We measure the impact of individuals' looks on their life satisfaction or happiness. Using five data sets from the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Germany, we construct beauty measures in different ways that allow putting a lower bound on the true effects of beauty on happiness. Personal beauty...

The internet and other large textual databases contain billions of documents: is there useful information in the number of documents written about different topics? We propose, based on the premise that the occurrence of a phenomenon increases the likelihood that people write about it, that the...

This paper investigates the empirical validity of the setup of a large-scale government neighbourhood investment programme in the Netherlands. Selection of neighbourhoods into the programme was determined by their score on a predetermined index. At first sight this is a textbook example for the...

We use spline interpolation to approximate the subjective cumulative distribution function of an economic agent over the future realization of a continuous (possibly censored) random variable. The method proposed exploits information collected using a small number of probability questions on...

An emerging question in demographic economics is whether there is a link between family size and the geographic distance between adult children and elderly parents. Given current population trends, understanding how different configurations of family size and sibship influence patterns of...

In this paper we ask three questions: First, is there evidence of a Black-White gap in self-employment between 1994-2002 and could the inclusion of the White immigrant population be driving this result? Second, do within race differences in self-employment exist among the U.S. born? Finally, do...

Individuals aged 65 years and older currently make up a larger share of the population than ever before, and this group is predicted to continue growing both in absolute terms and relative to the rest of the population. This chapter begins by introducing the facts, figures, and forecasts...

In recent years, singles have begun to take on a more prominent role in reshaping America. As a group, singles are increasingly becoming influential in politics and in the determination of many macro socioeconomic outcomes. In this descriptive paper we focus on homeownership among a subset of...

An early age at first marriage is known to be associated with a high risk of divorce. Yet it has been suggested that beyond a certain point, the relationship between age at marriage and marital instability may become positive, because as unmarried women begin to hear their biological clock tick,...

In the past forty years the Chinese economy achieved miracle growth and many attributed a significant part of this to China's favourable labour supply flowing from the "demographic dividend": a larger share of working age population (WAPS). Currently, this dividend is slipping away and many in...