During Vietnam’s two decades of rapid economic growth, its fertility rate has fallen sharply at the same time that its educational attainment has risen rapidly—macro trends that are consistent with the hypothesis of a quantity-quality tradeoff in child-rearing. We investigate whether the micro-level evidence supports the hypothesis that Vietnamese parents are in fact making a tradeoff between q...

In his classic work on the economics of fertility, Becker (1960) suggests that children are likely “normal.” We examine this contention. Our first step is documenting an empirical regularity about the cross section of non-Hispanic white married couples in the U.S.: When we restrict comparisons to similarly-educated women living in similarly-expensive locations, completed fertility is positively...

We obtained eight different cell lines in the long-term bone marrow culture system that showed a germ-line configuration of the joining (J) region segments of the Ig heavy-chain (IgH) genes. Their surface markers were CD45R+, Ly-1+, Lyb-2+, cIgM-, sIgM-, Ia-, Thy-1-, Mac-1-, and IL-2R (Tac)+. Use of very young mice and the presence of IL-5 were important for preferential promotion of the surviv...

Evidence on the pre-modern relationship between wealth and fertility has so far almost entirely relied upon data from Europe. We use British colonial records from early 19thcentury India on widow suicides (satis) to show that there is a robust positive relationship between income and fertility. JEL codes: J13, N35, D31

Disadvantaged students perform differentially worse when randomly given a financially salient mathematics exam. For with socioeconomic indicators below the national median, 10 percentage point increase in share of monetary themed questions depresses exam performance by 0.026 standard deviations, about 6 percent their gap. Using question-level data, I confirm role financial salience comparing on...

We show that children who are born at or just before the weekend less likely to be breastfed, owing poorer breastfeeding support services in hospitals weekends. use this variation estimate effect of on children's development first seven years life, for a sample births low-educated mothers. find large effects cognitive but no health noncognitive during period childhood we consider. Regarding mec...

This paper investigates whether the impact of children on labor market outcomes women relative to men—child penalties—can be explained by biological links between mother and child. We estimate child penalties in adoptive families using event studies around arrival almost 40 years adoption data from Denmark. Short-run are slightly larger for mothers than mothers, but their long-run virtually ide...

In this paper we characterise the selection into parenthood for men and women separately and estimate effects of motherhood and fatherhood on wages. We apply propensity score matching exploiting an extensive high-quality register-based data set augmented with family background information. We estimate net effects of parenthood and find that mothers receive 7.4% lower average wages compared to n...

The Economics of Child Well-Being This chapter presents an integrated economic approach that organizes and interprets the evidence on child development. It also discusses the indicators of child well-being that are used in international comparisons. Recent evidence on child development is summarized, and policies to promote child well-being are discussed. The chapter concludes with some open qu...

Treatment practices vary widely across hospitals, often with little connection to patients’ medical needs. We assess impacts of these differences in delivery at childbirth. find that infants quasi-randomly delivered hospitals higher C-section rates are born better shape and less likely be readmitted, suggestive evidence improved survival. These benefits driven by avoidance prolonged labors pose...