This article discusses son preference in India, including both greater investment in sons and the fertility preference for sons. Regarding differential investment, I focus on child health and show that gender gaps in inputs and outcomes have narrowed in recent years. Nonetheless, girls remain...

Several recent studies have found that earnings inequality in Canada has grown considerably since the late 1970's. Using an extraordinary data base drawn from longitudinal income tax records, we decompose this growth in earnings inequality into its persistent and transitory components. We find...

We examine trends in self-employment among white and black men from 1910 to 1990 using Census and CPS microdata. Self-employment rates fell over most of the century and then started to rise after 1970. For white men, we find that the decline was due to declining rates within industries, but was...

This paper uses data from the Health and Retirement Study to examine the employment and retirement behavior of men aged fifty and above who have experienced an involuntary job loss. Hazard models for returning to work and for exiting post-displacement employment are estimated and used to examine...

Alcohol consumption has been frequently linked to family violence. The purpose of this paper is to examine the direct relationship between the price of alcohol, which determines consumption, and violence towards spouses. The data come from the 1985 cross section and the 1985-1987 panel of the...

The elderly are one of the exceptional groups in American society with access to a significant cash safety net, a means-tested program called Supplemental Security Income (SSI). Little attention has been paid to the pre-eligibility-age labor market disincentives created by such a program. In...

We examine the effect of the 1996 Tax Reform Act on the labor supply of affluent men. The Act reduced marginal tax rates for the affluent more than for other taxpayers. Using instrumental-variables methods with a variety of identifying variables, we find essentially no responsiveness of the...

We estimate the impact of employer-provided retiree health insurance on the rate at which men aged 51-62 enter and exit the labor force and switch jobs. The models estimated are an approximation of the employment decision rules implied by a dynamic stochastic model of employment behavior of...

This paper tests the hypothesis that child support obligations impede remarriage among nonresident fathers. Hazard models fit to data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and from the Survey of Income and Program Participation reveal that child support obligations deter remarriage...

In this paper we use data on brothers, and fathers and sons, to estimate the economic returns to schooling. Our goal is to determine whether the correlation between earnings and schooling is due, in part, to the correlation between family backgrounds and schooling. The basic idea is to contrast...