The Impact of Family Policies on Fertility in OECD Countries
by Timothy Lloyd O’Brien Abstract This study investigates the impact of family policies in addressing declining fertility rates across OECD countries between 1990 and 2019. Over the past six decades, fertility rates in these nations have dropped substantially, with most falling below replacement level. This study evaluates the influence of three core policy instruments: cash […]
Peer Effects & Differential Attrition: Evidence from Tennessee’s Project STAR
by Sanjay Satish Abstract This paper explores the effects of attrition on student development in early education. It aims to provide evidence that student departure in elementary schools has educational impacts on the students they leave behind. Utilizing data from Tennessee’s Project STAR experiment, this paper aims to expand upon the literature of peer effects, […]
The Russian Maternity Capital Policy: Two Models
by Jackson Cooksey Abstract Between 1991 and 2007 the Russian Federation experienced a decrease in population and a drop in total fertility rate below population replacement levels. In 2007 the government, citing the importance of forestalling this decline, implemented the Russian Maternity Capital Policy, a one-time subsidy to those families who have a second or […]
The Effect of Marriage on the Wages of Americans: Gender and Generational Differences
By William Song and Theresa Tong A substantial body of literature on the wage effects of marriage finds that married American men earn anywhere from 10% to 40% higher wages than unmarried men on average, while married American women earn up to 7% less than unmarried women, even after controlling for traits such as background, […]
The Effect of Early Life Economic Conditions on Child Health in Post-Soviet Russia
By Hemal Pragneshbhai Patel The effect of the economic collapse on health has been extensively documented in Russia since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The proportion of stunted children in Russia increased substantially in this period, but no study has investigated the mechanisms by which this economic collapse impacted child health outcomes. This paper […]
Family Leave and Child Care Policy Across States: Implications for Labor Force Participation Over Time
By Kelly Albert This paper investigates the impact of child care subsidies, maternity and paternity leave policy, and Earned Income Tax Credits on labor force participation rates at the state level, utilizing data sets from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Current Population Survey. Results suggest labor force participation increased with federal maternity and paternity […]
Sister competition and birth order effects among marriage-aged girls: Evidence from a field experiment in rural Bangladesh
By Stephanie Zhong Early marriage before the age of 18 is prevalent among adolescent girls in Bangladesh, but the timing of marriage is not uniform across daughters within a household, with some sisters marrying earlier than others. Using survey data from a novel field experiment from rural Bangladesh, I find that girls ages 10-21 with […]
24K Magic: Evidence on Maternal Asset Ownership and Children’s Long Term Outcomes in Indonesia
By Maya Durvasula Household resource allocation in response to economic shocks is of central importance for policy makers, especially given widely documented evidence of gender biases. In this paper, I exploit a plausibly exogenous shock to maternal asset holdings in Indonesia to examine gender biases in resource allocation in the wake of the 1998 East […]
Job Choices, Flexibility and Maternal Labor Force Participation
By Samantha Cox While there are countless studies concerning the effects of various variables on female labor force participation, there are still many unexamined intricacies involved in a woman’s choice to enter, re-enter or leave the work force. This paper attempts to extend on previous research and examine how the flexibility of a woman’s job […]
The Nurture Effect: Like Father, Like Son. What about for an Adopted Child? A Study of Korean-American Adoptees on the Impact of Family Environment and Genes
By Suanna Seung-yun Oh I investigate the influences of family environment and genes on children’s educational outcomes by working with data on Korean American adoptees and their non-adoptive siblings. I make use of the natural experiment setting where children were quasi-randomly assigned to families. From Sacerdote’s discussion of the three different approaches of analyzing the […]
