Alcohol consumption has been frequently linked to family violence. The purpose of this paper is to examine the direct relationship between the price of alcohol, which determines consumption, and violence towards spouses. The data come from the 1985 cross section and the 1985-1987 panel of the...

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...

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...

In most societies, a small number of people commit the most serious violence. Short-term studies have shown that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can reduce such antisocial behaviors. These behavior changes may be temporary, however, especially from therapy on its own. This is unsettled,...

Gun violence is the most pressing public safety problem in American cities. We report results from a randomized controlled trial (N=2,456) of a community-researcher partnership--the Rapid Employment and Development Initiative (READI Chicago)--which provided 18 months of a supported job alongside...

The typical family in the US is now a dual-earner couple, yet relatively few studies examine the retirement decision in a household context. This paper explores how husbands' and wives' retirement behavior is influenced by their own financial incentives from Social Security and private pensions...

We examine the changing relationship between unionization and wage inequality in Canada and the United States. Our study is motivated by profound recent changes in the composition of the unionized workforce. Historically, union jobs were concentrated among low-skilled men in private sector...

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...

Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), this paper studies the degree to which spouses sort in the marriage market on the basis of parental wealth. We estimate a variety of models, including transition matrices, OLS and TSLS models to deal with measurement error in wealth...