This paper uses unique data collected in rural Pakistan to assess the extent to which consanguinity, which is widespread in North Africa, Central and West Asia, and most parts of South Asia, is linked to child cognitive ability and nutritional status. As economic benefits of marrying cousins may...

This paper examines whether economic empowerment of women improves their autonomy within their marital household, and investigates the mechanism, by exploiting variation from a legal reform aimed at improving women's inheritance rights in India. Results suggest that the reform increased...

This paper relaxes the single-factor model of intergenerational educational mobility and analyzes heterogeneous effects of family background on children’s education in villages, with a focus on the role of nonfarm occupations. The analysis uses data from rural China that cover three...

Strong boy-bias and its consequences for young and unborn girls have been widely documented for Asia. This paper considers a country in Sub-Saharan Africa and finds that parental gender preferences do affect fertility behavior and shape traditional social institutions with negative effects on...

During Vietnam's two decades of rapid economic growth, its fertility rate has fallen sharply at the same time that its educational attainment has risen rapidly -- macro trends that are consistent with the hypothesis of a quantity-quality tradeoff in child-rearing. This paper investigates whether...

The institution of consanguineous marriage-a marriage contracted between close biological relatives-has been a basic building block of many societies in different parts of the world. This paper argues that the practice of consanguinity is closely related to the practice of dowry, and that both...

This paper estimates the relationship between family background, school characteristics, and student achievement in primary school in two Latin American countries, Argentina and Colombia, as well as several comparison countries. The database used is the student-level international achievement...

Recent volatility in the Mexican economy, has required households to alter patterns of participation in the labor force, voluntarily or not. The author uses panel data to examine patterns of labor force entry among adult men, and women with different household responsibilities, asking whether...