As the share of U.S. adult children living with their parents increases, it is important to understand how children who "boomerang" back home impact their parents in their pre-retirement and post-retirement years. We use data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to examine the effects of...

Although rates of interracial marriage are on the rise, we still know relatively little about the experiences of mixed-race adolescents. In this paper, we examine the identity and behavior of mixed-race (black and white) youth. We find that mixed-race youth adopt both types of behaviors -- those...

While it is widely acknowledged that the family and childhood environments affect adult well being, why they matter is still an area of significant debate. Previous research concerned with this issue has focused on the influence of family income, family structure, and cognitive ability. Much of...

This study uses longitudinal data from the NICHD Study on Early Child Care (SECC) to examine the effects of maternal employment on family well-being, measured by maternal mental and overall health, parenting stress, and parenting quality. First, we estimate the effects of maternal employment on...

While there is a large literature on gender differences in important childhood developmental inputs in developing countries, the evidence for developed countries is relatively limited. I investigate gender differences in some of these inputs in the US and Canada. In the US very low birthweight...

In this paper, we use 2008-2013 American Community Survey data to update and further probe Dahl and Moretti's (2008) son preference results, which found evidence that having a female first child increased the probability of single female headship and raised fertility. In light of the substantial...

In this paper we explore income and race differences in nine measures of the health of children aged 6 through 11. We show that when health measures from mid-childhood are the subject of analysis, both income and race differences are much less pronounced than they are in infant mortality and...

Selective universities regularly employ policies that favor children of alumni (known as legacies') in undergraduate admissions. Since alumni from selective colleges and universities have, historically, been disproportionately white, admissions policies that favor legacies have...

Socioeconomic inequalities in child development crystallize at early stages, with associated disparities in parental investment in children. A key to understanding the data patterns is to document the sources underlying the observed inequalities. We first show that there are dramatic differences...