The causes and consequences of child labour are examined theoretically and empirically within a household decision framework, with endogenous fertility and mortality. The data come from a nationally representative survey of Indian rural households. The complex interactions uncovered by the...

Although the theoretical trade-off between the quantity and quality of children is well-established, empirical evidence supporting such a causal relationship - particularly on child health - is limited. We use two measures of child health to asses the quantity-quality trade-off across the entire...

The availability of child-care services has often been advocated as one of the instruments to counter the fertility decline observed in many high-income countries. In the recent past large inflows of low-skilled migrants have substantially increased the supply of child-care services. In this...

According to the agenda for employment set by the EU in 2000 for the following ten years, the target for female employment was set at 60 per cent for the year 2010. While Northern and most Continental countries have achieved this quantitative target, the Mediterranean countries are lagging...

This paper investigates the effect of earnings and employment opportunities on pre-marital fertility. Using data from a sample of British women born in 1970, we estimate an independent competing risks hazard model of fertility and cohabitation decisions. Our results show that individual earnings...

Typically, when two people decide to become parents, they procreate by copulation and produce a child. What do people do if, for some reason, they can?t produce their own children but want to be parents? Today, a prospective parent can go to the web, drop a vial of sperm from a donor with...

Economic models of household behavior typically yield the prediction that increases in schooling levels and wage rates of married women lead to increases in their labor supply and reductions in fertility. In Italy, as well as in other Southern European countries, low labor market participation...

The paper re-examines the idea that a family can be viewed as a community governed by a self-enforcing constitution, and extends existing results in two directions. First, it identifies circumstances in which a constitution is renegotiation-proof. Second, it introduces parental altruism. The...

We use elementary game-theoretical concepts to compare domestic equilibria with and without marriage. In particular, we examine the effects of marriage legislation, matrimonial property regime, and divorce court sentencing practice, on the decision to marry, and on the choice of game conditional...

The role of women in the ritual of many religions changed dramatically at the end of the 20th century, to the point where full participation by women was the norm by 2000 rather than the rarity that it had been 30 years earlier. This paper considers some aspects of the economic context that help...