What caused the baby boom? And can it be explained within the context of the secular decline in fertility that has occurred over the last 200 years? The hypothesis is that:(a) The secular decline in fertility is due to the relentless rise in real wages that increased the opportunity cost of...

For 200 years the average number of hours worked per worker declined, both in the market place and at home. Technological progress is the engine of such transformation. Three mechanisms are stressed: (i) The rise in real wages and its corresponding wealth effect; (ii) The enhanced value of time...

Powerful currents have reshaped the structure of families over the last century. There has been (i) a dramatic drop in fertility and greater parental investment in children; (ii) a rise in married female labor-force participation; (iii) a significant decline in marriage and a rise in divorce; (iv)...

The structural transformation of China – or the reallocation of resources from the agricultural sector to the nonagricultural sector – between 1978 and 2003 was truly remarkable. We develop a two-sector neoclassical growth model to quantitatively assess the driving forces of China's recent...

Consider the following facts. In 1950, the richest countries attained an average of 8 years of schooling whereas the poorest countries 1.3 years, a large 6-fold difference. By 2005, the difference in schooling declined to 2-fold because schooling increased faster in poor than in rich countries....