Pareto Efficiency is a core assumption of most models of household decision-making. We test this assumption using a new dataset covering the retirement saving contributions of over a million U.S. individuals. While a vast literature has failed to reject household efficiency in developed...

Despite the well-established importance of verbal engagement for infant language and cognitive development, many parents in low-income contexts do not converse with their infants regularly. We report on a randomized field experiment evaluating a low-cost intervention that aims to raise verbal...

How quickly does marginal utility fall with increasing consumption? It depends on the dimension along which we consider concavity of the utility function. This paper estimates the distribution of heterogeneous curvature parameters in individuals' utility functions from hypothetical choice data,...

Whereas studies have established the intra-household distribution of resources affects allocation decisions, little is known about how these decisions are affected by the distribution of resources among co-resident and non co-resident extended family members. Drawing on theoretical models of...

Studies of inequality often ignore resource allocation within the household. In doing so they miss an important element of the distribution of welfare that can vary dramatically depending on overall environmental and economic factors. Thus, measures of inequality that ignore intra household...

Empirical evidence suggests that money in the hands of mothers (as opposed to fathers) increases expenditures on children. Does this imply that targeting transfers to women promotes economic development? In this paper, we develop a noncooperative model of household decision making to answer this...

This paper examines whether an individual-level transfer of property rights increases the individual's bargaining power within the household. The question is analyzed in the context of a housing reform that occurred in China that gave existing tenants the opportunity to purchase the homes that...

The critical assumption that leads to the specialization conclusion in Becker's Treatise on the Family is that spouses' time inputs are perfect substitutes in household production. With no further assumptions (other than efficiency and the absence of process preferences) perfect substitutes...

Gary Becker's influence on the economics of the family has been pervasive. His ideas have dominated research in the economics of the family, shaping the tools we use, the questions we ask, and the answers we give. The foundational assumptions of Becker's economic approach to the family --...

The Israeli Ultra-Orthodox population doubles each seventeen years. With 60 % of prime aged males attending Yeshiva rather than working, that community is rapidly outgrowing its resources. Why do fathers with families in poverty choose Yeshiva over work? Draft deferments subsidize Yeshiva...