In 1933, the German government introduced the marriage loan for newlyweds, a policy aimed at increasing marriages and births as well as male employment, which entailed a work ban for the wife and sizeable credit deductions for children. This paper illustrates that the policy was rather...

Recent studies on fertility in Europe indicate the changing cross-country correlation between fertility and key fertility-related indicators. Fertility now tends to be lowest in countries that are traditional, catholic and family oriented, while fertility is highest in countries with high...

Most of the international studies on fertility are based on a female perspective. A major difficulty in couple-level research is the need for high-quality data that includes information on both partners. Using couple data from a longitudinal study conducted in Italy [2003-2007], a country with...

The interplay between changes of different demographic determinants may trigger or prevent convergence of various dimensions of demographic behaviour both within and between countries of western and Eastern Europe. We investigate whether convergence or divergence dynamics prevail across cohorts...

This paper examines the interactions between household matching, inequality, and per capita income. We develop a model in which agents decide whether to become skilled or unskilled, form households, consume and have children. We show that the equilibrium sorting of spouses by skill type (their...