In Southern Europe youngsters leave the parental home significantly later than in Northern Europe and United States. Policies have been implemented in Southern Europe to incentivize young adults to leave parental home earlier. Do peer effects among siblings amplify the effects of these policies?...

The paper analyzes the effect of mother tongue on labor market outcomes of Swiss residents. This type of analysis can shed light on an important policy question. Is the Swiss labor market well integrated, or can one find instead segmentation along language borders? Improving on previous research...

Classified broadly, two motives for intra-family transfers exist: altruism and selfishness. This paper examines two selfish hypotheses − the exchange motive (strategic bequest motive)and the demonstration effect − using a new Japanese micro data set. My analysis of the determinants of...

It is well documented that immigrants are in better health upon arrival in the United States than their American counterparts, but that this health advantage erodes over time. We study the potential determinants of this "healthy immigrant effect", with a particular focus on the tendency of...

We use unique retrospective family background data from the 2003 British Household Panel Survey to explore the degree to which family size and birth order affect a child's subsequent educational attainment. Theory suggests a trade off between child quantity and 'quality'. Family size might...

Typical measures of racial progress focus on objectively measurable changes in economic conditions - employment opportunities, income, education. These indicators tell a story of ongoing, albeit frustratingly slow, progress. In this paper, we focus instead on measures of subjective wellbeing....

We construct a new, direct measure of female autonomy in household decision-making by creating an index from the principal components of a variety of household variables on which mother of a child takes decision. We then examine its impacts on her child's secondary education in Mexico and find...

Subjective well-being data reveal that blacks are less happy than are whites. However, much of this racial gap in happiness has closed over the past 35 years. We investigate measures of subjective well-being that indicate that the well-being of blacks has increased both absolutely and relative...

Defining disability, from youth to old age, is a lesson in legislative priorities and incentive systems that are below the radar screen. This poster presentation provides a visual illustration of the life cycle of the concept of disability, over an average life span. The time line begins when a...

Progress in closing differences in many objective outcomes for blacks relative to whites has slowed, and even worsened, over the past three decades. However, over this period the racial gap in well-being has shrunk. In the early 1970s data revealed much lower levels of subjective well-being...