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on Demographic Economics |
| By: | Lauro Carnicelli |
| Abstract: | Parental and paternity leave policies have been used in developed countries to promote gender equality and curb the child penalty. However, these policies have a direct impact on how housework and childcare are organized within the household. Given the decline in fertility rates and the rise of single-parent households. I examine how the expansion and flexibilization of paternity leave affect union stability and future fertility. This study uses Finnish registry and social security data in a regression discontinuity setting to answer this question. The child’s due date is used as the running variable because it cannot be precisely manipulated by parents. Four paternity leave reforms from the 2000s are analyzed. Each reform introduced different changes regarding leave-entitlement expansion, flexibility, and benefit-replacement rate. Results suggest that flexibility is important for leave take-up. The most flexible reform, from 2010, increased the duration of paternity leave. It had a positive impact on fertility and a transient increase in union stability for individuals younger than 30 years. |
| Keywords: | Paternity leave, Fertility, Marriage, Union Stability |
| JEL: | J12 J13 |
| Date: | 2025–10–23 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pst:wpaper:356 |
| By: | Hamid Noghanibehambari; Jason Fletcher |
| Abstract: | Many previous studies have used cross-cohort comparisons and a focus on in utero exposure to document the lingering effects of the 1918 influenza pandemic on survivors’ outcomes later in life. A subset has examined impacts on old-age health and mortality, finding mixed results. This paper contributes to the literature by extending the analysis to evaluate early-life and childhood exposure to the pandemic on old-age longevity along with a set of candidate mechanisms. We employ Social Security Administration death records linked to the full-count 1940 census and employ event-study and difference-in-difference regressions to compare longevity of cohorts with different age-at-exposure who were born in cities with high versus low exposure based on 1918 influenza-related mortality. Our treatment-on-treated calculations suggest that cohorts with age-at-exposure of 3-8 and 9-11 experience 6.4 and 11.2 months reductions in old age longevity; importantly, we note that these cohorts are often used as “controls” in the broader literature. While our main analysis focuses on males due to data constraints, supplementary results suggest smaller and less precise effects for females. An analysis of census data suggests reductions in health, education and socioeconomic scores as potential mechanisms. |
| JEL: | I1 J10 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35471 |
| By: | Martin H. Saavedra |
| Abstract: | State legislatures enacted numerous public-health laws during the twentieth century, most of which likely had negligible effects on mortality. Using data on the universe of state-level public-health laws and regulations, I test whether these laws, taken together, account for a meaningful decline in mortality. To address endogeneity, I instrument for public-health legislation using the legislative calendar. Both OLS and IV estimates indicate that public-health laws reduced mortality, whereas other laws and repeals of public-health laws did not. Legislatures were most effective at reducing deaths from waterborne and drainage-related diseases, half as effective for airborne communicable diseases, and one-fifth as effective for noncommunicable diseases. I use text analysis to classify the laws into twenty topics and find that laws targeting particular causes of death produced larger mortality declines for those causes. The universe of public-health laws can account for approximately two-thirds of the mortality decline during the study period. |
| JEL: | H75 I1 K32 N32 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35686 |
| By: | E. Jason Baron; Arkadev Ghosh; Richard Lombardo |
| Abstract: | Many public-sector decisions require allocating scarce attention under uncertainty. We examine whether algorithmic risk assessments improve child-protection decisions, where supervisors decide which cases need closer scrutiny. In a randomized evaluation of 4, 752 child referrals over 14 months in Northampton County, supervisors received an algorithmic risk score alongside standard case records. Access to the score increased foster-care placements and services for children at highest predicted risk, with little change for lower-risk cases, and it reduced subsequent maltreatment referrals. We find no evidence that the score widened racial disparities in decisions or outcomes, suggesting algorithms can improve targeting while preserving human discretion. |
| JEL: | C93 I38 J13 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35540 |
| By: | Anna Schlaack; Christian Zimmermann |
| Abstract: | RePEc is an initiative created by economists for economists in 1997. It functions primarily as a bibliographic tool, but it also collects various linked metadata about economists, their institutions, and their impact. Thus, a labor economist may be interested in RePEc beyond literature searches and tracking—namely, as a dataset describing a profession, its members, and their output. This essay describes RePEc’s origins and history, the many facets of its data and how the data can be accessed. It also provides some examples of scholarly studies leveraging RePEc data that could be of interest to labor economists and lead them to other uses of RePEc data. |
| Keywords: | RePEc; dataset; sociology of economics; economics profession |
| JEL: | A11 A14 J44 J45 |
| Date: | 2026–08–26 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedlwp:103698 |
| By: | Trevor Fitzgerald; Atul Gupta; Stephen D. Schwab |
| Abstract: | Physicians in the U.S. military health care system are quasi-randomly assigned to combat deployments, leading to gaps of varying durations in their clinical practice. We leverage this unique setting to provide novel causal evidence on skill depreciation (forgetting) and learning-by-doing among physicians. We find robust evidence that readmission rates increase by 48% in the first two months after a surgeon returns from a deployment. However, surgeons return to baseline performance within 6 months of resuming practice. In contrast, obstetricians maintain elevated cesarean section rates for up to 9 months, implying a deeper change in clinical judgment. Finally, we interpret these patterns through the lens of a learning model and estimate learning-by-doing rates for surgeons and obstetricians. A doubling of recent procedure volume reduces readmission and C-section rates by 17% and 11% for surgeons and obstetricians, respectively. |
| JEL: | I10 J24 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35502 |