Can biology help us to better understand gender differences in labor market behavior and outcomes? This chapter reviews the emerging literature which sheds light on this question, considering research in four broad areas: i) behavioral endocrinology; ii) human genetics; iii) neuroeconomics; and...

In this paper we propose a way to measure the degree of government intervention on forward –from parents to children– and backward –from adult children to elderly parents– intergenerational family transfers (IFT). We carry out a discussion about the possibility of using Generational...

Demographic behaviour is shaped not only by characteristics at the individual level, but also by the context in which individuals are embedded. The Contextual Database of the Generations and Gender Programme (GGP) supports research on these micro-macro links by providing cross-country...

Family policies aim to influence fertility and labor force participation, and support families. However, often only fertility and labor supply are considered in policy evaluations. For example, the 2007 extension of parental leave benefits in Germany is generally considered unsuccessful because...

In Japan, many scholars and policymakers as well as ordinary people, have accepted the family nuclearization theory—that is, that the Japanese family system has changed from a traditional stem family into the modern nuclear or conjugal family in the latter half of the twentieth century....

Childbearing within cohabitation has gained considerable ground in recent decades, but existing explanations for this development are not coherent. Proponents of the Second Demographic Transition framework interpret it rather as a pattern of progress driven by processes such as emancipation from...

The economic stress hypothesis (ESH) suggests that economic decline leads to a decrease in the proportion of males born in a population. A multitude of additional influences on sex ratios that often cannot be accounted for empirically make assessing the validity of the ESH difficult. Thus, as a...

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Several countries in Northern and Western Europe report cohort fertility rates of close to two children per woman, including Belgium, France, and Denmark. By contrast, most Central and Southern European countries have cohort fertility levels of only around 1.5-1.6 children. Germany is part of...

The challenges women face in reconciling their work and family responsibilities are at the heart of current explanations concerning the low fertility levels in developed countries. This study examines the role of the outsourcing of household labor and of childcare responsibilities in reducing...