We examine the role of school closures in contributing to the negative labor market impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. We collect detailed daily information on school closures at the school-district level, which we merge to individual level data on various employment and socio- demographic...

This paper examines the extent to which the Great Recession affected gender composition at birth. We focus on ethnic minorities in the US known for a son preference - Chinese, Indians, and Koreans. Using the DID method, we find that in response to the Great Recession, the fraction of newborn...

Powerful currents have reshaped the structure of families over the last century. There has been (i) a dramatic drop in fertility and greater parental investment in children; (ii) a rise in married female labor-force participation; (iii) a decline in marriage and a rise in divorce; (iv) a higher...

This paper examines how traditional marriage market institutions affect households' financial decisions. We study how bride-to-groom marriage payments, i.e., dowries, influence saving behavior in rural India. Exploiting variation in firstborn gender and heterogeneity in dowry amounts across...

We investigate the impact of an economic downturn on natality and birthweight for newborns when parents prefer sons. We examine South Korea, unexpectedly hit by the Asian financial crisis in 1997. For identification, we exploit regional and time variation in the crisis, focusing on women who...

This study examines high school effects on the labor market success of young adults, above and beyond individual and family characteristics. We employ data from two longitudinal, nationally probability samples: the National Longitudinal Study and the High School and Beyond study and the 5th and...

This paper utilizes a large-scale natural experiment aimed at increasing fertility in Russia. Motivated by a decade-long decrease in fertility and population, the Russian government introduced a sequence of sizable child subsidies (called Maternity Capitals) in 2007 and 2012. We find that the...

In this paper, we use 2008-2013 American Community Survey data to update and further probe Dahl and Moretti's (2008) son preference results, which found evidence that having a female first child increased the probability of single female headship and raised fertility. In light of the substantial...

We examine whether economic downturns are beneficial to health outcomes of newborn infants in developed countries. For this we use merged population-wide registers on health and economic and demographic variables, including the national medical birth register and intergenerational link registers...

In July 2005, Switzerland introduced the first federal paid maternity leave mandate, offering 14 weeks of leave with 80% of pre-birth earnings. We study the mandate's impact on women's employment and earnings around the birth of their first child, as well as on their subsequent fertility by...