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on Demographic Economics |
| By: | Laurens Cherchye; Bram De Rock; Khushboo Surana |
| Abstract: | We use a structural revealed preference (RP) approach to study how fertility isassociated with intra-household allocations and individual welfare within married couples.Building on a collective consumption framework, we jointly model material consumptionand time use under heterogeneous preferences and Pareto-efficient household decisions, using marital stability to identify resource sharing from cross-sectional data. Applyingthe method to the 2023 wave of the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), wefind substantial gender inequality in intra-household allocations, with men consistentlyreceiving more resources. These disparities widen sharply with fertility. Householdswith children exhibit lower material and time welfare for both spouses, but the burdenfalls disproportionately on mothers. Material resources shift moderately, whereas thetime costs of children fall overwhelmingly on women: mothers experience large declinesin leisure and increases in home production time, leading to sharply higher time-povertyrisks and a clear worsening of the underlying welfare distribution. These patterns areespecially pronounced among the highly educated and document a dimension of thecost of children that household-level measures miss |
| Keywords: | fertility; individual welfare; intra-household allocation; revealed preference; material and time poverty |
| JEL: | D12 D13 C14 J12 |
| Date: | 2026–05–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eca:wpaper:2013/407342 |
| By: | Jose-Victor Rios-Rull (University of Pennsylvania, University College London, CAERP, CEPR, NBER); Shannon Seitz (Analysis Group); Satoshi Tanaka (University of Queensland) |
| Abstract: | Much of what looks like changing marriage preferences over the twentieth century is actually demographics. Exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in sex ratios across U.S. birth cohorts (1870, 1930, 1950), we jointly identify preferences, match quality dynamics, and the costs of marriage and divorce. Demographics alone explain two-thirds of cross-cohort differences. Women’s premium for older husbands collapsed across cohorts; men’s preferences barely changed. Love that survives its early years becomes permanent, but the odds of surviving fell from 97% to 44%. Divorce costs fell six-fold and depend on life stage. A horse race across behavioral channels shows that the match quality process—not mate-age preferences—is the primary dimension of generational change. Declining divorce costs and fragile match quality are substitutes: either alone fits the data, but together they reveal two independent dimensions of social change. The model validates out of sample on the 1910 and 1970 cohorts. |
| Keywords: | Demographic Transition, Sex Ratio, Marriage and Divorce, Two-Sided Search |
| JEL: | J10 J11 J12 |
| Date: | 2026–05–31 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pen:papers:26-008 |
| By: | Esperanza Vera-Toscano; Ana Gamarra Rondinel |
| Abstract: | Using longitudinal data from the HILDA Survey, this paper examines how socioeconomic disadvantage before labour-market entry shapes early-career labour-market pathways and whether family resources moderate these associations. We model hardship dynamically over ages 4–24 and relate pre-adult trajectories to labour-market risk and precarious-employment pathways over ages 25–30. We identify substantial heterogeneity in both pre-adult hardship and early-adult labour-market experiences, revealing dimensions of inequality that static measures of family background and adult outcomes overlook. Persistent hardship is strongly associated with persistently adverse labour-market trajectories, while moving out of hardship, volatile hardship, and no hardship are linked to substantially lower risks of sustained disadvantage. Family resources partially moderate these associations, but the effects depend on resource type. Short-term insurance provides the clearest buffering role, reducing entry into high-persistent and worsening trajectories. Overall, family resources operate primarily as private insurance against sustained labour-market risk rather than as a mechanism supporting strategic tolerance of precarious work. |
| Keywords: | intergenerational inequality, labour-market risk, precarious employment, family wealth; economic hardship, HILDA survey |
| JEL: | D31 I32 J62 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12703 |
| By: | Bhalotra, Sonia (University of Warwick); Daysal, N. Meltem (University of Copenhagen); Fjællegaard Jensen, Mathias (University of Oxford); Jørgensen, Thomas H. (University of Copenhagen); Montpetit, Sébastien (University of Warwick) |
| Abstract: | Using four decades of Danish administrative data, we estimate the intergenerational transmission of violent crime victimization. Sons are twice as likely, and daughters three times as likely, to be victimized if a parent was victimized, with stronger associations if the mother was the victim. Controlling for cohort, municipality, socio-economic factors, parental cohabitation, and parental offending explains about 60% of this correlation. The link is weaker in higher-income families; it persists for sons, but is driven to zero for daughters. Further, children of victimized parents experience lower absolute income mobility, comparable to the Black-White difference for men in the United States |
| Keywords: | victimization, violent crime, intergenerational transmission, income mobility JEL codes: K42, J12, J62 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wrk:warwec:1614 |
| By: | Daniel Gallardo-Albarrán (Wageningen University); Kalle Kappner (HU Berlin) |
| Abstract: | European countries paved the way for modern economic growth in the 19th century with large-scale reforms facilitating human capital accumulation. The literature has looked at the role of elites in broad education investments, but less attention has been devoted to reforms promoting workers' health, a key component of human capital. This paper studies the impact of the 1866 cholera outbreak on modern waterworks construction in the German Empire to test the hypothesis whether concerns about workers' health may have compelled elites to invest in health-enhancing public goods. We find that the epidemic raised the annual probability of building waterworks by about 35%. Exogenous variation relying on the cholera-spreading effect of military movements during the Austro-Prussian War in 1866 further underpins this result. Quantitative and qualitative evidence indicates that non-agricultural elites employing more productive capital and better-skilled workers pushed for reform to avoid the costly prospect of future labour shocks. Long-term analyses show sizeable and persisting effects of the epidemic on public health and development outcomes shortly before the First World War. |
| Keywords: | political economy; public goods; sanitation; cholera; elites; |
| JEL: | H41 H54 I18 N33 N93 |
| Date: | 2026–05–19 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rco:dpaper:573 |