This study analyzes the effect of education on the number of children, childlessness, and the timing of births. We use exogenous variation from a mandatory reform of compulsory schooling in West Germany to deal with the endogeneity of schooling. In contrast to studies for other developed...

The problem with most intergenerational mobility estimates is that unmeasured and inherited abilities prevent us from drawing inferences. In this paper we estimate the intergenerational mobility of schooling and exploit differences between adopted and own birth children to obtain genetically...

This paper uses variation created by parental deaths in the amount of time children spend with each parent to examine whether the parent-child correlation in schooling outcomes stems from a causal relationship. Using a large sample of Israeli children who lost one parent during childhood, we...

This study was prepared by Sven Neelsen while he was working with the ifo Institute for Economic Research. It was completed in December 2011 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich in May 2012. The study investigates long-run effects of...

Using cultural transmission, we develop a model that gives some microfoundation to the impact of residential neighborhood on children's educational attainment and then test it using the UK National Child Development Study. We find that, for high-educated parents, the better the quality of the...

A growing literature establishes that high quality early childhood interventions targeted toward disadvantaged children have substantial impacts on later life outcomes. Little is known about the mechanisms producing these impacts. This paper uses longitudinal data on cognitive and personality...