Armenia experienced dramatic demographic changes in the past three decades: the share of adults age 65 and over nearly doubled, the total fertility rate reduced by more than 30 percent, and the male-to-female sex ratio at birth increased to one of the world’s highest. Like other middle-income...

The papers included in this [welfare] symposium provide excellent examples of this growing body of research. The most important issues addressed by these papers are whether the effects of welfare reform are similar in urban and rural areas and across racial and ethnic groups, whether welfare...

Aiming to boost fertility rates, in 2007 the Spanish government implemented a universal €2500 baby bonus paid to mothers giving birth or adopting a child, leading to a short-lived increase in births. In this study, I measure the causal impact that the transfer had on the language and...

According to school entry regulations in most countries, the composition of school entrance cohorts is determined by a fixed cutoff date. This procedure creates inter-cohort differences in age and development which can severely influence educational trajectories. Developmental examinations at...

There is limited empirical evidence on whether unrestricted cash social assistance to poor pregnant women improves children's birth outcomes. Using program administrative micro-data matched to longitudinal vital statistics on the universe of births in Uruguay, we estimate that participation in a...

Little is known about the response behavior of parents whose children are exposed to an early-life shock. In this paper we interpret the prenatal exposure of the Austrian 1986 cohort to radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl accident as a negative human capital shock and examine their parents...

Many countries are currently expanding access to child care for young children. But are all children equally likely to benefit from such expansions? We address this question by adopting a marginal treatment effects framework. We study the West German setting where high quality center-based care...

An important externality of smoking is the harm it might cause to those who do not smoke. This paper examines the impact on birth outcomes of children of female workers who are affected by smoking bans in the workplace. Analyzing a 2004 law change in Norway that extended smoking restrictions to...

This paper studies the effect of improved neonatal health care on mortality and long run academic achievement in school. We use the idea that medical treatments often follow rules of thumb for assigning care to patients, such as the classification of Very Low Birth Weight (VLBW), which assigns...

Rwanda is among the few countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and the developing approaching universal health insurance coverage. To date, over 90 per cent of the population are enrolled in the Mutuelles de Santé - a system that started off from a number of stand-alone community based health...