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on Demographic Economics |
| By: | Lucia Corno (Cattolica University); Nicole Hildebrandt (Boston Consulting Group); Alessandra Voena (The University of Chicago) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies how aggregate economic conditions affect marriage markets in developing countries where marriage is regulated by traditional customary norms. We examine how local economics shocks influence the timing of marriage, and particularly child marriage, in Sub-Saharan Africa and in India, where substantial monetary or in-kind transfers occur with marriage: bride price across Sub-Saharan Africa and dowry in India. In a simple equilibrium model of the marriage market in which parents choose when their children marry, income shocks affect the age of marriage because marriage payments are a source of consumption smoothing, particularly for a woman's family. As predicted by our model, we show that droughts, which reduce annual crop yields by 10 to 15%, have opposite effects on the marriage behavior of a sample of 400,000 women in the two regions: in Sub-Saharan Africa, they increase the annual hazard into child marriage by 3%, while in India droughts reduce such a hazard by 4%. Changes in the age of marriage due to droughts are associated with changes in fertility, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, and with declines in observed marriage payments. Our results indicate that the age of marriage responds to short-term changes in aggregate economic conditions and that traditional norms determine this response. This suggests that, in order to design successful policies to combat child marriage and improve investments in daughters' human capital, it it crucial to understand the economic role of traditional cultural norms. |
| Keywords: | marriage market, income shocks, informal insurance, Africa, India, dowry, bride price |
| JEL: | J10 O15 |
| Date: | 2017–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hka:wpaper:2017-055&r=dem |
| By: | Paola Giuliano |
| Abstract: | Social attitudes toward women vary significantly across societies. This chapter reviews recent empirical research on various historical determinants of contemporary differences in gender roles and gender gaps across societies, and how these differences are transmitted from parents to children and therefore persist until today. We review work on the historical origin of differences in female labor-force participation, fertility, education, marriage arrangements, competitive attitudes, domestic violence, and other forms of difference in gender norms. Most of the research illustrates that differences in cultural norms regarding gender roles emerge in response to specific historical situations, but tend to persist even after the historical conditions have changed. We also discuss the conditions under which gender norms either tend to be stable or change more quickly. |
| JEL: | N0 Z1 |
| Date: | 2017–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23635&r=dem |
| By: | Jason Fletcher (University of Wisconsin–Madison) |
| Abstract: | A maturing literature across the social sciences suggests important impacts of the intergenerational transmission of crime as well as peer effects that determine youth criminal activities. This paper explores these channels by examining gender-specific effects of maternal and paternal incarceration from both own-parents and classmate-parents. This paper also adds to the literature by exploiting across-cohort, within school exposure to peer parent incarceration to enhance causal inference. While the intergenerational correlations of criminal activities are similar by gender (father-son/mother-son), the results suggest that peer parent incarceration transmits effects largely along gender lines, which is suggestive of specific learning mechanisms. Peer maternal incarceration increases adolescent female criminal activities and reduces male crime and the reverse is true for peer paternal incarceration. These effects are strongest for youth reports of selling drugs and engaging in physical violence. In contrast, the effects of peer parental incarceration on other outcomes, such as GPA, do not vary by gender. |
| Keywords: | crime, social spillovers, intergenerational transmission, gender |
| JEL: | J24 Z13 |
| Date: | 2017–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hka:wpaper:2017-058&r=dem |
| By: | Stefanie Fischer; Heather Royer; Corey White |
| Abstract: | Between 2011 and 2014, Texas enacted three pieces of legislation that significantly reduced funding for family planning services and increased restrictions on abortion clinic operations. Together this legislation creates cross-county variation in access to abortion and family planning services, which we leverage to understand the impact of family planning and abortion clinic access on abortions, births, and contraceptive purchases. In-state abortions fell 20% and births rose 3% in counties that no longer had an abortion provider within 50 miles. Births increased 1% and contraceptive purchases rose 8% in counties without a publicly-funded family planning clinic within 25 miles. |
| JEL: | I18 I38 J08 J13 J18 |
| Date: | 2017–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23634&r=dem |
| By: | Andrew E. Clark; Sarah Flèche; Warn N. Lekfuangfu |
| Abstract: | To what extent do childhood experiences continue to affect adult wellbeing over the life course? Previous work on this link has been carried out either at one particular adult age or for some average of adulthood. We here use two British birth-cohort datasets (the 1958 NCDS and the 1970 BCS) to map out the time profile of the effect of childhood on adult outcomes, including life satisfaction. We find that the effect of many aspects of childhood do not fade away over time, but are rather remarkably stable. In both birth cohorts child non-cognitive skills are the strongest predictors of adult life satisfaction at all ages. Of these, emotional health is the strongest. Childhood cognitive performance is more important than good conduct in explaining adult life satisfaction in the earlier cohort, whereas this ranking is inverted in the more recent BCS. |
| Keywords: | life satisfaction, cohort data, childhood, adult outcomes |
| JEL: | A12 D60 I31 |
| Date: | 2017–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp1493&r=dem |
| By: | Andrés Erosa; Luisa Fuster; Gueorgui Kambourov; Richard Rogerson |
| Abstract: | We document a robust negative relationship between the log of mean annual hours in an occupation and the standard deviation of log annual hours within that occupation. We develop a unified model of occupational choice and labor supply that features heterogeneity across occupations in the return to working additional hours and show that it can match the key features of the data both qualitatively and quantitatively. We use the model to shed light on gender differences in labor market outcomes that arise because of gender asymmetries in home production responsibilities. Our model generates large gender gaps in hours of work, occupational choices, and wages. In particular, an exogenous difference in time devoted to home production of ten hours per week increases the observed gender wage gap by roughly eleven percentage points and decreases the share of females in high hours occupations by fourteen percentage points. The implied misallocation of talent across occupations has significant aggregate effects on productivity and welfare. |
| JEL: | E2 J2 |
| Date: | 2017–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23636&r=dem |
| By: | Fahn, Matthias (LMU Munich and CESifo); Hakenes, Hendrik (University of Bonn and CEPR) |
| Abstract: | We show that team formation can serve as an implicit commitment device to overcome problems of self-control. If individuals have present-biased preferences, effort that is costly today but rewarded at some later point in time is too low from the perspective of an individual\'s long-run self. If agents interact repeatedly and can monitor each other, a relational contract involving teamwork can help to improve performance. The mutual promise to work harder is credible because the team breaks up after an agent has not kept this promise - which leads to individual underproduction in the future and hence a reduction of future utility. |
| Keywords: | self-control problems; teamwork; relational contracts; |
| JEL: | L22 L23 |
| Date: | 2017–07–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rco:dpaper:42&r=dem |