We document key facts about marriage and divorce, comparing trends through the past 150 years and outcomes across demographic groups and countries. While divorce rates have risen over the past 150 years, they have been falling for the past quarter century. Marriage rates have also been falling,...

We consider a case where some of the parents have higher ability to raise children than others. First-best policy gives both types of parents the same level of utility. If parental actions are not fully observable, however, the policy maker has to take into account the incentive-compatibility...

Estimating saving and fertility simultaneously by the VAR method, we find that social security cover has a positive effect on household saving, and a negative effect on fertility. In Germany, as in other countries where the hypothesis was tested, social security is thus good for growth. A...

This paper studies the optimal design of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) policies in an economy where individuals differ in their reproductive capacity (or fecundity) and in their wage. We find that the optimal ART policy varies with the postulated social welfare criterion....

Eligibility and benefits for anti-poverty income transfers in the U.S. are based on both the means and the household characteristics of applicants, such as their filing status, living arrangement, and marital status. In this paper we develop a dynamic structural model to study the effects of the...

We study the role and structure of commodity taxes when consumption and labor supplies are determined through a bargaining procedure between spouses, and where an optimal income tax is also available. We focus on the question whether there should be differences in tax treatment between "female"...

We document the time-series of employment rates and hours worked per employed by married couples in the US and seven European countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and the UK) from the early 1980s through 2016. Relying on a model of joint household labor supply...

We document the time-series of employment rates and hours worked per employed by married couples in the US and seven European countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and the UK) from the early 1980s through 2016. Relying on a model of joint household labor supply...

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the impact of cash social benefits on work incentives across the income distribution and among selected model family types in Lithuania. The analysis of work incentives was carried out for 2005-2013 based on a combination of measures estimated using the...

This paper studies the distribution of resources within Albanian families in 2012 using a collective consumption model with two alternative specifications: the first enables the estimation of intrahousehold distribution of resources among male adults, female adults and children; the second...