This paper discusses (a) the role of cognitive and noncognitive ability in shaping adult outcomes, (b) the early emergence of differentials in abilities between children of advantaged families and children of disadvantaged families, (c) the role of families in creating these abilities, (d)...

In this paper we analyze income tax design in a two member household labor supply model where time spent on consumption together by the two household members is valued differently from time spent apart. We treat consumption as a non excludable public good to members of the household; one example...

Transfer payments to poor families are increasingly conditioned on work, either via wage subsidies available only to workers or via work requirements in more traditional welfare programs. Although the effects of such programs on employment are fairly well understood, relatively little is known...

Background: Family structure is known to influence children's behavioral, educational, and cognitive outcomes, and recent studies suggest that family structure affects children's access to health care as well. However, no study has addressed whether family structure is associated with the care...

Nearly 20% of young prison inmates spent part of their youth in foster care - the placement of abused or neglected children with substitute families. Little is known whether foster care placement reduces or increases the likelihood of criminal behavior. This paper uses the placement frequency of...

The twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of Gary Becker's path-breaking quot;Treatise on the Familyquot; provides an occasion to reexamine both the American family and family economics. We begin by discussing how families have changed in recent decades: the separation of sex, marriage,...

In this paper, we use a two-stage bargaining model to analyze the living arrangement of a disabled elderly parent and the assistance provided to the parent by her adult children. The first stage determines the living arrangement: the parent can live in a nursing home, live alone in the...

In this paper we ask how the diffusion of oral contraception to young unmarried women affected the number and maternal characteristics of children born to these women. Using census data, we find that early pill access led to an increase in the share of children whose mothers were married,...

This paper measures impacts of removing children from families investigated for abuse or neglect. We use removal tendencies of child protection investigators as an instrument. We focus on young children investigated before age 6 and find that removal significantly increases test scores and...

This paper shows that in the presence of labor market shocks, child-bearing and child-rearing have far-reaching implications for gender inequality, household specialization and family structure. Using population register data on all births, marriages, and divorces together with employer-employee...