We examine how parental health shocks affect children's non-cognitive skills. Based on a German mother-and-child data base, we draw on significant changes in self-reported parental health as an exogenous source of health variation to identify effects on outcomes for children at ages of three and...

Substantial research on the relationship between family structures and child outcomes represents a considerable part of the literature. However, family structure provides a rather static view of the relationship of children's living arrangements and their well-being, revealing hardly anything...

Although spiteful preferences play a crucial role in the development of human large-scale cooperation, there is little evidence on spiteful behavior and its determinants in children. We investigate the relationship between children's cognitive skills and spiteful behavior in a sample of 214...

This paper examines the impact of outdoor and indoor pollution on children's health from birth until the age of three years in Germany. We use representative data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), combined with five air pollution levels. These data come from the Federal Environment...

While the health benefits of breastfeeding for both mothers and children are well known, breastfeeding may make it difficult for mothers to return early to the labor market. Maternity and parental leave regulations have been designed to reduce this conflict. In 2007, Germany put into effect a...

The full range of public benefits for married people and families is being evaluated on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (BMFSFJ) and the German Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF) for the first time. To strengthen existing datasets such as...

By investigating how locally available early childhood education and care quality relates to maternal employment choices, this study extended the literature which has mostly focused on the importance of day-care availability or costs. We provided differentiated analyses by the youngest child’s...

This paper investigates the association between maternal life satisfaction and the developmental functioning of two- to three-year-old children as well as the socio-emotional behaviorof five- to six-year-old children. We use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), which allows us...

In Germany, researchers dealing with questions of empirical educational research rely mainly on cross-sectional data. In addition, there are region- and group-specific longitudinal studies. This paper demonstrates the possibilities for using educationally relevant information from long-running...

In developed countries, obesity tends to be associated with worse labor market outcomes. One possible reason is that obesity leads to less human capital formation early in life. This paper investigates the association between obesity and the developmental functioning of children at younger ages...