth spacing, pregnancy loss, miscarriage |
| JEL: | J13 I14 I20 |
| Date: | 2016–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kan:wpaper:201609&r=dem |
| By: | Jaramillo, Miguel (Grupo de Análisis para el Desarrollo (GRADE)) |
| Abstract: | As in other developing countries, Peru’s demographic transition is well underway. Concurrently, women’s labor market participation and employment rates have substantially increased. In this paper we estimate the causal effect that the reduction in fertility rates has on women’s employment using instrumental variables already tested in developed countries—twins in the first birth and the sex composition of the two oldest children. We also analyze the heterogeneity of the effects along three lines: marriage status of the mother, age of the first (second) child, and mother’s level of education. We find strong effects of fertility. According to our results, 27 percent of the total increase in women’s rate of employment between 1993 and 2007 can be attributed to the reduction in fertility rates. This is a considerable magnitude, more than four times as large as the estimate for US by Jacobsen et al. (1999). Effects are largest in women with children 2 years old or younger and decline inversely as the first child increases in age, but are still significant when he or she reaches 10. Effects also vary with the mother’s education level, tending to be stronger when women have more education. Finally, these effects are smaller for married women than for all women. |
| Keywords: | Mercado de trabajo, Labour market, Labor market, Fecundidad, Fertility, Mujeres, Women, Perú |
| JEL: | J13 J22 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gad:avance:0020&r=dem |
| By: | Kieron Barclay (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany); Mikko Myrskylä (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany) |
| Abstract: | As parental ages at birth continue to rise, concerns about the effects of fertility postponement on offspring are increasing as well. Advanced maternal and paternal ages have been associated with a range of negative health outcomes for offspring, including decreased longevity. The literature, however, has neglected to examine the benefits of being born at a later date. We analyse mortality among 1.9 million Swedish men and women born in 1938-1960, and use a sibling comparison design that accounts for all time invariant factors shared by the siblings. We show that there are no adverse effects of childbearing at advanced maternal ages, and that offspring mortality declines monotonically with advancing paternal age. This positive effect is attributable to the increase in life expectancy over successive birth cohorts, which dominates over individual-level factors that may have negative effects on offspring longevity, such as reproductive ageing. |
| Keywords: | Sweden, ageing, longevity, mortality, parents, reproduction |
| JEL: | J1 Z0 |
| Date: | 2016–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dem:wpaper:wp-2016-011&r=dem |
| By: | Grosch, Kerstin; Rau, Holger A. |
| Abstract: | This paper experimentally analyzes the determinants of compliance in a cheating game. The results show that men are less compliant than women. We demonstrate that social value orientation predicts differences in cheating and explains the gender differences. Individualistic men cheat more than all social types of both gender. |
| Keywords: | Experiment, Gender Di erences, Honesty, Social Value Orientation, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, Labor and Human Capital, C91, H26, J16, |
| Date: | 2016–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:gagfdp:245702&r=dem |
| By: | Elena Bárcena-Martín (Dpto. Estadística y Econometría, University of Málaga.); Maite Blázquez (Universidad Autonoma de Madrid.); Ana I. Moro Egido (Department of Economic Theory and Economic History, University of Granada.) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes to what extent the financial regime of the couple, defined in terms of the level of income pooling and decision-making responsibilities, is associated with different levels of household deprivation and also with specific domains of deprivation, namely economic strain, durables and housing. We conclude that contributing incomes to the household, either totally or partially, reduces deprivation, specifically economic strain. This reduction is even more noticeable in the presence of children. We also find that sharing the responsibility for decision making reduces deprivation. In particular, by areas of decision we find that, first, deprivation is not significantly influenced by which member of the couple, either the man, the woman or both, has most decision-making responsibilities in terms of durables; second, deprivation increases when the female (male) decides on issues related to borrowing (children); third, if the woman decides about everyday shopping, deprivation diminishes and this effect is weaker if she is the one who earns more in the couple; and finally, deprivation decreases if the partner who earns more decides about savings, and even more so in the economic strain domain. All these results give evidence of the need to take into account the standard determinants of deprivation together with variables that capture the ways in which household members make decisions and how they pool incomes in designing policies to reduce deprivation. |
| Keywords: | Deprivation, income pooling, decision-making responsibility, gender, children |
| JEL: | C21 D13 I32 |
| Date: | 2016–10–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gra:wpaper:16/05&r=dem |