Using birth certificates matched to schooling records for Florida children born 1992 - 2002, we assess whether family disadvantage disproportionately impedes the pre-market development of boys. We find that, relative to their sisters, boys born to disadvantaged families have higher rates of...

This paper examines if the effect of parental labor market shocks on child development depends on the age of the child at the time of the shock. To address this question, we leverage rich Norwegian population-wide register data and exploit mass layoffs and establishment closures as a source of...

Using discontinuities within the Swedish SAT system, we show that additional admission opportunities causally affect college choices. Students with high-educated parents change timing, colleges, and fields in ways that appear consistent with basic economic theory. In contrast, very talented...

Using longitudinal data based on administrative registers for the population of Danish men we develop a model which accounts for the joint earnings dynamics of siblings and youth community peers. We are the first to decompose the sibling correlation of permanent earnings into family and...

This paper estimates the effects of family-background characteristics on student performance in the US and 17 Western European school systems. Family background has strong effects both in Europe and the United States, remarkably similar in size. France and Flemish Belgium achieve the most...

We estimate household equivalence scales using income satisfaction data from the German Socio-Economic Panel. We extend previous studies applying this approach by taking reference income into account. This allows separating needs-based from reference effects in the determination of income...

Using Swedish population register data on cohorts born 1982-1994 (N=1,087,750), we examine the effects of preterm births on school grades using sibling fixed effect models which compare individuals with their non-preterm siblings. We test for heterogeneous effects by degree of prematurity, as...

I study how motivation shapes own and peers' educational success. Using data from Project STAR, I find that academic motivation in early elementary school, as measured by a standardized psychological test, predicts contemporaneous and future test scores, high school GPA, and college-test taking...

In this paper we investigate the effect of Head Start on long term education and labor market outcomes using data from the NLSY79. The contributions to the existing literature on the effectiveness of Head Start are threefold: (1) we are the first to examine distributional effects of Head Start...

We exploit variation stemming from school consolidations in Denmark from 2010-2011 to analyze the impact on student achievement as measured by test scores. For each student we observe enrollment and test scores one year prior to school consolidation and up to four years after. We find that...