This paper develops the theoretical foundations and the testable implications of the variousmechanisms that have been proposed as possible triggers for the demographic transition.Moreover, it examines the empirical validity of each of the theories and their significance forthe understanding of...

We investigate the impact of exogenous income fluctuations on health using twenty years ofdata from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics using techniques from the literature on theestimation of dynamic panel data models....

In 1958 Jacob Mincer pioneered an important approach to understand how earnings aredistributed across the population. In the years since Mincer’s seminal work, he as well as hisstudents and colleagues extended the original human capital model, reaching importantconclusions about a whole array...

State and federal reforms of the 1990s transformed the U.S. cash assistance program forsingle parents and their children. Despite an extensive literature examining these changesand their impacts, there have been few studies that consider the effects of these reformsfrom the perspective of the...

Exploiting a 1960s government trial in Copenhagen, we study the long-run and inter-generational effects of preventive care for toddlers. We combine administrative data with handwritten nurse records to document universal treatment take-up and positive health effects for treated children over the...

We examine the effect of a Chinese family planning policy (FPP) known as "Later, Longer, and Fewer" on the gender gap in breastfeeding. We find that FPP increased the daughter-son breastfeeding gap in favor of sons in rural areas. Mean intensity of the FPP predicts the gender gap to be 35%...

Using an identification strategy based on random assignment of refugees to different municipalities in Denmark between 1986 and 1998, we find strong evidence that gang crime rates in the neighbourhood at assignment increase the probability of boys to commit crimes before the age of 19, and that...

Today's labor-scarce economies have open trade and closed immigration policies, while a century ago they had just the opposite, open immigration and closed trade policies. Why the inverse policy correlation, and why has it persisted for almost two centuries? This paper seeks answers to this dual...

We document key facts about marriage and divorce, comparing trends through the past 150 years and outcomes across demographic groups and countries. While divorce rates have risen over the past 150 years, they have been falling for the past quarter century. Marriage rates have also been falling,...

Marriage data show a strong degree of positive assortative mating along a variety of attributes. But since marriage is an equilibrium outcome, it is unclear whether positive sorting is the result of preferences rather than opportunities. We assess the relative importance of preferences and...