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on Demographic Economics |
| By: | Lundborg, Petter (Lund University); Plug, Erik (University of Amsterdam); Rasmussen, Astrid Würtz (Aarhus University) |
| Abstract: | Newly matched data on in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments are used to estimate the long-run consequences of children on the labor market earnings of women and men (often referred to as child penalties). We measure long-run child penalties in IVF-treated families by comparing the earnings of successfully and unsuccessfully first-time treated women and men up to 25 years after the first IVF treatment. In the short run, we find a large penalty immediately after the birth of the first child. In the long run, however, we find that the child penalty fades out, disappears completely after 10 years, and even turns into a child premium after 15 years, offsetting the initial setbacks experienced when children are young. Our findings therefore challenge the widely held view that children are the primary drivers behind the long-run gender gap in earnings. |
| Keywords: | child penalty, gender earnings gap, fertility |
| JEL: | J13 J16 J31 |
| Date: | 2024–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16959&r= |
| By: | Cools, Angela (Cornell University); Grooms, Jared (Brigham Young University); Karbownik, Krzysztof (Emory University); O'Keefe, Siobhan (Davidson College); Price, Joseph (Brigham Young University); Wray, Anthony (University of Southern Denmark) |
| Abstract: | The nineteenth-century American family experienced tremendous demographic, economic, and institutional changes. By using birth order effects as a proxy for family environment, and linked census data on men born between 1835 and 1910, we study how the family's role in human capital production evolved over this period. We find firstborn premiums for occupational outcomes, marriage, and fertility that are similar across census waves. Our results indicate that the returns to investments in the family environment were stable over a long period. |
| Keywords: | birth order, parental investments, occupational outcomes, intergenerational mobility, marriage, fertility |
| JEL: | J13 J62 N30 |
| Date: | 2024–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16953&r= |
| By: | Simankova, Irina; Tauchmann, Harald |
| Abstract: | The age at which women become mothers for the first time is ever increasing in many industrialized countries. Therefore, fertility determinants that might deteriorate with age, such as health, and their effect on reproductive patterns, should be given more attention. We explore the effect of the subjective general health of women of reproductive age on the conditional probability of entering motherhood. Based on estimating linear discrete-time hazard models using survey data from Germany, we do not find a homogeneous health effect on the probability of having a first child. However, allowing effect heterogeneity over the span of reproductive age reveals that the role of health is ambiguous. While good health is associated with a lower probability of entering motherhood at the beginning of the reproductive phase, the opposite holds for the late reproductive phase. This pattern is robust to employing different estimation methods (parametric, non-parametric), conditioning on socio-economic characteristics, and taking unobserved individual-level heterogeneity into account. |
| Keywords: | motherhood, fertility, discrete-time survival analysis, instrumental variables estimation |
| JEL: | C41 I19 J13 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:iwqwdp:295728&r= |
| By: | Rude, Johanna |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the relationship between demographic change and automation while taking the role of education into account. This is illustrated by incorporating skilled and unskilled labor into a theoretical model. If labor supply by households decreases, for example, due to demographic change, the model states that the optimal level of automation capital increases. However, this relationship depends crucially on the level of education in the workforce. Motivated by this novel prediction derived from the model, a new data set allowing for testing of the prediction is constructed. Patent data are combined with an automation classification to arrive at a novel measure of automation. In a series of analyses, evidence for the theoretical prediction is found. While there is a negative relationship between automation capital and population growth, the results corroborate the theoretical prediction that it is crucial to account for the role of education in that relationship. Doing so yields highly significant results which suggest that population growth is negatively correlated with automation, but that this is only true if the workforce consists of predominantly unskilled workers. |
| Keywords: | Skill, Education, Automation, Demographic Change |
| JEL: | E21 E22 E23 E24 E25 J11 J21 J24 J31 O3 |
| Date: | 2024–05–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:120876&r= |
| By: | Sarah Bögl; Jasmin Moshfegh; Petra Persson; Maria Polyakova |
| Abstract: | WHO estimates that as many as 1 in 6 individuals of reproductive age worldwide are affected by infertility. This paper uses rich administrative population-wide data from Sweden to construct and characterize the universe of infertility treatments, and to then quantify the private costs of infertility, the willingness to pay for infertility treatments, as well as the role of insurance coverage in alleviating infertility. Persistent infertility causes a long-run deterioration of mental health and couple stability, with no long-run “protective” effects (of having no child) on earnings. Despite the high private non-pecuniary cost of infertility, we estimate a relatively low revealed private willingness to pay for infertility treatment. The rate of IVF initiations drops by half when treatment is not covered by health insurance. The response to insurance is substantially more pronounced at lower income levels. At the median of the disposable income distribution, our estimates imply a willingness to pay of at most 22% of annual income for initiating an IVF treatment (or about a 30% chance of having a child). At least 40% of the response to insurance coverage can be explained by a liquidity effect rather than traditional moral hazard, implying that insurance provides an important consumption smoothing benefit in this context. We show that insurance coverage of infertility treatments determines both the total number of additional children and their allocation across the socioeconomic spectrum. |
| JEL: | H0 I0 J0 |
| Date: | 2024–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32445&r= |
| By: | Paul Hufe (University of Bristol) |
| Abstract: | Converging labor market opportunities of men and women have altered the economic incentives for how families invest monetary and time resources into the skill development of their children. In this paper, I study the causal impact of changes in the parental wage gap (PWG)—defined as the relative difference in potential wages of mothers and fathers—on children’s socio-emotional skills. I leverage administrative and survey data from Germany to create exogenous between-sibling variation in the PWG through a shift-share design. I find that decreases in the PWG do not affect children’s socio-emotional development as measured by their Big Five personality traits and externalizing/internalizing behaviors. This null effect can be rationalized by the offsetting effects of the PWG on monetary investments, i.e., more disposable household income that is increasingly controlled by mothers, and time investments, i.e., a substitution from in-home maternal care to informal childcare. |
| Keywords: | gender gap, skill development, parental investments |
| JEL: | J13 J16 J22 J24 |
| Date: | 2024–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hka:wpaper:2024-010&r= |
| By: | L. Rachel Ngai; Claudia Olivetti; Barbara Petrongolo |
| Abstract: | Women's contribution to the economy has been markedly underestimated in predominantly agricultural societies, due to their widespread involvement in unpaid agricultural work. Combining data from the US Census and several early sources, we create a consistent measure of male and female employment and hours for the US for 1870-2019, including paid work and unpaid work in family farms and non-farm businesses. The resulting measure of hours traces a U-shape for women, with a modest decline up to mid-20th century followed by a sustained increase, and a monotonic decline for men. We propose a multisector economy with uneven productivity growth, income effects, and consumption complementarity across sectoral outputs. During early development stages, declining agriculture leads to rising services -- both in the market and the home -- and leisure, reducing market work for both genders. In later stages, structural transformation reallocates labor from manufacturing into services, while marketization reallocates labor from home to market services. Given gender comparative advantages, the first channel is more relevant for men, reducing male hours, while the second channel is more relevant for women, increasing female hours. Our quantitative illustration suggests that structural transformation and marketization can account for the overall decline in market hours from 1880-1950, and one quarter of the rise and decline, respectively, in female and male market hours from 1950-2019. |
| JEL: | J16 J20 O41 |
| Date: | 2024–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32475&r= |