High maternal mortality ratios (MMR) serve as objective indicators of the poor condition of women's health in any country and point to violations of human rights that are entrenched in national, regional and global laws. For over a decade, Nigeria has consistently been in the top 5 listed...

Helle et al. (2002) used data from Finnish parish records to study the cost of bearing sons vis-à-vis daughters in terms of postmenopausal longevity and found a large and significant cost associated with sons. In this paper, we replicate and extend their analysis on a larger dataset of...

We use miscarriage as a biological shock to fertility in order to estimate the causal impact of motherhood on labor market outcomes. The number of instruments is increased by exploiting the response-heterogeneity to miscarriage along three dimensions: time, age, and birth order. This allows us...

We study the determinants of season of birth of the first child, for white married women aged 25-45 in the US, using birth certificate and Census data. We also analyze stated preferences for season of birth using our own Amazon Mechanical Turk survey. The prevalence of quarters 2 and 3 is...

This study investigates how maternal working hours are related to various outcomes in children aged 11 to 15 using a sample of mothers and adolescents in the British Household Panel Survey. Research that examines the effects of maternal employment on children has been motivated by the rapid...

In this paper, I make an attempt to understand the efficacy of some of the current fiscal stimuli being implemented to deal with the ongoing economic disaster precipitated by COVID-19. The focus is on pecuniary externalities working through the demand side, for they seem crucial for recovery. I...

In this paper we study the effect of unemployment on birth outcomes by exploiting geographical variation in the unemployment rate across local areas in England, and comparing siblings born to the same mother via sibling fixed effects. Using rich individual data from hospital administrative...

Pregnancy conditions have been shown to matter for later economic success, but many threats to fetal development that have been identified are difficult to prevent. In this paper I study seasonal influenza, a preventable illness that comes around every year and causes strong inflammatory...

Pregnancy conditions have been shown to matter for later economic success, but many threats to fetal development that have been identified are difficult to prevent. In this paper I study seasonal influenza, a preventable illness that comes around every year and causes strong inflammatory...