Recent policy proposals call for significant new investments in early care and education (ECE). These policies are designed to reduce the burden of child care costs, support parental employment, and foster child development by increasing access to high-quality care, especially for children in...

In theory, unilateral divorce laws alter the private incentive to invest in human capital by permitting either spouse to initiate the division of the marital assets. Using several causal research designs we show that both men and women are less likely to attain a bachelor's degree in states with...

This paper studies the mechanisms and the extent to which parental wage risk passes through to children's skill development. Through a quantitative dynamic labor supply model in which two parents choose whether to work short or long hours or not work at all, time spent with children, and...

We offer a new analysis of a large-scale trial of an early-childhood education program that targeted premature, low-birthweight children. This targeting heavily oversampled twins, whose outcomes differed significantly from singletons'. Singletons' gains in short-term cognition and age-18...

What happens to children during the early years is recognized to be very important for their long run development. It is also increasingly clear that the skills that are relevant for economic success and more generally well-being are multidimensional, including different types of socioemotional...

This paper analyzes the aggregate and distributional effects of publicly funded merit-based ('free') secondary schooling in the developing world. Our analysis is based on an overlapping-generations model of human capital accumulation in which households face borrowing constraints that can lead...

Fertility change is distinct from other forms of social and economic change because it directly alters the size and composition of the next generation. This paper studies how changes in population composition over the fertility transition feed back into the evolution of average fertility across...

This research explores the biocultural origins of human capital formation. It presents the first evidence that moderate fecundity and thus predisposition towards investment in child quality was conducive for long-run reproductive success within the human species. Using an extensive genealogical...

Using micro-data from 48 developing countries, I document a recent reversal in the income-fertility relationship and its aggregate implications. Before 1960, children from larger families had richer parents and obtained more education. By century's end, both patterns had reversed. Consequently,...

Introduced as part of the War on Poverty, Community Health Centers (CHCs) deliver primary care to underserved populations by locating sliding-scale clinics in economically disadvantaged areas. We investigate how this policy affected infant health using the rollout of CHCs and a flexible event...