Using state-level variation in the timing of political reforms, we find that an increase in female representation in local government induces a large and significant rise in documented crimes against women in India. Our evidence suggests that this increase is good news, driven primarily by...

Decades of research on the US gender gap in wages describes its correlates, but little is known about why women changed their career paths in the 1960s and 1970s. This paper explores the role of "the Pill" in altering women's human capital investments and its ultimate implications for life-cycle...

We estimate the effect of television on fertility in Brazil, where soap operas portray small families. We exploit differences in the timing of entry into different markets of Globo, the main novela producer. Women living in areas covered by Globo have significantly lower fertility. The effect is...

This paper evaluates the impact of three major expansions in maternity leave coverage in Germany on children's long-run outcomes. To identify the causal impact of the reforms, we use a difference-indifference design that compares outcomes of children born shortly before and shortly after a...

We present in this paper evidence about the effects and mechanisms of gender peer effects in elementary, middle, and high schools. For identification, we rely on idiosyncratic variations in gender composition across adjacent cohorts within the same schools. We find that an increase in the...

This paper uses the Islamic holy month of Ramadan as a natural experiment in diurnal fasting and fetal health. Among births to Arab parents in Michigan, we find prenatal exposure to Ramadan results in lower birth weight. Exposure in the first month of gestation also reduces the number of male...

This paper uses a new dataset on child-adoption matching to estimate the preferences of potential adoptive parents over US-born and unborn children relinquished for adoption. We identify significant preferences favoring girls and against African American children put up for adoption. These...

Previous research has not always found that boys and girls are treated differently in rural India. However estimates of the effect of gender on parental investments could be biased if girls end up in larger families due to son-biased stopping rules. Using a novel identification strategy that...

We conduct a randomized evaluation of the effect of village-based schools on children's academic performance using a sample of 31 villages and 1,490 children in rural northwestern Afghanistan. The program significantly increases enrollment and test scores among all children, but particularly for...

We show that pregnant women whose first clinic visit coincides with the nurse's attendance are 58 percentage points more likely to test for HIV and 46 percent more likely to deliver in a hospital. Furthermore, women with high pretest expectations of being HIV positive, whose visit coincides with...