This paper exploits the complex sequential structure of the diary data in the American Heritage Time Use Study (AHTUS) and constructs three classes of indicators that capture the quality of leisure ('pure leisure,' 'co-present leisure' and 'leisure fragmentation') to show that the relative...

This paper asks whether the gap in subjective happiness between spouses matters per se, i.e. whether it predicts divorce. We use three panel databases to explore this question. Controlling for the level of life satisfaction of spouses, we find that a higher satisfaction gap, even in the first...

The time allocated to household chores is substantial, with the burden falling disproportionately upon women. Further, social norms about how much work men and women should contribute in the home are likely to influence couples' housework allocation decisions and evaluations of their lot. Using...

Participating in and presenting gifts at funerals, weddings, and other ceremonies held by friends and neighbors have been regarded as social norms in many parts of the world for thousands of years. However, due to the reciprocal nature of gift giving, it is more burdensome for the poor to take...

Social norms can mitigate the effectiveness of formal institutions, in particular the way legal reforms may affect women's autonomy. We examine this question in the context of ethnic variation in traditional post-marital cohabitation, i.e. matrilocality versus patrilocality. We use...

A substantial and growing fraction of children across Europe and the US live in single parent households. Law practices are evolving to encourage both parents to maintain contact with their children following parental separation/divorce, driven by the belief that such contact is in the best...

Twin births are often used to instrument fertility to address (negative) selection of women into fertility. However recent work shows positive selection of women into twin birth. Thus, while OLS estimates will tend to be downward biased, twin-IV estimates will tend to be upward biased. This is...

Twin births are often construed as a natural experiment in the social and natural sciences on the premise that the occurrence of twins is quasi-random. We present new population-level evidence that challenges this premise. Using individual data for more than 18 million births (more than 500,000...

The present paper provides new evidence that hospital delivery can significantly lower child mortality risks, especially among vulnerable young adolescent mothers in Bangladesh. We exploit the exogenous variation in community's access to local health facilities (both traditional and modern)...

An open question in the literature is whether families compensate or reinforce the impact of child health shocks. Discussions usually focus on one dimension of child investment. This paper examines multiple dimensions using household survey data on Chinese child twins whose average age is 11. We...