What are idiosyncratic shocks and how do people respond to them? This paper starts from the observation that idiosyncratic shocks are experienced at the individual level, but responses to shocks can encompass the whole household. Understanding and accurately modeling these responses is essential...

This study investigates how West German spouses have responded by adjusting their time allocation to the alimony reform introduced in 2008. This reform imposed financial self-responsibility after a finalized divorce. It weakened the relative bargaining position of the spouse with a claim for...

We analyse the marriage decisions of men and women in rural India, focusing on the added attractiveness of sanitation within the marital living arrangement. We demonstrate that the Government’s Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) changed marriage market outcomes for both men and women. To...

This paper uses seven nationally representative time use surveys in Latin America to identify key stylized facts regarding the quantity and quality of parental time investment on the skill formation of their children. Traditional models of household behavior have failed to account for the...

This paper examines the allocation of resources of poverty rates within households in Suriname. To this end we employ a bargaining model estimation framework that allows one to identify the allocation of resources across adult and children males and females. Our results using the Suriname...

In this paper we discuss the importance of families for understanding economic inequality. Family structure can in principle be an amplifier or mitigator of economic inequality. We describe three channels on how families shape economic inequality. First, how people match to form families matters...

This paper provides novel empirical evidence on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the division of labour among parents of school-aged children in two-parent opposite-gender families. In line with existing evidence, we find that mothers' paid work took a larger hit than that of fathers, and...

How does future income uncertainty affect child labour and human capital accumulation? Using a unique panel dataset, we examine the effect of changes in climate variability on the allocation of time among child labour activities (the intensive margin) as well as participation in education and...

Results of general equilibrium models are sensitive to model parameterization and specification. The role of macroeconomic closures and the effect of trade elasticities are documented in the literature, but there is no systematic analysis of the implications of different labor supply...

We infer the role of gender identity norms from the reallocation of childcare across parents, following changes in their relative wages. By exploiting variation from a Swedish tax reform, we estimate the elasticity of substitution in parental childcare for the whole population and for...