Supporting working mothers to balance their work and childcare responsibilities is a central objective of maternal and parental leave policies. Nearly all countries offer some forms of maternity and family leave programs for childbearing on a national basis. This chapter reviews various types of...

Health at birth is an important indicator of human capital development over the life course. This paper uses longitudinal data from the Young Lives survey and employs instrumental variable regression models to estimate the effect of birth weight on cognitive development during childhood in...

The examination of the causal impact of health insurance coverage on healthcare utilisation is a critical endeavour in both academic research and policy formulation. However, this endeavour faces challenges, notably the endogenous selection into coverage and prevalent misreporting of coverage...

During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, Shanghai implemented lockdown measures to stop transmission of the virus. Over 26 million residents, including 0.8 million children aged 3-6, were confined at home. This study leveraged a city-wide cohort of preschool children - the Shanghai...

Cognitive impairment poses considerable challenges among older adults, with the protective role of family support becoming increasingly crucial. This study examines the role of children's residential proximity and spousal presence with dementia risk in cognitively impaired older adults. We...

This paper examines the role of various socioeconomic factors in mediating the local and cross-city transmissions of the novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) in China. We implement a machine learning approach to select instrumental variables that strongly predict virus transmission among the rich...

Recent economic literature has advanced the notion that cognitive biases and behavioural barriers may be important influencers of uptake decisions in respect of public programs that are designed to help disadvantaged people. This paper provides the first evidence on the determinants of uptake of...