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on Demographic Economics |
| By: | Melissa Schettini Kearney; Phillip B. Levine |
| Abstract: | This paper considers why fertility has fallen to historically low levels in virtually all high-income countries. Using cohort data, we document rising childlessness at all observed ages and falling completed fertility. This cohort perspective underscores the need to explain long-run shifts in fertility behavior. We review existing research and conclude that period-based explanations focused on short-term changes in income or prices cannot explain the widespread decline. Instead, the evidence points to a broad reordering of adult priorities with parenthood occupying a diminished role. We refer to this phenomenon as “shifting priorities” and propose that it likely reflects a complex mix of changing norms, evolving economic opportunities and constraints, and broader social and cultural forces. We review emerging evidence on all these factors. We conclude the paper with suggestions for future research and a brief discussion of policy implications. |
| JEL: | I12 J13 |
| Date: | 2025–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33989 |
| By: | Moretti, Margherita (Bocconi University); Korhonen, Kaarina; van Raalte, Alyson A (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research); Riffe, Tim; Martikainen, Pekka |
| Abstract: | Widowhood is a disruptive life event, and in ageing societies, increased numbers of individuals are potentially exposed to it. Yet we lack a comprehensive understanding of the demography of widowhood. Using total population data with information on marital and cohabiting unions, discrete-time event history analysis and incidence-based multistate lifetables, we analyse lifetime risk of widowhood, mean age at becoming widowed, widowhood expectancy, and variation in years spent widowed, and document gender and educational differences in these metrics over the last three decades in Finland. Our results show that, over time, individuals are less likely to experience widowhood, and when they do, it occurs at older ages. Women have higher widowhood risk, expectancy, and a lower mean age at widowhood than men. Widowhood expectancy for women declined from 8 to 6 years, while for men, it stagnated at around 2 years. Low-educated women faced more widowhood years than highly educated, while the opposite holds for men. By showing decreased risks, delayed onset, and shorter widowhood expectancy, particularly among women, our results suggest that the current older population may experience reduced exposure to the psychosocial and financial challenges of widowhood, with potentially reduced caregiving burden on families and the state. |
| Date: | 2025–07–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:2q6fu_v1 |
| By: | Chloe Gibbs; Jocelyn S. Wikle; Riley Wilson |
| Abstract: | We leverage pronounced changes in the availability of public schooling for young children—through duration expansions to the kindergarten day—to better understand how an implicit childcare subsidy affects mothers and families. Exploiting full-day kindergarten variation across place and time from 1992 through 2022 and novel data on state-level policy changes, combined with a comparison of children of typical kindergarten age to older children, we measure effects on parental labor supply and family childcare expenses. Results suggest that families are responsive to these shifts. Full-day kindergarten expansions were responsible for as much as 24 percent of the growth in employment of mothers with kindergarten-aged children in this time frame. |
| JEL: | H75 I28 J13 J22 |
| Date: | 2025–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33948 |
| By: | Mark Budolfson; Michael Geruso; Kevin J. Kuruc; Dean Spears; Sangita Vyas |
| Abstract: | A smaller human population would emit less carbon, other things equal, but how large is the effect? Here we test the widely-shared view that an important benefit of the ongoing, global decline in fertility will be reductions in long-run temperatures. We contrast a baseline of global depopulation (the most likely future) with a counterfactual in which the world population continues to grow for two more centuries. Although the two population paths differ by billions of people in 2200, we find that the implied temperatures would differ by less than one tenth of a degree C—far too small to impact climate goals. Timing drives the result. Depopulation is coming within the 21st century, but not for decades. Fertility shifts take generations to meaningfully change population size, by which time per capita emissions are projected to have significantly declined, even under pessimistic policy assumptions. Meanwhile, a smaller population slows the non-rival innovation that powers improvements in long-run productivity and living standards, an effect we estimate to be quantitatively important. Once the possibility of large-scale net-negative emissions is accounted for, even the sign of the population-temperature link becomes ambiguous. Humans cause greenhouse gas emissions, but human depopulation, starting in a few decades, will not meet today’s climate challenges. |
| JEL: | J11 J13 O30 O40 Q54 |
| Date: | 2025–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33932 |
| By: | Janice Compton; Robert A. Pollak; Seth G. Sanders |
| Abstract: | Using data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), we construct two measures of the longevity of older wives and husbands. For definiteness, we focus on couples in which the wife was 60 and the husband 62 in 1988. Our first measure utilizes a 4 x 4 "longevity matrix" in which the bins correspond to the decades in which the spouses died. For example, an entry in the (3, 2) bin indicates that the wife died in the 3rd decade (between ages 80 and 89) and the husband in the second decade (between ages 72 and 81). Our second measures use the Gompertz distribution to estimate the censored observations from the NHIS. We use the Gompertz estimates of age-specific mortalities to construct joint and survivor life expectancies for the couples in our working sample. We compare the longevity estimates based on actual couples from the NHIS with estimates based on synthetic couples constructed from the 1988 CDC life tables. Research based on randomly formed synthetic couples constructed from CDC life table data shows that the randomness of mortality and the overlap between spouses' age-specific mortality distributions imply dramatically long life spans for surviving spouses. The 4 x 4 longevity matrices show that longevity effects are magnified at the level of the couple by assortative marriage. |
| JEL: | J10 J12 J14 J19 |
| Date: | 2025–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33931 |
| By: | Lidia Farre; Libertad Gonzalez; Claudia Hupkau; Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela |
| Abstract: | Between 2017 and 2021, Spain progressively extended paternity leave from 2 to 16 weeks, equalizing it with maternity leave and introducing mandatory weeks. A 2018 reform also allowed fathers to split their leave. Using administrative data on all leave permits since 2016, we analyze trends in paternity leave take-up. Following the introduction of mandatory leave, the share of fathers taking leave increased by around 20 percentage points, and most now use nearly the full entitlement. The share opting to split leave has steadily grown, surpassing 50% by 2023. However, this behavior shows marked heterogeneity: while overall uptake is uniform across groups, leave-splitting is far more common among higher-income fathers and more prevalent in certain sectors. Spain's experience illustrates how policy design can significantly increase paternity leave usage, though workplace flexibility and income-related constraints shape how fathers use that time. |
| Keywords: | paternity leave, reform, take-up, mandatory parental leave |
| Date: | 2025–07–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp2111 |