Parenting decisions are among the most consequential choices people make throughout their lives. Starting with the work of pioneers such as Gary Becker, economists have used the toolset of their discipline to understand what parents do and how parents' actions affect their children. In recent...

We analyze how access to childcare affects health outcomes of children with unemployed parents using a reform that increased childcare access in some Swedish municipalities. For 4-5 year olds, we find an immediate increase in infection-related hospitalization, when these children first get...

Using population wide register data, I exploit the "speed premium" rule in the Swedish parental leave system to estimate the causal effect of a change in the level of benefits per day on the utilization of parental leave. The results show that a 1% (5 SEK ≈ $0.54) increase in the mother's...

Previous research has established that birth order affects outcomes such as educational achievements, IQ and earnings. The mechanisms behind these effects are, however, still largely unknown. In this paper, we examine birth-order effects on health, and whether health at young age could be a...

Previous research has shown that birth order affects outcomes such as educational achievements, IQ and earnings. The mechanisms behind these effects are, however, still largely unknown. In this paper, we examine birth-order effects on health, and whether health at young age could be a...

This paper introduces a new IV strategy based on IVF (in vitro fertilization) induced fertility variation among childless women to estimate the causal effect of having children on their career. For this purpose, we use administrative data on IVF treated women in Denmark. Because observed chances...

We use quasi-random variation in graduation years during the onset of a very deep national recession to study the relationship between early labor market conditions and young females' family formation outcomes. A policy-pilot affecting the length of upper-secondary education in Swedish...

We analyze how access to childcare affects the health outcomes of children with unemployed parents using a reform that increased childcare access in some Swedish municipalities. While we find no effects of childcare access on hospitalization for 2- to 3-year-olds, our results suggest that 4- to...

Using population wide register data, I exploit the "speed premium" rule in the Swedish parental leave system to estimate the causal effect of a change in the level of benefits per day on the utilization of parental leave. The results show that a 1% (5 SEK ≈ $0.54) increase in the mother's...

Skilled and educated women have on average fewer children and are more likely to remain childless than the less skilled and educated. Using rich Swedish register data, we show that these negative associations found in most previous studies largely disappear if we remove the impact of family...