We use several datasets to study whether son preference prevails in the human capital investment among Chinese rural-urban migrant households. We find that son preference exists among the rural migrants’ households and that it caused lower probabilities relative to that of their boy...

The economic literature that studies the salary gaps between men and women produced by children. However, there may also be wage gaps between women with children and women without children, which is known as a motherhood wage penalty and whose study for countries such as Bolivia is scarce....

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 investigates if the impact of children on the labor market trajectories of women relative to men child penalties can be explained by the biological links between mother and child. We estimate child penalties in biological and adoptive families using event studies around the arrival of...

We explore gender differences in preferences for competition and risk among children aged 9-12 in Colombia and Sweden, two countries differing in gender equality according to macro indices. We include four types of tasks that vary in gender stereotyping when looking at competitiveness: running,...

This paper first documents the extent of the specialization in time use in couple families, and the impact of children on this specialization. It then examines the links between the time allocations of partners in couple families, the impact of children on these links, and the effects these...

We find that second-generation effects of in utero and early childhood malnutrition on the school participation of the offspring of mothers who experienced the China Great Leap Forward Famine. The direct impact on entrance to senior high school is also negative, but smaller in magnitude than...

Chinese parents prefer to have sons as they depend on their sons for support in old age, according to most of the literature. This paper uses the Preference Parameters Study, which randomly interviewed individuals in six major cities in China in 2011, to present empirical evidence about the...

Gender inequality in educational attainment remains a salient feature of contemporary Japanese society. This inequality lies not at the high school level but at the university level. Equal numbers of men and women advance to high school, but a significantly lower proportion of women advance to...

We study the impact of India's National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) on children's educational outcomes via women's labour force participation. Using data from the Young Lives Study and taking advantage of the spatial and temporal variation in the intensity of implementation of the...