We analyze the impact on schooling outcomes of growing up in a family headed by a single mother. Growing up in a non-intact family in Germany is associated with worse outcomes in models that do not control for possible correlations between common unobserved determinants of family structure and...

We analyze the impact on schooling outcomes of growing up in a family headed by a single mother. Growing up in a non-intact family in Germany is associated with worse outcomes in models that do not control for possible correlations between common unobserved determinants of family structure and...

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....

Studies on the role of birth order in educational achievement in developing countries have yielded contradictory findings. This study uses unique and novel data on 4,362 siblings living in alternative care families in 54 countries. Results suggest negative birth order effects among biological...

Households are dynamic while most surveys only collect information on individuals who are present at a single point in time. We exploit a unique and thorough household membership enumeration in Burkina Faso to consider the analytical costs of the typical static household roster. We document that...

This paper presents results from a randomized evaluation of a home visiting program for disadvantaged first time mothers and their families implemented in three German federal states. At the end of the first year of the program, children in home visited families perform significantly better than...

With the goal to shed more light on the effectiveness of parental time spent with their children, I estimate the causal relationship between parental involvement and education outcomes of children. My research is the first which examines the effect of parental time in terms of the engagement in...

This paper uses data from Matlab, Bangladesh to examine the characteristics of female-headed households and estimate the impact of female-headship on children's schooling. Female householdheads in Matlab fall into two broad groups: widows and married women, most of whom are wives of migrants....

This study builds on the findings of Carrell and Hoekstra (2010, 2018) by exploring the peer effects of domestic violence exposure over the academic attainment of secondary school students in Peru. However, we also study these peer effects over a novel set of outcomes: internalizing behaviors...

This paper investigates the relationship between kindergarten attendance and secondary school track choice in West-Germany. Our analysis is based on a panel of 12 to 14-year olds with information from age two on, drawn from the German SocioEconomic Panel (GSOEP) 1984-2005. We estimate binary...