occupational choice and the process of development this paper models economic development as a process of institutional transformation by focusing on the interplay between agents occupational decisions and the distribution of wealth because of capital market imperfections poor agents choose working for a wage over self employment and wealthy agents become entrepreneurs who monitor workers only with sufficient inequality however will there be employment contracts otherwise there is either subsistence or self employment thus in static equilibrium the occupational structure depends on distribution since the latter is itself endogenous we demonstrate the robustness of this result by extending the model dynamically and studying examples in which initial wealth distributions have long run effects in one case the economy develops either widespread cottage industry self employment or factory production employment contracts depending on the initial distribution in the other example it develops into prosperity or stagnation

the one child policy a macroeconomic analysis abstract this paper studies the effects of china s one child policy using a calibrated general equilibrium model a benchmark with a fertility constraint in place is compared to a counterfactual experiment without the fertility constraint the results indicate that the implementation of the one child policy promotes the accumulation of human capital and increases per capita output in addition the policy leads to different welfare effects across generations and skill groups the initial generation would benefit from relaxing the one child policy but the following generations would be hurt a redistribution effect between skilled and unskilled workers is also observed these findings demonstrate that focusing solely on gdp per capita as a measure of economic well being paints an incomplete picture of the welfare consequences of population policies

multiple experiments for the causal link between the quantity and quality of children this article presents evidence on the child quantity child quality trade off using quasi experimental variation due to twin births and preferences for a mixed sibling sex composition as well as ethnic differences in the effects of these variables our sample includes groups with very high fertility an innovation in our econometric approach is the juxtaposition of results from multiple instrumental variables strategies capturing the effects of fertility over different ranges for different sorts of people to increase precision we develop an estimator that combines different instrument sets across partially overlapping parity specific subsamples our results are remarkably consistent in showing no evidence of a quantity quality trade off

the gender gap fertility and growth changes in fertility have long been recognized as important correlates of economic growth with the relationship between the level of fertility and the level of income per capita being one of the strongest observable correlations in cross country data this paper examines the linkages between fertility and growth theory the structure of the model is presented in sections on production couples decision making system dynamics and steady state equilibria the first component of the model is that increases in capital per worker raise womens relative wages since capital is more complementary to womens labor input than to mens the second component is that increasing womens relative wages reduces fertility by raising the cost of children more than household income finally lower fertility raises the level of capital per worker a positive feedback loop generates demographic transition a rapid decline in fertility accompanied by accelerated output growth

the perceived returns to education and the demand for schooling economists emphasize the link between market returns to education and investments in schooling though many studies estimate these returns with earnings data it is the perceived returns that affect schooling decisions and these perceptions may be inaccurate using survey data for eighth grade boys in the dominican republic we find that the perceived returns to secondary school are extremely low despite high measured returns students at randomly selected schools given information on the higher measured returns completed on average 0 20 0 35 more years of school over the next four years than those who were not

how do sex ratios affect marriage and labor markets evidence from america s second generation sex ratios i e relative numbers of men and women can affect marriage prospects labor force participation and other social and economic variables but the observed association between sex ratios and social and economic conditions may be confounded by omitted variables and reverse causality this paper uses variation in immigrant flows as a natural experiment to study the effect of sex ratios on the children and grandchildren of immigrants the flow of immigrants affected the second generation marriage market because second generation marriages were mostly endogamous i e to members of the same ethnic group the empirical results suggest that high sex ratios had a large positive effect on the likelihood of female marriage and a large negative effect on female labor force participation perhaps surprisingly the marriage rates of second generation men appear to be a slightly increasing function of immigrant sex ratios higher sex ratios also appear to have raised male earnings and the incomes of parents with young children the empirical results are broadly consistent with theories where higher sex ratios increase female bargaining power in the marriage market

the evolution of china s one child policy and its effects on family outcomes abstract in 1979 china introduced its unprecedented one child policy under which households exceeding the birth quota were penalized however estimating the effect of this policy on family outco

life expectancy and human capital investments evidence from maternal mortality declines longer life expectancy should encourage human capital accumulation since a longer time horizon increases the value of investments that pay out over time previous work has been unable to determine the empirical importance of this life expectancy effect due to the difficulty of isolating it from other effects of health on education we examine a sudden drop in maternal mortality risk in sri lanka between 1946 and 1953 which creates a sharp increase in life expectancy for school age girls without contemporaneous effects on health and which also allows for the use of boys as a control group using additional geographic variation we find that the 70 reduction in maternal mortality risk over the sample period increased female life expectancy at age 15 by 4 1 female literacy by 2 5 and female years of education by 4 0 authors

home ownership as status competition some theory and evidence abstract in this paper we explore the implications of home ownership as a status good for housing prices more concretely if a family s housing wealth relative to others is an important sorting variable for relative attractiveness in the marriage market then competition for marriage partners might motivate people to pursue a bigger and more expensive house apartment to test the hypothesis we explore regional variations in the sex ratio for the pre marital age cohort across china as a proxy for differential strength for concerns for status we find that the evidence is consistent with the status competition hypothesis

consumption inequality and intra household allocations the current literature on consumption inequality treats all adults within the household equally making the implicit assumption that all consumption inequality is between not within households however increased marital sorting on earnings and the subsequent rise in the share of women s income in the household may have important implications for consumption inequality measured at the individual level we use an extension of the collective framework of chiappori to estimate a rule for assigning resources to individual household members we then construct a measure of individual level inequality by looking at implied changes in intra household allocations and explore the implications of our framework for the measurement of individual level versus household level consumption inequality our analysis which is based on households comprising one or two adults suggests that the conventional approach of ignoring intra household allocations underestimates the level of cross sectional consumption inequality by 30 and overstates the trend by two thirds our findings also indicate that increases in marital sorting on wages and hours worked can simultaneously explain virtually all of the decline in within household inequality and a substantial fraction of the rise in between household inequality in the uk since the 1970s

risk and insurance in a rural credit market an empirical investigation in northern nigeria credit contracts play a direct role in pooling risk between households in northern nigeria repayments owed by borrowers depend on realizations of random shocks by both borrowers and lenders the paper develops two models of state contingent loans the first is a competitive equilibrium in perfectly enforceable contracts the second permits imperfect information and equilibrium default estimates of both models indicate that quantitatively important state contingent payments are embedded in these loan transactions but that a fully efficient risk pooling equilibrium is not achieved the research is based on a year long survey in zaria nigeria conducted by the author

price elasticity and adverse selection in the demand for supplementary health insurance probit regression estimates show the effects of the price of insurance anticipated medical expenditures and other factors on reported decisions about purchasing hypothetically offered supplementary insurance policies the demand estimates can characterize how much supplemental insurance would be purchased under different tax policies affecting health insurance purchases although eliminating the current tax subsidy to insurance is shown to decrease demand the results indicate a substantial demand for supplementary insurance even in the absence of present tax incentives however our results on adverse selection raise concerns about the potential stability of supplemental insurance markets

mortality reductions educational attainment and fertility choice this paper develops a model where reductions in mortality are the main force behind economic development the model generates a pattern of changes similar to the demographic transition where gains in life expectancy at birth are followed by reductions in fertility and increases in the rate of human capital accumulation the onset of the transition is characterized by a critical level of life expectancy at birth which marks the movement of the economy from a malthusian equilibrium to an equilibrium with investments in human capital and the possibility of long run growth

impact of varying medigap insurance coverage on the use of medical services of the elderly a recursive model is estimated for the demand for medigap insurance coverage and for expected total medical care expenditures it is found that higher levels of coverage are associated with increased expenditures through higher probabilities of incurring a medical expense and increased levels of expenditures those with poor health had a smaller likelihood of having insurance than those with better health status contrary to the notion of adverse selection however those in poor health status who obtained health insurance tended to purchase more insurance coverage than those with better health status consistent with adverse selection non whites were at a disadvantage in terms of the probability of having medigap insurance and expected medical expenditures

women empowerment and economic development women empowerment and economic development are closely related in one direction development alone can play a major role in driving down inequality between men and women in the other direction empowering women may benefit development does this imply that pushing just one of these two levers would set a virtuous circle in motion this paper reviews the literature on both sides of the empowerment development nexus and argues that the interrelationships are probably too weak to be self sustaining and that continuous policy commitment to equality for its own sake may be needed to bring about equality between men and women

imbalance in china s sex ratio at birth a review for decades china s sex ratio at birth srb has risen significantly this trend was found in different provinces and between different parities three direct causes have led to the imbalanced srb underreporting of female births which refers to girls who are alive but are hidden from the census count high rates of female infanticide which refers to the killing of female infants shortly after birth and sex selective abortion which refers to the selective abortion of female fetuses in addition to these immediate causes china s one child policy and the cultural preference for sons constitute underlying causes for the imbalanced srb distortions in the srb can have serious social and economic consequences including the loss of potential population growth a marriage squeeze precipitated social instability and an aging workforce however china can improve the status quo by taking appropriate measures such as relaxing fertility regulations and preventing sex selective abortions establishing a comprehensive pension system can help address the high srb in the long run however a policy reversing the high srb may have a negative effect on other demographic factors china needs to find a way to reverse the srb without harming other demographic indicators and has to do so soon

the formation of risk sharing networks this paper examines the formation of risk sharing networks in the rural philippines we find that geographic proximity possibly correlated with kinship is a major determinant of mutual insurance links among villagers age and wealth differences also play an important role in contrast income correlation and differences in occupation are not determinants of network links reported network links have a strong effect on subsequent gifts and loans gifts between network partners are found to respond to shocks and to differences in health status from this we conclude that intra village mutual insurance links are largely determined by social and geographical proximity and are only weakly the result of purposeful diversification of income risk the paper also makes a methodological contribution to the estimation of dyadic models

the effects of school spending on educational and economic outcomes evidence from school finance reforms since the coleman report many have questioned whether public school spending affects student outcomes the school finance reforms that began in the early 1970s and accelerated in the 1980s caused dramatic changes to the structure of k 12 education spending in the united states to study the effect of these school finance reform induced changes in public school spending on long run adult outcomes we link school spending and school finance reform data to detailed nationally representative data on children born between 1955 and 1985 and followed through 2011 we use the timing of the passage of court mandated reforms and their associated type of funding formula change as exogenous shifters of school spending and we compare the adult outcomes of cohorts that were differentially exposed to school finance reforms depending on place and year of birth event study and instrumental variable models reveal that a 10 increase in per pupil spending each year for all 12 years of public school leads to 0 31 more completed years of education about 7 higher wages and a 3 2 percentage point reduction in the annual incidence of adult poverty effects are much more pronounced for children from low income families exogenous spending increases were associated with notable improvements in measured school inputs including reductions in student to teacher ratios increases in teacher salaries and longer school years jel codes j10 i20 h7

estimating consumption economies of scale adult equivalence scales and household bargaining power how much income would a woman living alone require to attain the same standard of living that she would have if she were married what percentage of a married couple s expenditures are controlled by the husband how much money does a couple save on consumption goods by living together versus living apart we propose and estimate a collective model of household behaviour that permits identification and estimation of concepts such as these we model households in terms of the utility functions of its members a bargaining or social welfare function and a consumption technology function we demonstrate generic non parametric identification of the model and hence of a version of adult equivalence scales that we call indifference scales as well as consumption economies of scale the household s resource sharing rule or members bargaining power and other related concepts copyright 2013 oxford university press

all for one family size and children s educational distribution under credit constraints this paper examines the possibility that a child s years of schooling could increase in the number of siblings instead of being diminished by competition for parents resources if unable to finance the education of their younger children parents may do so through their older children s labor income we examine this possibility in a model combining convex returns to education and credit constraints our model predicts correlations among family size years of schooling and birth order which would not exist when either of these two elements is absent empirical patterns shown in the united states mexico and south korea support the model predictions

brothers household financial markets and savings rate in china abstract this study analyzes the effect of the number of brothers an individual has on that individual s household savings rate under the current underdeveloped household financial market in urban china i show that having an additional brother reduces an individual s household savings rate by at least 5 percentage points brothers help households 1 by sharing risks providing a source of informal borrowing and 2 by sharing the cost of supporting parents sisters play a minor role in affecting a household s savings rate mainly because of cultural norms the decline in the average number of brothers in households induced by population policies explained at least one third of the increased aggregate household savings rate in urban china

the quiet revolution that transformed women s employment education and family the modern economic role of women emerged in four phases the first three were evolutionary the last was revolutionary phase i occurred from the late nineteenth century to the 1920s phase ii was from 1930 to 1950 phase iii extended from 1950 to the late 1970s and phase iv the quiet revolution began in the late 1970s and is still ongoing three aspects of women s choices distinguish the evolutionary from the revolutionary phases horizon identity and decision making the evolutionary phases are apparent in time series data on labor force participation the revolutionary phase is discernible using time series evidence on women s more predictable attachment to the workplace greater identity with career and better ability to make joint decisions with their spouses each of these series has a sharp break or inflection point signifying social and economic change these changes moreover coincide by birth cohort or period the relationship between the development of modern labor economics and the reality of women s changing economic role is explored the paper concludes by assessing whether the revolution has stalled or is being reversed women who graduated college in the early 1980s did not opt out but recent cohorts are too young to evaluate this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

endogenous altruism theory and evidence from chinese twins this paper studies the endogenous formation of intersibling altruism the theory suggests that parental incentive to foster children s fraternal love is positively related to efficiency gains from

who are china s entrepreneurs it has been increasingly recognized that entrepreneurship plays a crucial role in successful economies the schumpeterian approach to growth aghion and howitt 1997 advances the view that entrepreneurial dynamism is the key to innovation and growth a growing body of policy work emphasizes the important role of entrepreneurs in economic development world bank 2003 yet research on entrepreneurship in economics is rather limited there are three distinct perspectives on entrepreneurship in social sciences the first perspective focuses on the role of economic political and legal institutions in fostering or restricting entrepreneurship institutional problems are seen in credit constraints that make it impossible to borrow and set up businesses insecurity of property rights that provides insufficient incentives for entrepreneurs and regulatory burdens that make setting up new enterprises difficult the second perspective focuses on the sociological variables shaping entrepreneurship for example sociologists study the role of values and social networks in promoting or discouraging entrepreneurial activities social networks may work through a variety of channels such as family friends or ethnic groups the third perspective emphasizes individual characteristics of entrepreneurs psychologists have studied the traits associated with entrepreneurship such as a personal need for achievement belief in the effect of personal effort on outcomes attitudes towards risk and individual self confidence although there are studies on each perspective little work looks at each of these factors taking the other into account this is precisely what we do in this paper using a new data set of chinese entrepreneurs and a matching sample of non entrepreneurs with similar age gender and educational characteristics the survey covers both entrepreneurs and non entrepreneurs in order to understand how they differ in individual characteristics family background social networks values and beliefs and perceptions of the institutional environment the data further allow us to separate chinese entrepreneurs into two groups by necessity and by opportunity and to differentiate non entrepreneurs in three groups those who never thought to be entrepreneurs those who thought but never became entrepreneurs and those who became entrepreneurs but eventually failed this is a richer data set than a previous survey in russia

limited life expectancy human capital and health investments human capital theory predicts that life expectancy will impact human capital attainment we estimate this relationship using variation in life expectancy driven by huntington disease an inherited neurological disorder we compare investments for individuals who have ex ante identical risks of hd but differ in disease realization individuals with the hd mutation complete less education and job training the elasticity of demand for college attendance with respect to life expectancy is around 1 0 we relate this to cross country and over time differences in education we use smoking and cancer screening data to test the corollary that health capital responds to life expectancy

tax rates and labor supply in fiscal equilibrium tax rates and labor supply in fiscal equilibrium i introduction if the government changes the tax on wage income what happens to aggregate labor supply this question is at the core of debates between proponents of supply side and keynesian approaches to government fiscal policy it is unfortunate therefore that previous attempts to resolve the issue have obscured decisive assumptions regarding the preference relation between leisure and public spending one argument exposited recently by gwartney and stroup 1983 1986 and ehrenberg and smith 1988 179 80 descends from an older literature represented by the works of friedman 1949 1954 goode 1949 scitovsky 1951 and bailey 1954 and emphasizes the importance of a balanced budget framework for addressing the question this approach reveals the presence of an income effect caused by the change in government spending that must accompany the tax change at optimum according to this view this income effect exactly offsets the income effect of the tax change so that only the substitution effect of the tax remains as a consequence a balanced budget increase in the wage tax unambiguously decreases economy wide labor supply provided the increase in public spending is valued the same as the forgone private spending a different approach was initiated by winston 1965 and subsequently elaborated upon by lindbeck 1982 fullerton 1982 hanson and stuart 1983 bohanon and van cott 1986 and gahvari 1986 this approach stresses the importance of the preference relation between public spending and private spending rather than the role of the public spending income effect in determining the change in aggregate labor supply as a special example gahvari 1986 assumes a preference structure which implies that public spending does not have any influence on labor supply so there is only the partial equilibrium effect of the tax however the general conclusion of this line of reasoning is that the theoretical ambiguity of the labor supply response arises from both tax and spending effects in this paper a simple formal model is used to develop a careful accounting of the various income and substitution effects the model is sufficiently general to permit a rigorous comparison of earlier studies and to expose implicit assumptions responsible for their conclusions we show that the two approaches outlined above are associated respectively with the focal cases of compensated independence and ordinary independence between leisure and public spending the pan of the paper is as follows section ii contains a model of labor supply in the presence of wage taxation and public spending in section iii the effect on aggregate labor supply of a balanced budget change in wage taxation is analyzed section iv provides an interpretation of several previous analyses of these issues section v contains a summary of our results ii the model consider an economy with n identical consumers who derive utility from leisure l a pure private good x which serves as numeraire and a publicly provided good z the utility function u l x z is assumed to be twice continuously differentiable and strictly quasi concave everyone is endowed with t units of time which are allocated either to labor market work or leisure nonmarket activities the marginal product of labor in producing the private good is the constant real gross of tax wage rate w because agents are identical we can confine attention to allocations of equal consumption as a consequence the production possibilities frontier assumed to be linear can be expressed in per capita terms as wl x p n z wt 1 where p is the constant marginal cost of z with identical agents and only two goods not publicly provided it may be assumed without loss of generality that public spending is financed by a wage tax with constant marginal and average ad valorem rate t

health insurance and the demand for medical care evidence from a randomized experiment we estimate how cost sharing the portion of the bill the patient pays affects the demand for medical services the data come from a randomized experiment a catastrophic insurance plan reduces expenditures 31 percent relative to zero out of pocket price the price elasticity is approximately 0 2 we reject the hypothesis that less favorable coverage of outpatient services increases total expenditure for example by deterring preventive care or inducing hospitalization

fertility restrictions and life cycle outcomes evidence from the one child policy in china this study considers the experience of china s one child policy to examine how fertility restrictions affect economic and social outcomes over a lifetime using variations in these penalties across

number of siblings credit constraints and entrepreneurship in china with an under developed financial market borrowing from relatives becomes an important funding source in starting one s own business in china this paper examines the positive effect of number of

house prices collateral and self employment this paper explores the role of the collateral lending channel to facilitate small business starts and self employment in the period before the financial crisis of 2008 we document that between 2002 and 2007 areas with a bigger run up in house prices experienced a strong increase in employment in small businesses compared to employment in large firms in the same industries this increase in small business employment was particularly pronounced in industries that need little startup capital and can thus more easily be financed out of increases in housing as collateral our results highlight the importance of the collateral lending channel during the period of the house price boom in the creation of small establishments we show that this effect is separate from the aggregate demand channel that relies on home equity based borrowing leading to increased demand and employment creation

redistributive effects of transfer programmes in the united kingdom we discuss the redistribution effects of transfer using a conditional choice general equilibrium model we calibrate it to uk data for the early 2000s results indicate that a money metric measure of the welfare value of transfer received by the bottom decile of uk households equals 17 of the cash transfer

fertility and labor supply evidence from the one child policy in china this study provides new evidence on on the causal effect of fertility on maternal labor supply in rural china using the fact that in some parts of rural china couples are allowed to have a second

fecundity fertility and the formation of human capital exploiting a genealogy of english individuals living in the 16th to the 19th centuries this study shows that lower parental reproductive capacity positively affected the socio economic achievements of offspring using the time interval between the date of marriage and the first birth as a measure of reproductive capacity we find that parental fecundity positively affected the number of siblings and that children of parents with lower fecundity were more likely to become literate and employed in skilled and high income professions this suggests there was a trade off between child quantity and quality in england during the industrial revolution supporting leading theories of the origins of modern economic growth

when does a decrease in a distortion increase welfare abstract with non identical individuals when does decreasing a distortion increase welfare minimizing the tax rate is efficient as long as pre tax income is decreasing in the tax rate this condition is likely to hold for typical methods of financing public goods

contraception as development new evidence from family planning in colombia there has been considerable debate in the last decade about whether or not family planning programmes in developing countries reduce fertility or improve socio economic outcomes this article provides new evidence by studying the expansion of one of the worlds oldest and largest family planning organisations profamilia of colombia it finds that family planning explains less than 10 of colombias fertility decline during its demographic transition as in wealthy countries however lowering the costs of first birth postponement produced important socio economic gains enabling young women to obtain more education and to work more and live independently later in life

public policy and health insurance choices of the elderly evidence from the medicare buy in program this study provides evidence on health insurance decisions of senior citizens nearly all senior citizens have health insurance coverage through medicare but poor seniors may also qualify for medicaid that fills many gaps in medicare coverage since 1987 the medicaid program has expanded eligibility using the sipp i find that medicaid eligibility increased from 8 7 in 1987 to 12 4 in 1995 for every 100 elderly who became eligible approximately 50 took up medicaid but more than 30 dropped private coverage resulting in crowd out of 60 crowd out came from individuals dropping privately purchased health insurance rather than dropping employer provided retiree health insurance the roles of asset tests health status and the panel structure of the sipp are also explored i find that a major strength of the sipp is in its point in time asset information for determining medicaid eligibility while the changing income and demographic information over the course of the 2 year panel adds little insight beyond cross sectional data 2000 elsevier science s a all rights reserved

the long run impact of cash transfers to poor families lleras muney we estimate the long run impact of cash transfers to poor families on children s longevity educational attainment nutritional status and income in adulthood to do so we collected individual level administrative records of applicants to the mothers pension program the first government sponsored welfare program in the united states 1911 1935 and matched them to census wwii and death records male children of accepted applicants lived one year longer than those of rejected mothers they also obtained onethird more years of schooling were less likely to be underweight and had higher income in adulthood than children of rejected mothers jel i12 i14 i18 i32 i38 j16 n32

the effects of exposure to better neighborhoods on children new evidence from the moving to opportunity experiment the moving to opportunity mto experiment offered randomly selected families housing vouchers to move from high poverty housing projects to lower poverty neighborhoods we analyze mto s impacts on children s long term outcomes using tax data we find that moving to a lower poverty neighborhood when young before age 13 increases college attendance and earnings and reduces single parenthood rates moving as an adolescent has slightly negative impacts perhaps because of disruption effects the decline in the gains from moving with the age when children move suggests that the duration of exposure to better environments during childhood is an important determinant of children s long term outcomes jel i31 i38 j13 r23 r38

how does your kindergarten classroom affect your earnings evidence from project star in project star 11 571 students in tennessee and their teachers were randomly assigned to classrooms within their schools from kindergarten to third grade this article evaluates the long term impacts of star by linking the experimental data to administrative records we first demonstrate that kindergarten test scores are highly correlated with outcomes such as earnings at age 27 college attendance home ownership and retirement savings we then document four sets of experimental impacts first students in small classes are significantly more likely to attend college and exhibit improvements on other outcomes class size does not have a significant effect on earnings at age 27 but this effect is imprecisely estimated second students who had a more experienced teacher in kindergarten have higher earnings third an analysis of variance reveals significant classroom effects on earnings students who were randomly assigned to higher quality classrooms in grades k 3 as measured by classmates end of class test scores have higher earnings college attendance rates and other outcomes finally the effects of class quality fade out on test scores in later grades but gains in noncognitive measures persist

credit constraints job mobility and entrepreneurship evidence from a property reform in china this paper provides new evidence on the impact of private property rights on entrepreneurship i explore this issue in the context of a housing reform in urban china that allowed state employees renting state owned housing the opportunity to buy their homes at subsidized prices using the reform as an exogenous change in the capital constraints and mobility costs that inuence individuals entry

long run impacts of childhood access to the safety net a growing economics literature establishes a causal link between in utero shocks and health and human capital in adulthood most studies rely on extreme negative shocks such as famine and pandemics we are the first to examine the impact of a positive and policy driven change in economic resources available in utero and during childhood in particular we focus on the introduction of a key element of the u s safety net the food stamp program which was rolled out across counties in the u s between 1961 and 1975 we use the panel study of income dynamics to assemble unique data linking family background and county of residence in early childhood to adult health and economic outcomes the identification comes from variation across counties and over birth cohorts in availability of the food stamp program our findings indicate that the food stamp program has effects decades after initial exposure specifically access to food stamps in childhood leads to a significant reduction in the incidence of metabolic syndrome obesity high blood pressure and diabetes and for women an increase in economic self sufficiency overall our results suggest substantial internal and external benefits of the safety net that have not previously been quantified

beyond the quantity quality tradeoff population control policy and human capital investment abstract the quantity quality tradeoff theory implies that a reduction in fertility would induce more human capital investment per child and it is widely believed that population control policy could promote human capital levels in developing countries china s one child policy ocp has significantly reduced the fertility in the country and popular belief holds that this policy has contributed to the enhancement in china s human capital since 1979 however the quantity quality tradeoff dose not present the complete truth another crucial factor relates to which segment of the population is reduced a critical issue that has been ignored in the literature china s ocp is significantly more strictly implemented in urban areas than in rural areas where human capital investment in children is significantly lower this two tier ocp could have significantly increased the rural urban fertility ratio and brought about important consequences we first emphasize the importance of such a population compositional effect which may offset the potentially positive quantity quality tradeoff effect on human capital we present a simple analytic framework and quantify the relative sizes of the quantity quality tradeoff and compositional effects we find that the former is dominated by the latter and that the ocp has reduced the average human capital level of china s next generation by approximately 1 2 this novel evidence indicates that the conventional wisdom on population control may be incomplete and that its policy implications could be misleading

the chinese saving rate long term care risks family insurance and demographics abstract a general equilibrium model that properly captures the risks in old age the role of family insurance changes in demographics and the productivity growth rate is capable of generating changes in the national saving rate in china that mimic the data well our findings suggest that the combination of the risks faced by the elderly and the deterioration of family insurance due to the one child policy may account for approximately half of the increase in the saving rate between 1980 and 2010 changes in the productivity growth rate account for the fluctuations in the saving rate during this period

birth control and female empowerment an equilibrium analysis we analyze from a theoretical perspective the impact of innovations in birth control technology on intrahousehold allocation of resources we consider a model of frictionless matching on the marriage market in which men as well as women differ in their preferences for children moreover men unlike women must marry to enjoy fatherhood we show that more efficient birth control technologies generally increase the power hence the welfare of all women including those who do not use them this empowerment effect requires that the new technology be available to single women an innovation reserved to married women may result in a disempowerment effect

tax policy and the demand for health insurance estimates of the price and income elasticities of demand for health insurance are derived from econometric estimates of the parameters of a discrete choice model of health insurance demand using data from a survey of plan choices among a sample of federal government employees the estimated income elasticity 0 01 is similar to most previous estimates the estimated price elasticity 0 16 is in absolute value much less than the earlier previous estimates and somewhat less than the more recent previous estimates possible causes of these differences in price elasticity estimates are discussed

carrots and sticks fertility effects of china s population policies for 20 years following 1949 average total fertility per woman in china hovered just above six children the year 1970 marked the beginning of persistent fertility declines by 1980 the rate had dropped to 2 75 and since 1992 it has remained under 2 while some of this transition can be accounted for by broad socioeconomic developments the extent to which it is attributable to china s unique population policies remains controversial this paper analyzes household data from the 1992 household economy and fertility survey hefs to provide the first direct microeconomic empirical evidence on the efficacy of these policies

population control policies and fertility convergence the rapid population growth in developing countries in the middle of the 20th century led to fears of a population explosion and motivated the inception of what effectively became a global population control program the initiative propelled in its beginnings by intellectual elites in the united states sweden and some developing countries mobilized resources to enact policies aimed at reducing fertility by widening contraception provision and changing family size norms in the following five decades fertility rates fell dramatically with a majority of countries converging to a fertility rate just above two children per woman despite large cross country differences in economic variables such as gdp per capita education levels urbanization and female labour force participation the fast decline in fertility rates in developing economies stands in sharp contrast with the gradual decline experienced earlier by more mature economies in this paper we argue that population control policies are likely to have played a central role in the global decline in fertility rates in recent decades and can explain some patterns of that fertility decline that are not well accounted for by other socioeconomic factors

more power to the pill the impact of contraceptive freedom on women s life cycle labor supply the release of enovid in 1960 the first birth control pill afforded u s women unprecedented freedom to plan childbearing and their careers this paper uses plausibly exogenous variation in state consent laws to evaluate the causal impact of the pill on the timing of first births and extent and intensity of women s labor force participation the results suggest that legal access to the pill before age 21 significantly reduced the likelihood of a first birth before age 22 increased the number of women in the paid labor force and raised the number of annual hours worked

endowments and the allocation of schooling in the family and in the marriage market the twins experiment 03 we show how comparisons between the within twin correlations of human capital outcomes across identical and nonidentical twins can be used to identify the variability in the individual specific component of endowments and the responsiveness of schooling to individual specific endowments in the family and in the marriage market even when schooling is measured with error estimates from two twins samples indicate that 27 42 percent of the variance in log earnings obesity is due to variability in individual specific endowments allocations of schooling reinforce specific endowments and individual specific earnings endowments of men and their wives schooling are negatively associated

schooling and labor market consequences of school construction in indonesia evidence from an unusual policy experiment between 1973 and 1978 the indonesian government engaged in one of the largest school construction programs on record combining differences across regions in the number of schools constructed with differences across cohorts induced by the timing of the program suggests that each primary school constructed per 1 000 children led to an average increase of 0 12 to 0 19 years of education as well as a 1 5 to 2 7 percent increase in wages this implies estimates of economic returns to education ranging from 6 8 to 10 6 percent

who are russia s entrepreneurs social scientists studying entrepreneurship have emphasized three distinct sets of variables the institutional environment sociological variables and personal and psychological characteristics we are conducting surveys in five large developing and transition economies to better understand entrepreneurship in this short paper using over 2 000 interviews from a pilot study in russia we find evidence that the three sets of variables matter perceptions of the local institutional environment social network effects and individual characteristics are all important in determining entrepreneurial behavior jel m13 o12 p12

tax rates government expenditures and labor supply clarifying the record a central claim of supply side economics is that in general equilibrium the income effect of a change in the income tax rate washes out and only the substitution effect remains in the words of ehrenberg and smith 1985 there would be a substitution effect with no overall income effect and labor supply would increase the aggregate supply of labor curve then must be upward sloping p 160 emphasis in the original although there has been a substantial literature on this subject the literature is sometimes confused in this paper a simple model is used to sort through the literature correct mistaken assertions derive a new result and collect earlier results in a compact way

income and outcomes a structural model of intrahousehold allocation there is evidence from several sources that one cannot treat many person households as a single decision maker if this is the case then factors such as the relative incomes of the household members may affect the final allocation decisions made by the household we develop a method of identifying how incomes affect outcomes given conventional family expenditure data the basic assumption we make is that household decision processes lead to efficient outcomes we apply our method to a sample of canadian couples with no children we find that the final allocations of expenditures on each partner depend significantly on their relative incomes and ages and on the level of lifetime wealth

the trade off between child quantity and quality an empirical investigation of trade offs between number of children and their scholastic performance confirms that family size directly affects children s achievement though parents show no favori

do population control policies induce more human capital investment twins birthweight and china s one child policy in this paper we address the issues of whether reductions in fertility increase human capital investments per child and whether twinning can identify the quantity quality q q trade off we show that estimates of the effects of twinning at higher parities on the outcomes of older children in prior studies do not identify family size effects but are confounded by inter child allocation effects because of the endowment deficit and close spacing of twins however examining the effects of twinning by birth order net of the effects stemming from the endowment deficit of twins can provide upper and lower bounds on the trade off between the family size and average child quality our estimates based on data from china indicate that an extra child at parity one or at parity two net of one component of birth endowment effects associated with birth weight significantly decreases the schooling progress the expected college enrolment grades in school and the assessed health of all children in the family despite the evident significant trade off between number of children and child quality in china the findings suggest that the contribution of the one child policy in china to the development of its human capital was modest copyright wiley blackwell

demand for medigap insurance by the elderly a micro simulation analysis in this paper a micro simulation model is developed to explain and estimate the optimum medigap insurance coverage for elderly with different levels of insurance premium subsidy the medigap risk exposure is estimated from the 1977 national medical care expenditure utilization survey utilizing the gamma distribution the theory of expected utility maximization is assumed and the model for health insurance demand is operationalized for hypothetical parameters for risk aversion the price elasticity of demand the loading fee and the subsidy with the risk aversion parameter at 0 0005 the price elasticity of medical care demand at 0 5 loading costs at 9 without any subsidy the optimal medigap coinsurance rate is 0 78 and with a premium subsidy of 60 the co insurance rate falls to 12 the hypothetical price elasticity of demand for medigap insurance is estimated to be between 0 44 and 1 02 more than half of the increase in medical expenditure resulting from an increase in premium subsidy from