Individual cognitive functioning declines over time. We seek to understand how adverse physical health shocks in older ages contribute to this development. By use of event-study methods and data from the USA, England and several countries in Continental Europe we find evidence that health shocks...

The economic and psychological literatures have demonstrated that early investments (private and public) in children can significantly increase cognitive outcomes in the short and long term and contribute to success later in life. One of the most important of these inputs is maternal time....

The main goal of secondary school education in developed countries is to prepare students for higher education and the labor market. That demands high investments in study duration and specialized fields to meet rising skill requirements. However, these demands for more education are in...

Governments invest a lot of money in education, so it is important to understand the benefits of this spending. One essential aspect is that education can potentially make people better parents and thus improve the educational and employment outcomes of their children. Interventions that...

In this study I examine the impact of fluctuations in the unemployment rate before high school graduation on educational attainment measured 30 years later. I find evidence that educational attainment is countercyclical, as found in other studies, but also find that the impact of the...

This paper examines the effects of a substantial change in publicly funded paid parental leave in Germany on child development and socio-economic development gaps. For children born before January 1, 2007, parental leave benefits were means-tested and paid for up to 24 months after childbirth....

Over the 2000s, many federal states in Germany shortened the duration of secondary school by one year while keeping the curriculum unchanged. Exploiting quasi-experimental variation due to the staggered introduction of this reform allows me to identify the causal effect of increased learning...

This paper examines the effects of substantial changes in paid parental leave on child development and socio-economic development gaps. We exploit a German reform from 2007 that both expanded paid leave in the first year and removed paid leave in the second year following childbirth....

Cross-sectional studies show that in West Germany women with different levels of educational attainment participate differently in the labor market. In this paper, I examine one potential underlying mechanism: the re-entry of mothers in the labor market after a period of inactivity. I argue that...

Children who grow up in deprived neighborhoods underperform at school and later in life but whether there is a causal link remains contested. This study estimates the effect of very deprived neighborhoods, characterized by a high density of social housing, on the educational attainment of...