We propose a general framework for analyzing structural limited dependent variable models where an endogenous regressor is also limited in range. A copula-based modeling of structural joint distributions permits us to implement a full information maximum likelihood estimation of parameters. We apply this modeling strategy to the March 1992 and 2002 CPS data for estimating the average partial ef...

Fertility Differences between Married and Cohabiting Couples: A Switching Regression Analysis Little is known about why cohabiting couples have fewer children than married couples. We explore the factors that explain the difference in fertility between these two groups using a switching regression analysis, which enables us to quantify the contribution of different factors through a decompositi...

Migration, Transfers and Child Labor We examine agricultural child labor in the context of emigration, transfers, and the ability to hire outside labor. We start by developing a theoretical background based on Basu and Van, (1998), Basu, (1999) and Epstein and Kahana (2008) and show how hiring labor from outside the household and transfers to the household might induce a reduction in children’s...

Maternal Employment and Childhood Obesity in China: Evidence from the China Health and Nutrition Survey Using five waves from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), we investigate the association between maternal employment and obesity in children aged 3–17 in both rural and urban China. Using BMI and waist circumference as measures for pediatric adiposity, we provide scant evidence for ...

This article studies the effect of the regime shift to joint custody in custody dispute adjudication in the United States during the 1980s using census data. Relying on cross state and year variation in the timing of adoption, I found the probability of attaining grade 12 or higher at age 18 among children of divorced or separated families to be higher in adoption states, but there was a fall i...

Data on 2,355 married women from the 2006 China Health and Nutrition Survey are used to study how female employment affects fertility in China. China has deep concerns with both population size and female employment, so the relationship between the two should be better understood. Causality flows in both directions; hence, we use a plausible instrumental variable to isolate the effect of employ...

This paper gives a brief overview of China’s family planning policy which, although recently relaxed, still controls a large swath of the population. Unofficially known as the ‘one-child policy’, it resulted from the social strife of the 1970s coupled with a Malthusian pessimism concerning the capability of the still largely closed and isolated Chinese economy to care for itself. We discuss the...

There is longstanding evidence that youth raised by single parents are more likely to perform poorly in school and partake in ‘deviant’ behaviors such as smoking, sex, substance use and crime. However, there is not widespread agreement as to whether the timing of the marital disruption differentially impacts youth outcomes. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and its Young Adult Sup...

We combine household survey data with event data on the timing and location of armed conflicts to examine the impact of Burundi’s civil war on children’s health status. The identification strategy exploits exogenous variation in the war’s timing across provinces and the exposure of children’s birth cohorts to the fighting. After controlling for province of residence, birth cohort, individual an...

Economic theory predicts that abortion laws affect sexual behavior since they change the marginal cost of having risky sex. We estimate the impact of abortion laws on sexual behavior by reported gonorrhea incidence. Our data panel includes 41 countries for which consistent gonorrhea data are available for 1980–2000. Compared with laws permitting abortion only to save the pregnant woman’s life o...