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on Demographic Economics |
| By: | Sen Coskun; Husnu Dalgic; Yasemin Ozdemir |
| Abstract: | Women strategically sort into "family-friendly" sectors characterized by lower returns to experience but also lower per-child penalties, before the birth of their first child. This pre-birth sorting represents an ex-ante career cost, a "sorting penalty" not captured by conventional measures. We build a heterogeneous agent model of career choice and fertility, incorporating both quality-quantity (Q-Q) and time-expenditure (T-E) trade-offs, to quantify this cost. Our central finding is that despite this sorting penalty being surprisingly small, it reveals an important mechanism: Women at the productivity margin are the switchers and use the Q-Q and T-E trade-offs as their primary, more powerful tools to navigate motherhood and career. Our findings highlight that frameworks excluding these trade-offs will overestimate the fertility responses and career costs associated with policies. |
| Keywords: | child penalty, fertility, sectoral gender segregation, job switch, quality-quantity trade-off |
| JEL: | E24 J13 J22 J24 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2025_722 |
| By: | Rong Fu (School of Commerce, Waseda University, and Waseda Institute of Social & Human Capital Studies (WISH)); Yunkyu Sohn (Department of Sociology, Seoul National University); Yichen Shen (School of Health Innovation, Kanagawa University of Human Services, and WISH); Haruko Noguchi (Faculty of Political Science and Economics, Waseda University, and WISH.) |
| Abstract: | Identifying causal effects of prenatal psychological stress on birth outcomes is challenging because stressful events typically bundle psychological stress with material disruptions. The 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident provides a unique setting to overcome this challenge: while physical radiation exposure was geographically limited and well-documented, fear of radiation spread nationwide. We exploit this geographic separation to examine how maternal anxiety independently affects fetal development. Using universal Japanese birth records linked to census data, combined with a novel Google Trends-based measure of radiation-specific anxiety, we employ three complementary identification strategies: population-level comparisons of in-utero exposed versus unexposed cohorts, within-family sibling analysis controlling for time-invariant family characteristics, and dose-response estimation exploiting geographic variation in anxiety intensity. Prenatal exposure to the accident increased preterm births by 16% and reduced birth weights by 22-26 grams. Birth outcomes exhibit a clear dose-response relationship with anxiety intensity: each standard deviation increase in radiation-specific fear corresponds to 4-5 gram birth weight reductions and 7% increases in preterm births. Effects are concentrated among socioeconomically disadvantaged mothers and during first-trimester exposure. Our findings demonstrate that invisible threats generate measurable intergenerational health impacts through psychological stress pathways, with implications for disaster preparedness and risk communication during contemporary crises from pandemics to climate change. |
| Keywords: | Prenatal Stress; Birth Outcomes; Nuclear Disasters; Google Trends; Fetal Origins |
| JEL: | Q54 J13 I14 I18 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wap:wpaper:2527 |
| By: | Xue, Melanie |
| Abstract: | This paper evaluates the usefulness of crowd-sourced Chinese genealogical data for quantitative research in demography and economic history. I first examine whether genealogies—despite well-known selection biases—produce demographic patterns consistent with established historical knowledge of China. Comparisons with existing studies show that aggregate population-growth trends and sex ratios over time align reasonably well with established demographic and historical findings, suggesting that genealogies, though selective, capture coherent and interpretable patterns. Building on these plausibility checks, the paper argues that the main value of genealogical data lies in their scalability and temporal depth, particularly as crowd-sourced digitization vastly expands the number of available records. These features make genealogies well suited to analyses that leverage variation across regions and over time, an approach that is central in modern economic history. |
| Keywords: | crowd-sourced genealogies; China; migration; sex ratios |
| JEL: | J11 J13 N10 N35 |
| Date: | 2026–01–31 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:130282 |
| By: | Elif Tasar; John Voorheis |
| Abstract: | We are the first to study how inheritances affect labor supply in the U.S. using large-scale administrative data. Leveraging federal tax and Social Security records, we estimate event studies around parental death to investigate impacts on adult children. Our results indicate that the death of a last parent causes sizable gains in investment income—our main proxy for inheritances—and proportionate reductions in labor supply. On average, annual per-adult investment income at the tax unit level increases by about $300 (45 percent) and annual per-adult wage earnings decrease by $600 (2 percent). These earnings responses are large relative to the implied wealth transfer. Income effects are the dominant channel through which parental death reduces earnings, with children of wealthier parents exhibiting larger earnings reductions. Over six years, inheritances slightly equalize the distribution of investment income. |
| Keywords: | labor supply, inheritance, aging, household finance, wealth inequality |
| JEL: | J22 D64 D31 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cen:wpaper:25-71 |