While much is now known about the effects of physical health shocks to pregnant women on the outcomes of the in-utero child, we know little about the effects of psychological stresses. One clear form of stress to the mother comes from the death of a parent. We examine the effects of the death of...

While recent research finds strong evidence that birth order affects children's outcomes such as education, IQ scores, and earnings, the evidence for effects on health is more limited. This paper uses a large dataset on the population of Norway and focuses on the effect of birth order on a range...

Lower birth weight babies have worse outcomes, both short-run in terms of one-year mortality rates and longer run in terms of educational attainment and earnings. However, recent research has called into question whether birth weight itself is important or whether it simply reflects other...

Given the wide use of childcare subsidies across countries, it is surprising how little we know about the effect of these subsidies on children's longer run outcomes. Using a sharp discontinuity in the price of childcare in Norway, we are able to isolate the effects of childcare subsidies on...

Does it matter when a child starts school? While the popular press seems to suggest it does, there is limited evidence of a long-run effect of school starting age on student outcomes. This paper uses data on the population of Norway to examine the role of school starting age on longer-run...

Transfers from parents - either in the form of gifts or inheritances - have received much attention as a source of inequality. This paper uses administrative data for the population of Norway to examine the share of the Total Inflows (defined as the capitalized sum of net labor income,...

In every society for which we have data, people’s educational achievement is positively correlated with their parents’ education or with other indicators of their parents’ socioeconomic status. This topic is central in social science, and there is no doubt that research has intensified...

Children with lower socioeconomic status (SES) tend to benefit more from early child care, but are substantially less likely to be enrolled. We study whether reducing behavioral barriers in the application process increases enrollment in child care for lower-SES children. In our RCT in Germany...

Why are children with lower socioeconomic status (SES) substantially less likely to be enrolled in child care? We study whether barriers in the application process work against lower-SES children - the group known to benefit strongest from child care enrollment. In an RCT in Germany with highly...

We study whether female students benefit from being taught by female professors, and whether such gender match effects differ by class size. We use administrative records of a German public university, covering all programs and courses between 2006 and 2018. We find that gender match effects on...