Using data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), we construct two measures of the longevity of older wives and husbands. For definiteness, we focus on couples in which the wife was 60 and the husband 62 in 1988. Our first measure utilizes a 4 x 4 "longevity matrix" in which the bins...

This paper provides quasi-experimental evidence on the impact of paid leave legislation on fathers' leave-taking, as well as on the division of leave between mothers and fathers in dual-earner households. Using difference-in-difference and difference-in-difference-in-difference designs, we study...

We investigate whether individuals' risk preferences change after experiencing a natural disaster, specifically, the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. Exploiting the panels of nationally representative surveys on risk preferences, we find that men who experienced greater intensity of the...

This paper examines the value of an individual's human capital and the associated return on human capital using U.S. data on male earnings and financial asset returns. We find that (1) the value of human capital is far below the value implied by discounting earnings at the risk-free rate and (2)...

We show that a number of "noncognitive" skills and preferences, including patience and identity, are malleable in adults, and that investments in them reduce crime and violence. We recruited criminally-engaged men and randomized half to eight weeks of cognitive behavioral therapy designed to...

Studies of online dating suggest that physical attraction is a key factor in early relationship formation, but say little about the role of attractiveness in longer-term relationships. Meanwhile, assortative coupling and exchange models widely employed in demographic research overlook the...

We use two quasi-natural experiments, the rapid expansion of many markets after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Anti-Alcohol Campaign in 1986, and a migrants research design to identify highly persistent habits in food and alcohol consumption. Large shocks to product availability and...

India's male-biased sex ratio has worsened over the past several decades. In combination with the increased availability of prenatal sex-diagnostic technology, the declining fertility rate is a hypothesized factor. Suppose a couple strongly wants to have at least one son. At the natural sex...

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 the effect of labor market conditions--measured through unemployment, mass layoffs and predicted employment--on child abuse and neglect using county-level data from California. Using these indicators we separately estimate the effects of overall and gender-specific economic...