|
on Demographic Economics |
| By: | Bergvall, Sanna (University of Gothenburg); Rodríguez-Planas, Núria (Queens College, CUNY) |
| Abstract: | Most empirical studies indicate that becoming a mother is an augmenting factor for the perpetration of intimate partner violence (IPV). Using rich population-wide hospital records data from Sweden, we conduct a stacked DiD analysis comparing the paths of women two years before and after the birth of their first child with same-age women who are several quarters older when giving birth to their first child and find that, in contrast to the consensus view, violence sharply decreases with pregnancy and motherhood. This decline has both a short-term and longer-term component, with the temporary decline in IPV covering most of the pregnancy until the child is 6 months old, mimicking a temporary decrease in hospital visits for alcohol abuse by the children's fathers. The more persistent decline is driven by women who leave the relationship after the birth of the child. Our evidence is not supportive of alternative mechanisms including suspicious hospitalizations, an overall reduction in hospital visits or selection in seeking medical care, mothers' added value as the main nurturer, or mothers' drop in relative earnings within the household. Our findings suggest the need to push for public health awareness campaigns underscoring the risk of victimization associated with substance abuse and to also provide women with more support to identify and leave a violent relationship. |
| Keywords: | motherhood, stacked difference-in-differences model, event study, individual fixed effects, administrative longitudinal records data, population-wide estimates |
| JEL: | J12 J13 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17129 |
| By: | David Koll; Dominik Sachs; Fabian Stürmer-Heiber; Hélène Turon |
| Abstract: | We formalize and estimate the dynamic marginal efficiency cost of redistribution (MECR) in the spirit of Okun’s “leaky bucket” to compare the MECR of an income-contingent childcare subsidy program and of the income-contingent tax and transfer schedule. We set up a dynamic structural model of heterogeneous households choosing their childcare demand and maternal labor supply. Allowing for the availability of informal childcare and for consumption of leisure, we estimate this model within the German context. Our analysis identifies two competing forces. (i) Labor supply responses increase the MECR of the childcare subsidy relative to the tax and transfer system. (ii) Child development effects decrease the MECR of the childcare subsidy relative to the income tax. We show that, under most plausible assumptions on the long-term returns to childcare attendance for children growing up in households of different incomes, progressive childcare subsidies are the more efficient redistribution tool. |
| Keywords: | female labor supply, childcare, family policies, fiscal externalities, dynamic discrete choice, redistribution |
| JEL: | H23 H31 J13 J22 J24 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11196 |
| By: | Joseph P. Ferrie; Claudia Goldin; Claudia Olivetti |
| Abstract: | The Lanham Act was a federal infrastructure bill passed by Congress in 1940 and eventually used to fund programs for the preschool and school-aged children of working women during WWII. It remains, to this day, the only example in US history of an (almost) universal, largely federally-supported childcare program. We explore its role in enabling and increasing the labor supply of mothers during WWII. Our information is at the city or town level and includes war contracts, the size of and expenditures on the childcare program, and the “reserve labor force” of mothers as of 1939. We find that the programs became well-funded but were late to start, limited in scope, and incapable of greatly increasing women’s employment in the aggregate. They were more numerous in places that already had high participation rates of women suggesting that they were effective in caring for the children of women who had already entered the labor force. Their impact on the children as adults is still to be determined. |
| JEL: | J21 N32 N42 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32755 |
| By: | Jensen, Mathias Fjællegaard (University of Oxford); Zhang, Ning (Chinese University of Hong Kong) |
| Abstract: | Nearly everyone experiences the death of a parent in adulthood, but little is known about the effects of parental death on adult children's labor market outcomes and the underlying mechanisms. In this paper, we use Danish administrative data to examine the effects of losing a parent on individual labor market outcomes and its contribution to gender earnings inequalities. Our empirical design leverages the timing of sudden, first parental deaths, allowing us to focus on the health and family support channels. Our findings reveal enduring negative effects on the earnings of both adult sons and daughters: sons' earnings drop by 2% in the fifth year after parental death, while daughters' earnings drop by 3% during the same period. Exploring the underlying mechanisms, we observe that both women and men experience increased mental health issues after parental loss, albeit manifesting differently: women tend to seek psychological assistance more frequently, while men receive more mental health-related and opioid prescriptions. Furthermore, we find that women with young children experience a comparatively larger drop (around 4%) in earnings after parental death due to the loss of informal childcare, a factor that significantly contributes to the gender pay gap. Lastly, we show that women experience a greater decline in earnings if their surviving parent requires higher levels of eldercare. These findings collectively underscore a substantial labor market penalty for individuals who experience parental death and emphasize the role of informal care in contributing to gender pay disparities. |
| Keywords: | parental death, earnings, gender inequalities, mental health, family support |
| JEL: | D64 J10 J16 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17127 |
| By: | Christopher S. Carpenter; Lucas Goodman; Maxine J. Lee |
| Abstract: | We provide the first evidence on transgender earnings in the US using administrative data on over 55, 000 individuals who changed their gender marker with the Social Security Administration and had gender-congruent first name changes on tax records. We validate and describe this sample which exhibits positive selection likely associated with the ability to legally affirm gender. To address selection we estimate transgender earnings gaps using timing variation within-person and variation across siblings and coworkers. All three approaches return evidence of robust transgender earnings penalties of 6-13 log points driven by extensive and intensive margin differences. |
| JEL: | J0 J10 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32691 |
| By: | Natalie Bau; David J. Henning; Corinne Low; Bryce Steinberg |
| Abstract: | Early fertility is a key barrier to female human capital attainment in sub-Saharan Africa, yet contraceptive take-up remains puzzlingly low, even among educated populations with healthcare access. We study a barrier to hormonal contraceptive uptake that has not been causally tested: the persistent (incorrect) belief that these contraceptives cause later infertility. This belief creates a perceived tradeoff between current and future reproductive control. We use a randomized controlled trial with female undergraduates at the flagship university in Zambia to test two interventions to increase contraceptive use. Despite high rates of sexual activity, low rates of condom-use, and near zero desire for current pregnancy, only 5% of this population uses hormonal contraceptives at baseline. Providing a non-coercive conditional cash transfer to visit a local clinic only temporarily increases contraceptive use. However, pairing this transfer with information addressing fears that contraceptives cause infertility has a larger initial effect and persistently increases take-up over 6 months. This treatment reduces beliefs that contraceptives cause infertility and leads to the take-up of longer-lasting contraceptives. Compliers are more likely to cite fear of infertility as the reason for not using contraceptives at baseline. Eliminating the belief that contraceptives cause infertility would more than triple contraceptive use. |
| JEL: | I10 I12 J10 J13 O10 O12 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32735 |
| By: | Virtanen, Hanna (ETLA - The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy); Silliman, Mikko (Norwegian School of Economics); Kuuppelomäki, Tiina (Labour Institute for Economic Research); Huttunen, Kristiina (Aalto University) |
| Abstract: | We study the effect of educational attainment on family formation using regression discontinuity designs generated by centralized admissions processes to both secondary and tertiary education in Finland. Admission to further education at either margin does not increase the likelihood that men form families. In contrast, women admitted to further education are more likely to both live with a partner and have children. We then pre-register and test two hypotheses which could explain each set of results using survey data. These suggest that the positive association between men's education and family formation observed in the data is driven by selection. For women, our estimates are consistent with the idea that, as increased returns to social skills shift the burden of child development from schools to parents and particularly mothers, education can make women more attractive as potential partners. |
| Keywords: | family, education, gender |
| JEL: | J13 I26 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17122 |
| By: | Effrosyni Adamopoulou; Mattia Colombo; Eleftheria Triviza |
| Abstract: | This study examines how early-life exposure to food scarcity influences individuals’ long-term time preferences and savings behavior. To this end, we analyze hand-collected historical data on livestock availability during World War II at the provincial level, alongside detailed survey data on elicited time preferences and household savings. By leveraging differences across cohorts and provinces in a difference-in-differences framework, we find that individuals who experienced more severe scarcity during early childhood develop higher levels of patience later in life and tend to hold more (precautionary) savings, conditional on income. Our findings suggest that exposure to protein scarcity during the first years of life and in utero can instigate a lasting increase in prudent behavior in the form of a coping mechanism. |
| Keywords: | patience, precautionary savings, scarcity, early life experiences |
| JEL: | D14 N44 |
| Date: | 2024–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2024_583 |
| By: | Dahl, Gordon B.; Felfe, Christina; Frijters, Paul; Rainer, Helmut |
| Abstract: | What happens when immigrant girls are given increased opportunities to integrate into the workplace and society, but their parents value more traditional cultural outcomes? We answer this question in the context of a reform which granted automatic birthright citizenship to eligible immigrant children born in Germany after 1 January 2000. Using survey data, we collected from students in 57 schools and comparing those born in the months before vs. after the reform, we find the introduction of birthright citizenship lowers measures of life satisfaction and self-esteem for immigrant girls by 0.32 and 0.25 standard deviations, respectively. This is especially true for Muslims, where parents are likely to prefer more traditional cultural outcomes than their daughters. Moreover, we find that Muslim girls granted birthright citizenship are less integrated into German society: they are both more socially isolated and less likely to self-identify as German. Exploring mechanisms for these unintended drops in well-being and assimilation, we find that immigrant Muslim parents invest less in their daughters’ schooling and that these daughters receive worse grades in school if they are born after the reform. Parents are also less likely to speak German with these daughters. Consistent with a rise in intra-family conflict, birthright citizenship results in disillusionment where immigrant Muslim girls believe their chances of achieving their educational goals are lower and the perceived odds of having to forgo a career for a family rise. In contrast, immigrant boys experience, if anything, an improvement in well-being, integration, and schooling outcomes. Taken together, the findings point towards immigrant girls being pushed by parents to conform to a role within traditional culture, whereas boys are allowed to take advantage of the opportunities that come with citizenship. To explain these findings, we construct a simple game-theoretic model which builds on Akerlof and Kranton (2000), where identity-concerned parents constrain their daughter’s choices, and hence lower their daughter’s well-being, when faced with the threat of integration. Alternative models can explain some of the findings in isolation. |
| Keywords: | cultural identity; immigrant assimilation; intergenerational conflict |
| JEL: | J1 |
| Date: | 2022–10–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:124064 |