We study the link between parental selection and children criminality in a new context. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, East Germany experienced an unprecedented temporary drop in fertility driven by economic uncertainty. We exploit this natural experiment to estimate that the children from...

Following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the birth rate halved in East Germany. Despite their small sizes, the cohorts conceived during this period of socio-economic turmoil were, as they grew up in reunified Germany, markedly more likely to be arrested than cohorts conceived a few years...