The leading evidence against the unitary household models is that "who gets what" is significantly dependent upon "who earns how much." However, it is difficult to pin down the causal effect of relative earnings on intra-household resource allocation because households jointly decide both labor...

Whether siblings of specific birth order perform differently has been a longstanding open empirical question. We use the family tree structure of the PSID to examine two claims found in the literature: whether being early in the birth order implies a distinct educational advantage, and whether...

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...

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...

This paper presents new estimates of sibling correlations in health and socioeconomic outcomes over the life course. Sibling correlations provide an omnibus measure of the importance of all family and community influences. I find that sibling correlations in a range of health and socioeconomic...

An emerging question in demographic economics is whether there is a link between family size and the geographic distance between adult children and elderly parents. Given current population trends, understanding how different configurations of family size and sibship influence patterns of...

The question addressed in this paper is how families with elderly living in are organizing themselves to face populational ageing, a major children economic dependency and the reduction of the role of the State. Are they "empty nests"? Co-residence and elderly increase in family size may be a...

One of the most marked demographic trends observed over the twentieth century is the increased rate of divorce. Relatively little research, however, has explored the effects of these changing marital patterns in the context of an aging society. Using a sample of elderly parents and their adult...

Some advocates worry that stronger child support enforcement may increase domestic violence. The predictions of a simple economic model are ambiguous; stronger enforcement may increase the mother's bargaining power, which reduces violence, but may also increase the father's opportunity and...

A long literature in economics concerns itself with differential allocations of resources to different children within the family unit. In a study of approximately 1,500 very disadvantaged families with children in Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio from 1999 to 2005, significant differences in...