This paper explores the role of culture in determining divorce decisions by examining differences in divorce rates by country of origin of immigrants in the United States.  Because immigrants who arrived in the US at a young age are all exposed to a common set of American laws and institutions,...

Despite the well-documented increase in the relative wages and expenditures of highly-educated individuals in the U.S. in recent decades, leisure inequality mirrors inequality of wages, i.e. we observe that highly-educated individuals have now relatively less leisure time than lower-educated...

How much income would a woman living alone require to attain the same standard of living that she would have if she were married? What percentage of a married couple`s expenditures are controlled by the husband? How much money does a couple save on consumption goods by living together versus...

Women working full-time in the UK earn on average about 18% per hour less than men (EOC, 2005). Traditional labour economics has focussed on gender differences in human capital to explain the gender wage gap. Although differences in male and female human capital are recognized to derive from...

This paper investigates the effect of earnings and employment opportunities on pre-marital fertility. Using data from a sample of British women born in 1970, we estimate an independent competing risk harzard model of fertility and cohabitation decisions. Our results show that individual earnings...

Many observers believe that times are growing harder for young people in Western society. This paper looks at the evidence and finds that conventional wisdom appears to be wrong.

This paper explores the extent and nature of gender differences, by age, in household health expenditure allocation.  Using South African data, we adopt a hurdle methodology, constructing a sequence of decision stages (reporting sickness, consulting medical practitioner, incurring positive...

This paper provides a causal reason for failure in productive efficiency in the household and explains why some households may be less efficient than others.  In the theoretical model, spouses make labour allocation decisions in each period to generate income, facing a threat of divorce in the...

This paper studies the effects of orphanhood on health and education outcomes of children in Tanzania. Using an original dataset on members of the extended family networks of orphaned children, I assess by how much the effects of orphanhood are reduced due to a systematic placement of the...