In this survey, we argue that the economic analysis of fertility has entered a new era. First-generation models of fertility choice were designed to account for two empirical regularities that, in the past, held both across countries and across families in a given country: a negative...

In many high-income economies, the recession caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in unprecedented declines in women's employment. We examine how the forces that underlie this observation play out in developing countries, with a specific focus on Nigeria, the most populous country in...

It takes a woman and a man to make a baby. This fact suggests that for a birth to take place, the parents should first agree on wanting a child. Using newly available data on fertility preferences and outcomes, we show that indeed, babies are likely to arrive only if both parents desire one, and...

This paper reviews models of marriage, with special emphasis on how the sex ratio (the ratio of marriageable men to women) can help explain measurable outcomes such as marriage formation, intra-marriage distribution of consumption goods, savings, labor supply, leisure, type of relationship,...

We document evidence on preferences for childbearing in developing countries. Across countries, men usually desire larger families than women do. Within countries, we find wide dispersion in spouses' desired fertility: there are many couples whose ideal family size differs by five children or...

We investigate the positive and normative consequences of child-labor restrictions for economic aggregates and welfare. We argue that even though the laissez-faire outcome may be inefficient, there are usually better policies to cure these inefficiencies than the imposition of a child-labor ban....

The nineteenth century witnessed dramatic improvements in the legal rights of married women. Given that these changes took place long before women gained the right to vote, they amounted to a voluntary renouncement of power by men. In this paper, we investigate men's incentives for sharing power...

Using the American Time Use Survey for the years 2003-18 we compare the allocation of time of native men and women married to immigrants with that of their counterparts in all-native couples. We find that when intermarried to a native some immigrant women pay an assimilation price to the extent...

This article uses data from the 1998-1999 French INSEE time use survey to estimate the time costs of children. The focus is on couples with two spouses working Full-Time in the labor force in order to avoid issues of substitution between home production and labor supply. Time costs are computed...