nep-dem New Economics Papers
on Demographic Economics
Issue of 2023‒01‒30
nine papers chosen by
Héctor Pifarré i Arolas
University of Wisconsin

  1. The Emergence of Procyclical Fertility: The Role of Gender Differences in Employment Risk By Coskun, Sena; Dalgic, Husnu
  2. Why Did Gender Wage Convergence in the United States Stall? By Peter Blair; Benjamin Posmanick
  3. Schooling, Skill Demand and Differential Fertility in the Process of Structural Transformation By T. Terry Cheung
  4. Race, Class, and Mobility in U.S. Marriage Markets By Ariel J. Binder; Caroline Walker; Jonathan Eggleston; Marta Murray-Close
  5. The Scale and Nature of Neighborhood Effects on Children: Evidence from a Danish Social Housing Experiment By Stephen B. Billings; Mark Hoekstra; Gabriel Pons Rotger
  6. Height and Well-Being During the Transition from Plan to Market By Alícia Adserà; Francesca Dalla Pozza; Sergei Guriev; Lukas Kleine-Rueschkamp; Elena Nikolova
  7. Nineteenth and Early 20th Century Physical Activity and Calories by Gender and Race By Scott Alan Carson; Scott A. Carson
  8. The Black Death and the origin of the European marriage pattern By Jeremy Edwards; Sheilagh Ogilvie
  9. Retirement duration maximization with survival time expectations By Linden, Mikael

  1. By: Coskun, Sena (Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Nuremberg, Germany ; FAU); Dalgic, Husnu (Univ. Mannheim)
    Abstract: "Fertility in the US exhibits an increasingly more procyclical pattern. We argue that women’s breadwinner status is behind procyclical fertility: (i) women’s relative income in the family has increased over time; and (ii) women are more likely to work in relatively stable and countercyclical industries whereas men tend to work in volatile and procyclical industries. This creates a countercyclical gender income gap as women become breadwinners in recessions, producing an insurance effect of women’s income. Our quantitative framework features a general equilibrium OLG model with endogenous fertility and human capital choice. We show that the change in gender employment cyclicality can explain 38 to 44 percent of the emergence of procyclical fertility. Our counterfactual analysis shows that in a world in which men become nurses and women become construction workers, we would observe “countercyclical fertility” but at the expense of lower human capital accumulation as families lean in more towards quantity in the quality-quantity trade-off." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))
    Keywords: USA ; IAB-Open-Access-Publikation ; Auswirkungen ; Erwerbsbeteiligung ; erwerbstätige Frauen ; Familieneinkommen ; Frauen ; Fruchtbarkeit ; generatives Verhalten ; geschlechtsspezifische Faktoren ; geschlechtsspezifischer Arbeitsmarkt ; Konjunkturabhängigkeit ; Arbeitsmarktrisiko ; Arbeitsplatzgefährdung ; Wirtschaftszweige ; 1964-2018
    JEL: E24 E32 J11 J13 J16 J21 J24
    Date: 2022–12–21
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iab:iabdpa:202227&r=dem
  2. By: Peter Blair (Harvard Graduate School of Education); Benjamin Posmanick (St. Bonaventure University)
    Abstract: During the 1980s, the wage gap between white women and white men in the US declined by approximately 1 percentage point per year. In the decades since, the rate of gender wage convergence has stalled to less than one-third of its previous value. An outstanding puzzle in economics is ``why did gender wage convergence in the US stall?'' Using an event study design that exploits the timing of state and federal family-leave policies, we show that the introduction of the policies can explain 94% of the reduction in the rate of gender wage convergence that is unaccounted for after controlling for changes in observable characteristics of workers. If gender wage convergence had continued at the pre-family leave rate, wage parity between white women and white men would have been achieved as early as 2017.
    Keywords: gender wage gap, Family and Medical Leave Act, family leave
    JEL: J16 J31 J32
    Date: 2023–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hka:wpaper:2023-001&r=dem
  3. By: T. Terry Cheung (Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan)
    Abstract: Demography and structural transformation are interrelated, and depend critically on education. At the turn of the twentieth century, U.S. parents began having fewer children while in-creasing educational investment per child. This quantity-quality tradeoff facilitated job reallocation from the low-skilled agricultural sector to the high-skilled nonagricultural sector. This transformation is examined in a heterogeneous agent model with a non-degenerate human capital distribution, focusing on how fertility and education decisions affect structural transformation. The result shows that the quantity-quality decisions account for up to approximately one-third of the decline in the agricultural employment share.
    Keywords: Quantity-Quality Tradeoff, Demographic Transition, Structural Transformation
    JEL: E24 J11 O11 O41
    Date: 2022–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sin:wpaper:22-a006&r=dem
  4. By: Ariel J. Binder; Caroline Walker; Jonathan Eggleston; Marta Murray-Close
    Abstract: We study racial-ethnic disparities in marital and economic status by linking American Community Survey respondents born in 1978-87 to their parents’ tax records. Conditional on childhood family income (CFI), we find that the average Black non-Hispanic woman obtains 60 percent less partner income than does the average White non-Hispanic woman, driven both by a lower propensity to be partnered and a lower partner CFI rank. These marriage market dynamics account for 85 percent of the observed—and large—gap in intergenerational family income mobility. We also show that mobility gaps are larger, and rates of intermarriage lower, in birth areas with greater CFI inequality and racial-ethnic segregation. We discuss a simple model in which these patterns originate from segmentation of the marriage market along racial-ethnic lines combined with imperfect assortative matching on economic status. We comment on the implications of our findings for policy.
    Keywords: marriage market, intergenerational mobility, family income, racial inequality, assortative matching, segregation, intermarriage, union formation, stratification economics
    JEL: D31 J12 J15
    Date: 2022–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cen:wpaper:22-59&r=dem
  5. By: Stephen B. Billings; Mark Hoekstra; Gabriel Pons Rotger
    Abstract: Recent research documents a causal impact of place on the long-run outcomes of children. However, little is known about which neighborhood characteristics are most important, and at what scale neighborhood effects operate. By using the random assignment of public housing along with administrative data from Denmark, we get inside the “black box” of neighborhood effects by defining neighborhoods using various characteristics and scales. Results indicate effects on mental health and especially education are large but local, while effects on drug possession operate on a much broader scale. Additionally, unemployment and education are better predictors of outcomes than neighborhood income.
    JEL: I38 K42 R23
    Date: 2022–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30764&r=dem
  6. By: Alícia Adserà (Princeton University); Francesca Dalla Pozza (EBRD - European Bank for Reconstruction and Development - EBRD); Sergei Guriev (ECON - Département d'économie (Sciences Po) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CEPR - Center for Economic Policy Research - CEPR); Lukas Kleine-Rueschkamp (University of Oxford [Oxford], OCDE - Organisation de Coopération et de Développement Economiques = Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development); Elena Nikolova (UCL - University College of London [London])
    Abstract: Using newly available data, we re-evaluate the impact of transition from plan to market in former communist countries on objective and subjective well-being. We find clear evidence of the high social cost of early transition reforms: cohorts born around the start of transition are about 1 cm shorter than their older or younger peers. We provide suggestive evidence on the importance on mechanisms that partially explain these results: the decline of GDP per capita and the deterioration of healthcare systems. On the bright side, we find that cohorts that experienced transition in their infancy are now better educated and more satisfied with their lives than their counterparts. Taken together, our results imply that the transition process has been a traumatic experience, but that its negative impact has largely been overcome.
    Keywords: Transition from plan to market, Structural reforms, Height, Well-being
    Date: 2021–01–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03878624&r=dem
  7. By: Scott Alan Carson; Scott A. Carson
    Abstract: When traditional measures for income and wealth are scarce or unreliable, alternative values are effective in measuring nutritional conditions during economic development. This study uses net nutrition and calories to illustrate that during the 19th and early 20th centuries that men required about 20 percent more calories per day than women. Individuals with darker complexions had greater BMRs and required more calories per day compared to fairer complexioned individuals; however, the difference was not large. Individuals born in the Great Lakes, Plains, and South required more calories per day than individuals from the Northeast and Middle Atlantic. Residence in the developing Northeast and Middle Atlantic was associated with the fewest regional calories per capita. Nineteenth and early 20th century calorie consumption was inversely related to inequality.
    Keywords: net nutrition, 19th and 20th century gender relations, 19th and 20th century race relations
    JEL: Q10 Q19 N11 N51
    Date: 2022
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10140&r=dem
  8. By: Jeremy Edwards; Sheilagh Ogilvie
    Abstract: This paper evaluates criticisms of our view that there is no evidence of the Black Death having caused the European Marriage Pattern. The attempt by Nico Voigtländer and Hans-Joachim Voth to rebut our argument fails completely. Their claim that we distort the historical evidence is entirely without foundation. They do not engage with the fact that historical demographers are widely divided on when this marriage pattern emerged and that the data are too fragile for any definitive conclusions about the period before c. 1540. They sidestep the logic of their own model, refusing to acknowledge that the factual inaccuracy of one key assumption makes the model completely inapplicable to demographic behaviour in England after the Black Death. They repeatedly refer to evidence on demographic behaviour centuries later than the Black Death with no attempt to explain how it could be relevant to the aftermath of that pandemic. This weakness also applies to the econometric evidence they adduce, but that evidence is further vitiated by the invalidity of the instrumental variables they use.
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oxf:esohwp:_204&r=dem
  9. By: Linden, Mikael
    Abstract: Paper proposes a model of retirement duration maximization based on retiree’s ex-ante intended retirement age and subjective survival time estimate. The optimum result needs that retirement age is an increasing convex function of survival time estimate supporting postponed retirement age with longer intended retirement duration. As a result, the average actual observed retirement duration is less than the intended duration. The result is valid irrespectively of biasedness of subjective survival estimates
    Keywords: Optimal retirement age, intended retirement duration, subjective survival time estimates, convex function
    JEL: C41 D81 J14
    Date: 2022–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:115903&r=dem

This nep-dem issue is ©2023 by Héctor Pifarré i Arolas. It is provided as is without any express or implied warranty. It may be freely redistributed in whole or in part for any purpose. If distributed in part, please include this notice.
General information on the NEP project can be found at http://nep.repec.org. For comments please write to the director of NEP, Marco Novarese at <director@nep.repec.org>. Put “NEP” in the subject, otherwise your mail may be rejected.
NEP’s infrastructure is sponsored by the School of Economics and Finance of Massey University in New Zealand.