We exploit the change to the minimum school-leaving age in the United Kingdom from 14 to 15 using a regression discontinuity design to evaluate the causal effect of one more year of education on cognitive abilities at older ages. We find a large and significant effect of this reform on males'...

This paper shows that there are large differences in cognitive and socio-emotional development between children from rich and poor backgrounds at the age of 3, and that this gap widens by the age of 5. Children from poor backgrounds also face much less advantageous "early childhood caring...

We show that children who are born at the weekend or just before are less likely to be breastfed, owing to poorer breastfeeding support services at weekends. We use this variation to estimate the effect of breastfeeding on children's development for a sample of uncomplicated births from low...

This paper uses data from a rich UK birth cohort to estimate the differences in cognitive and non-cognitive skills between children born at the start and end of the academic year. It builds on the previous literature on this topic in England by using a more robust regression discontinuity design...

This paper tests whether family size has a causal effect on girls' education in Mexico. It exploits son preference as the main source of random variation in the propensity to have more children, and estimates causal effects using instrumental variables. Overall, it finds no evidence of family...

This paper investigates how the permanent departure of the father from the household affects children's school enrolment and work participation in rural Colombia. Our results show that departure of the father decreases children's school enrolment by around 4 percentage points, and increases...

The large sibling correlations in risky behaviour between siblings raise the possibility that adolescents may directly influence the actions of their brothers or sisters. We assess the extent to which correlations in substance use and selling drugs are causal. Our identification strategy relies...

This paper investigates how the permanent departure of the head from the household, mainly due to death or divorce, affects children's school enrolment and work participation in rural Colombia. In our empirical specification we use household-level fixed effects to deal with the fact that...

We study how parental leave benefit levels affect household labor supply, family income, and child outcomes, exploiting the Speed Premium (SP) in the Swedish leave system. The SP grants mothers higher benefits for a subsequent child without re-establishing eligibility through market work, if two...

In this paper we provide an overview of the literature relating labour supply to taxes and welfare benefits with a focus on presenting the empirical consensus. We begin with a basic continuous hours model, where individuals have completely free choice over their hours of work. We then consider...