nep-dem New Economics Papers
on Demographic Economics
Issue of 2023‒04‒17
four papers chosen by
Héctor Pifarré i Arolas
University of Wisconsin

  1. Fortunate Families? The Effects of Wealth on Marriage and Fertility By David Cesarini; Erik Lindqvist; Robert Östling; Anastasia Terskaya
  2. Age at marriage and marital stability: evidence from China By Garcia Hombrados, Jorge; Özcan, Berkay
  3. Prenatal sugar consumption and late-life human capital and health: analyses based on postwar rationing and polygenic indices By van den Berg, Gerard J.; von Hinke, Stephanie; H. Wang, R. Adele
  4. The Foreign-Born Population, the U.S. Economy, and the Federal Budget By Congressional Budget Office

  1. By: David Cesarini; Erik Lindqvist; Robert Östling; Anastasia Terskaya
    Abstract: We estimate the effects of large, positive wealth shocks on marriage and fertility in a sample of Swedish lottery players. For male winners, wealth increases marriage formation and reduces divorce risk, suggesting wealth increases men’s attractiveness as prospective and current partners. Wealth also increases male fertility. The only discernible effect on female winners is that wealth increases their short-run (but not long-run) divorce risk. Our results for divorce are consistent with a model where the wealthier spouse retains most of his/her wealth in divorce. In support of this assumption, we show divorce settlements in Sweden often favor the richer spouse.
    JEL: D01 J12 J13
    Date: 2023–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:31039&r=dem
  2. By: Garcia Hombrados, Jorge; Özcan, Berkay
    Abstract: Many studies showed that marrying younger is associated with a higher risk of divorce. We investigate the causal effect of marrying at an earlier age on women’s divorce risk. We exploit the introduction of the 1981 reform in China, which facilitated legal marriage for urban women younger than 25 years old, using the Chinese Census data. We show that the reform generated a kink in the mean age at marriage for women, which we use in a fuzzy regression kink design (RKD) to assess the causal effect of marrying younger on the probability of divorce. First, we confirm in our data the existence of a negative (in fact, a U-shaped) association between age at marriage and divorce, as commonly observed in previous studies from the USA. Then, we show that this association disappears in our analyses based on RKD. This finding suggests that the well-documented association between early marriage and divorce is in fact attributable to unobservable factors driving both marriage timing and the likelihood of divorce. We discuss the implications.
    Keywords: age at marriage; divorce; Regression Kink Design (RKD); China; 336475; Springer deal
    JEL: J12
    Date: 2023–03–15
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:118361&r=dem
  3. By: van den Berg, Gerard J. (IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy); von Hinke, Stephanie (School of Economics, University of Bristol); H. Wang, R. Adele (School of Economics, University of Bristol.)
    Abstract: Maternal sugar consumption in utero may have a variety of effects on offspring. We exploit the abolishment of the rationing of sweet confectionery in the UK on April 24, 1949, and its subsequent reintroduction some months later, in an era of otherwise uninterrupted rationing of confectionery (1942-1953), sugar (1940-1953) and many other foods, and we consider effects on late-life cardiovascular disease, BMI, height, type-2 diabetes and the intake of sugar, fat and carbohydrates, as well as cognitive outcomes and birth weight. We use individual-level data from the UK Biobank for cohorts born between April 1947–May 1952. We also explore whether one’s genetic “predisposition” to the outcome can moderate the effects of prenatal sugar exposure. We find that prenatal exposure to derationing increases education and reduces BMI and sugar consumption at higher ages, in line with the “developmental origins” explanatory framework, and that the sugar effects are stronger for those who are genetically “predisposed” to sugar consumption.
    Keywords: Nutrition; food consumption; gene-environment interplay; education; developmental origins
    JEL: D45 I12 I15 I18
    Date: 2023–03–17
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2023_005&r=dem
  4. By: Congressional Budget Office
    Abstract: About 45 million people living in the United States in 2021 were born in other countries. Foreign-born people accounted for about half of the growth of the U.S. labor force between 2002 and 2018. In 2019, 2020, and 2021, the size of the foreign-born labor force dropped considerably because of changes in immigration policy and the pandemic.
    JEL: F22 F66 J11 J15 J61
    Date: 2023–04–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cbo:report:58939&r=dem

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