U.S. fertility rose from a low of 2.27 children for women born in 1908 to a peak of 3.21 children for women born in 1932. It dropped to a new low of 1.74 children for women born in 1949, before stabilizing for subsequent cohorts. We propose a novel explanation for this boom-bust pattern, linking...

Drawing on original fieldwork in the slums of Ndola in Northern Zambia we study the role of family structure in caring for vulnerable children. We try to isolate those features of a child’s nuclear and extended family that put him most at risk of ending up on the streets. We find that older,...

This paper constructs a continuous and consistent measure of intergenerational mobility in the United States between 1850 and 1930 by linking individuals with the same first name across pairs of decennial Censuses. One of the advantages of this methodology is that it allows to calculate...

The gender wage gap varies widely across countries and across skill groups within countries. Interestingly, there is a positive cross-country correlation between the unskilled-to-skilled gender wage gap and the corresponding gap in hours worked. Based on a canonical supply and demand framework,...

This paper explores the hypothesis that gender wage differentials arise from the interaction between the intra-household allocation of labor and the contractual relation between firms and workers in the presence of private information on workers’ labor market attachment. In our model, if firms...

This paper provides an overview of the literature on international di¤erences in the gender wage gap. It then focuses on the Italian case and analyzes di¤erentials in gender wage and employment gaps across regions. The cross-regional variation reproduces the negative correlation between wage...

Divorce rates in the U.S. have been falling for the past decade, while female labor force participation rates have been rising. Aggregate data for US states show that in 2000, divorce rates across states are negatively correlated with female labor force participation rates, even after...

Until the early decades of the 20th century, women spent more than 60% of their prime- age years either pregnant or nursing. Since then, improved medical knowledge and obstetric practices reduced the time cost associated with women?s reproductive role. The introduction of infant formula also...