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on Demographic Economics |
|
Issue of 2018‒02‒12
five papers chosen by Héctor Pifarré i Arolas Max-Planck-Institut für demografische Forschung |
| By: | Stefanie Fischer (Department of Economics, California Polytechnic State University); Heather Royer (University of California, Santa Barbara, NBER, and IZA); Corey White (Department of Economics, California Polytechnic State University) |
| 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 response to these policies, abortions to Texas residents fell 20.5% and births rose 2.6% in counties that no longer had an abortion provider within 50 miles. Changes in the family planning market induced a 1.5% increase in births for counties that no longer had a publicly funded family planning clinic within 25 miles. Meanwhile, responses of retail purchases of condoms and emergency contraceptives to both abortion and family planning service changes were minimal. |
| Keywords: | family planning, abortion, birth, contraception, reproductive, health |
| JEL: | J13 I18 J08 J18 I38 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpl:wpaper:1706&r=dem |
| By: | Schaubert, Marianna |
| Abstract: | This study investigates how West German spouses have responded by adjusting their time allocation to the alimony reform introduced in 2008. This reform imposed financial self-responsibility after a finalized divorce. It weakened the relative bargaining position of the spouse with a claim for maintenance in the case of a potential divorce prior to the law change. Therefore, the present study helps to verify bargaining models by considering the 2008 policy change as a shift of spousal bargaining power. Estimating difference-in-differences models I find that, indeed, wives who face a potential low alimony loss might have increased their working hours as a result of the 2008 reform. To my knowledge, the present investigation is the first analysis of the behavioral response of individuals in longer marriages to the 2008 reform. Its approach to identifying those who have been (dis)advantaged by this reform is a new one, proposing a method that reflects the realities of alimony arrangements in Germany. |
| Keywords: | Alimony,Family,Bargaining,Institutional change,Labor supply,Time allocation |
| JEL: | D13 J12 J13 J22 K36 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:esprep:173193&r=dem |
| By: | Adrián Nieto |
| Abstract: | This article studies the impact of permanent employment on the fertility decision. I identify a causal effect by exploiting exogenous variation in subsidies to permanent contracts. Using a 2SLS specification, I firstly examine whether the subsidies had an impact on the use of open-ended contracts, and, in a second step, whether permanent employment has an effect on the decision to have a child. Holding an open-ended contract has a positive impact on the fertility decision by means of a higher job security. However, this effect vanishes when the career costs of childbearing are high. The paper provides two sets of evidence of the previous findings. My micro results based on individual administrative data are consistent with the estimates obtained using aggregate data. |
| Keywords: | fertility decision, permanent employment, job security, career costs of childbearing, instrumental variables. |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:not:notcfc:18/01&r=dem |
| By: | Philipp Ager; Markus Brueckner; Benedikt Herz |
| Abstract: | This paper provides new insights on the link between structural change and the fertility transi-tion. In the early 1890s agricultural production in the American South was severely impaired by the spread of an agricultural pest, the boll weevil. We use this plausibly exogenous variation in agricultural production to establish a causal link between changes in earnings opportunities in agriculture and fertility. Our estimates show that lower earnings opportunities in agriculture lead to fewer children. We identify two channels: households staying in agriculture reduced fertility because children are a normal good, and households switching to manufacturing faced higher opportunity costs of raising children. The lower earnings opportunities in agriculture also stimulated human capital formation, which we argue is consistent with the predictions of a quantity-quality model of fertility. |
| Keywords: | Fertility Transition, Structural Change, Industrialization, Agricultural Income |
| JEL: | J13 N31 O14 |
| Date: | 2018–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:auu:hpaper:062&r=dem |
| By: | de Silva, Tiloka; Tenreyro, Silvana |
| Abstract: | The rapid population growth in developing countries in the middle of the 20th century led to fears of a population explosion and motivated the inception of what effectively became a global population-control program. The initiative, propelled in its beginnings by intellectual elites in the United States, Sweden, and some developing countries, mobilized resources to enact policies aimed at reducing fertility by widening contraception provision and changing family-size norms. In the following five decades, fertility rates fell dramatically, with a majority of countries converging to a fertility rate just above two children per woman, despite large cross-country differences in economic variables such as GDP per capita, education levels, urbanization, and female labour force participation. The fast decline in fertility rates in developing economies stands in sharp contrast with the gradual decline experienced earlier by more mature economies. In this paper, we argue that population-control policies are likely to have played a central role in the global decline in fertility rates in recent decades and can explain some patterns of that fertility decline that are not well accounted for by other socioeconomic factors |
| JEL: | J11 J13 J18 O15 Z13 |
| Date: | 2017–09–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:86623&r=dem |