This paper examines a wide variety of forms, and full histories, of family structure to test existing theories of family influences and identify needs for new theories. The focus is on links between childhood family structure and both completed schooling and risk of a nonmarital birth. Using a...

This paper examines one avenue through which female autonomy impinges on fertility and child mortality in developing countries. A simple model is set out in which couples are motivated to have children for old age security purposes. The decisions of a couple regarding fertility and allocation of...

In this paper we estimate the relationships between several outcomes in early adulthood (educational attainment, economic inactivity, early childbearing, distress and smoking) and experience of life in a single-parent family during childhood. The analysis is performed using a special sample of...

This study examines the effect of family structure on high school graduation by race and gender using data from the first twenty-one waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and recently available retrospective marital histories. The nature of the data allows for a more complete specification...

This note reviews and evaluates Tasiran's (1995) claim that estimated female wage effects on Swedish fertility dynamics reported by Heckman and Walker (1990) are not robust to the use of microwage data. The results reported here indicate that once individual wage measures have been purged of...

This paper uses labour force survey data to examine the employment rates and employment decisions of women with young children in the United States, Britain and Japan. Our results confirm that young children have a very strong negative effect on women's employment; this effect is most pronounced...

This paper examines the interaction between decisions on divorce and fertility. The analysis generates two major implications. Firstly, it complements the existing literature on endogenous fertility to explain why population growth and economic growth can be negatively correlated after an...

Even before the 1996 overhaul of the U.S. welfare system, a number of states had ended the practice of paying extra benefits to families who have additional children while receiving welfare. Proponents believe that this reform can reduce births to recipients, however many worry that it may...

Effects of sex preference on investments in children`s human capital, bequests and fertility are studied, with and without sex selection, in a model based on parental altruism. Both pure sex preference, a feature of the parental utility function, and indirect preference, which arises from...