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on Demographic Economics |
| By: | Ritikaa Khanna; Rourke O'Brien; Andrew C. Stokes; Atheendar Venkataramani; Elizabeth Wrigley-Field |
| Abstract: | U.S. life expectancy stagnated and declined in the 2010s despite continued growth in real per capita income. We use Preston curves to characterize this pattern as a change in the relationship between income and longevity. Using state-level data from 1980 to 2019 and county-level data from 2000 to 2019, we estimate population-weighted Preston curves relating life expectancy to logged real per capita income. From 1980 to 2010, U.S. states followed the classic Preston curve pattern: rising income was accompanied by rising life expectancy. Counties followed the same pattern from 2000 to 2010. From 2010 to 2019, however, states and counties continued to become richer while life expectancy stagnated or declined. The curves shifted right without shifting up and became steeper, indicating decoupling and divergence: increases in aggregate resources over time no longer produced broad longevity gains, and, in any given year, inequality in life expectancy by income grew. These patterns are robust to alternative temporal anchors around the Great Recession and to substituting education for income. They also appear across sex and racial groups. County-level decompositions are broadly consistent with arguments that longevity has fallen due to widely shared exposures to social deterioration, which may account for the Preston curve reversal. Collectively, we show that the recent U.S. mortality crisis reveals a weakening—and growing inequality—in the conversion of aggregate resources into longevity gains. We conclude that the recent U.S. mortality crisis could be understood not only as a story about particular causes of death, but also as a weakening of institutional and social translation. |
| JEL: | I1 I14 I15 J19 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35470 |
| By: | Hamid Noghanibehambari; Jason Fletcher |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the long-term effects of early-life exposure to county health departments (CHDs), a public health initiative aimed at providing affordable healthcare access to disadvantaged and underserved areas during the early decades of the 20th century, on later-life longevity. We employ Social Security Administration death records linked with the 1940 census and implement a difference-in-differences estimation strategy to compare the longevity of individuals exposed at different ages to the county-specific year of CHD establishment. We find that exposure to a CHD opening in the county of birth during fetal development and early years of life is associated with a 1-4-month increase in longevity. We observe considerable heterogeneity in the results, such that the effects are more concentrated among non-white individuals and individuals with lower-educated parents. Contemporaneous fertility and infant mortality data suggest reductions in infant mortality rates and increases in birth rates following CHD openings. Additionally, we find significant improvements in educational attainment, socioeconomic status, and income in early adulthood. We argue that enhancements in the fetal environment, improved fetal survival, and better early life health capital resulting from CHD exposure contribute to improvements in human capital during adulthood, with potential implications for later-life longevity. |
| JEL: | I1 I18 J14 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35533 |
| By: | Raquel Fernández; Inés Berniell; Milagros Onofri |
| Abstract: | Fertility has fallen in nearly all high-income countries. People also report wanting fewer children: between 2012 and 2022 the ideal number of children fell from 2.42 to 2.31 and the share of respondents intending a child within three years fell from 28 to 21 percent over a similar period. Why? Using two cross-national surveys that ask respondents about their attitudes and their fertility preferences, both fielded twice roughly a decade apart, we decompose each decline into the contribution of a broad and competing set of attitudes. Three stand out: children are increasingly seen as interfering with the freedom of parents; views on whether mothers of young children should work have become markedly more progressive and account for a substantially larger share of the decline among the tertiary-educated; and fewer people believe that women or men need children to lead a fulfilled life. This last attitude changed most over the decade and is the largest contributor to the fall in intended fertility, above all among less-educated women. The changing division of household work and increasing work-family conflict have minor contributions to changing fertility preferences. |
| JEL: | J11 J13 J16 Z13 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35651 |
| By: | Viktoria Falk; Andreas Madestam; Emilia Simeonova |
| Abstract: | This study examines the persistence of fertility-related health problems across generations within the same family, and the utilization of assisted reproductive technologies (ART). Using comprehensive Swedish registry data, we document significant intergenerational transmission of fertility difficulties for both daughters and sons, independent of parental socioeconomic status. Daughters whose parents reported such problems are 2.6 percentage points, or 19.4 percent, more likely to experience fertility problems themselves. Sons whose parents reported fertility difficulties experience a 1.7 percentage point, or 13.5 percent, increase. These associations persist across alternative measures and samples. Comparing biological and adopted children raised in the same households, we find that this phenomenon is unlikely to be driven by family awareness of fertility issues, pointing to biological and other factors that biological children share with their parents but adopted children do not. Medical technology works equally well for those who use it, and we find no significant association between the success of advanced fertility treatments and parental backgrounds. However, past generations’ fertility difficulties are associated both with higher medical expenses and with social costs such as increased likelihood of divorce. |
| JEL: | I10 J13 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35585 |
| By: | Serena Goldberg; Costas Meghir |
| Abstract: | Childcare services can offer an opportunity for women to develop their careers and increase household income. At the same time, it can affect the development of children, depending on the quality of care. We first develop a collective model of the household as a conceptual framework to show how improving the availability of childcare can affect mothers’ labor market opportunities and earnings and how it can affect child development. We then review the literature on the effects of childcare on the employment and earnings of women and on child development. Childcare can increase mothers’ employment. However, limited work opportunities or strict norms against maternal work can keep mothers out of the labor force. When other family members provide care, childcare can free these caregivers to work or attend school. When studies measure the impact on child development, the results are mixed and depend on both context and quality of provision. |
| JEL: | D13 I28 J13 J16 J24 O15 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35649 |
| By: | Ran Abramitzky; Santiago Pérez; Joseph Price |
| Abstract: | We use newly digitized records for 1.2 million students at 60 co-educational U.S. colleges, 1915–1943, linked to enrollment records for their children through 1963, to study how colleges shape marital matching and the intergenerational transmission of educational advantage. About 6% of men and 9% of women marry someone from their own college. This homogamy is largely causal: within colleges, more different-sex classmates and longer campus overlap both raise same-college marriage. Same-college spouses are more educated, and this advantage persists across generations. Children of same-college couples more often attend selective colleges, with spousal education explaining a third of the gap. |
| JEL: | J0 N32 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35602 |