This paper reviews empirical evidence on the micro-level consequences of family planning programs in middle- and low-income countries. In doing so, it focuses on fertility outcomes (the number and timing of births), women's health and socio-economic outcomes (mortality, human capital, and labor...

During the 1970s the US underwent an important change in its divorce laws, switching from mutual consent to a unilateral divorce regime. Who benefitted and who lost from this change? To answer this question we develop a dynamic life-cycle model in which agents make consumption, saving, labor...

This paper examines how marital and fertility patterns have changed along racial and educational lines for men and women. Historically, women with more education have been the least likely to marry and have children, but this marriage gap has eroded as the returns to marriage have changed....

The last 60 years have seen the emergence of a dramatic socioeconomic gradient in marriage, divorce, cohabitation, and childbearing. The divide is between college graduates and others: those without four-year degrees have family patterns and trajectories very similar to those of high school...

Fertility rates have long been falling in many developed countries while educational attainment in these countries has risen. We attempt to reconcile these two trends with a novel application of a recent model to generate plausibly causal effects of education on these decreases in fertility....

Allowing migration activity as an integral part of demographic transition and economic development, we establish a locational quantity-quality trade-off of children and explore its macroeconomic consequences. We construct a dynamic competitive migration equilibrium framework with rural agents...