After roughly 10 years of decline, the U.S. fertility rate reached a historic low in 2017. However, aggregate trends in fertility mask substantial heterogeneity across different demographic groups. Young women and unmarried women have seen the largest declines in fertility in recent years while...

This study demonstrates that regression discontinuity designs will arrive at biased estimates when attributes related to outcomes predict heaping in the running variable. We discuss several approaches to diagnosing and correcting for this type of problem. Our primary example focuses on the use...