long term intergenerational persistence of human capital an empirical analysis of four generations most previous studies of intergenerational transmission of human capital are restricted to two generations how parents influence their children in this study we use a swedish data set that links individual measures of lifetime earnings for three generations and data on educational attainment for four generations we find that estimates obtained from data on two generations severely underestimate long run intergenerational persistence in both labor earnings and educational attainments long run social mobility is hence much lower than previously thought we attribute this additional persistence to dynastic human capital the influence on human capital of more distant family members than parents

reclaiming virtue ethics for economics contrast virtue ethics the study of moral character has been an important strand in moral philosophy for literally thousands of years but has received little strand in moral philosophy for literally thousands of years but has received little attention from contemporary economists that neglect has not been reciprocated attention from contemporary economists that neglect has not been reciprocated a signifi cant body of philosophical work in virtue ethics is associated with a radical a signifi cant body of philosophical work in virtue ethics is associated with a radical critique of the market economy and of economics expressed crudely the charge critique of the market economy and of economics expressed crudely the charge sheet is this the market depends on instrumental rationality and extrinsic motisheet is this the market depends on instrumental rationality and extrinsic motivation market interactions therefore fail to respect the internal value of human vation market interactions therefore fail to respect the internal value of human practices and the intrinsic motivations of human actors by using market exchange practices and the intrinsic motivations of human actors by using market exchange as its central model economics normalizes extrinsic motivation not only in markets as its central model economics normalizes extrinsic motivation not only in markets but also in its ventures into the territories of other social sciences in social life but also in its ventures into the territories of other social sciences in social life more generally therefore economics is complicit in an assault on virtue and on more generally therefore economics is complicit in an assault on virtue and on human fl ourishing we will argue that this critique is fl awed both as a descriphuman fl ourishing we will argue that this critique is fl awed both as a description of how markets actually work and as a representation of how classical and tion of how markets actually work and as a representation of how classical and neo classical economists have understood the market we will show how the market neo classical economists have understood the market we will show how the market and economics can be defended against the critique from virtue ethics and economics can be defended against the critique from virtue ethics crucially our response to that critique will be constructed crucially our response to that critique will be constructed using the language and logic of virtue ethics in this respect it is fundamentally different from a response in this respect it is fundamentally different from a response that many economists would fi nd more natural to point to the enormous benefi ts that many economists would fi nd more natural to point to the enormous benefi ts

household choices and child development the growth in labor market participation among women with young children has raised concerns about the potential negative impact of the mother s absence from home on child outcomes recent data show that mother s time spent with children has declined in the last decade while the indicators of children s cognitive and noncognitive outcomes have worsened the objective of our research is to estimate a model of the cognitive development process of children nested within an otherwise standard model of household life cycle behavior the model generates endogenous dynamic interrelationships between the child quality and employment processes in the household which are found to be consistent with patterns observed in the data the estimated model is used to explore the eects of schooling subsidies and employment restrictions on household welfare and child development

differential fertility human capital and development using micro data from 48 developing countries this paper studies changes in crosssectional patterns of fertility and child investment over the course of the demographic transition before 1960 children from larger families obtained more education in large part because they had richer and more educated parents by century s end these patterns had reversed consequently fertility differentials by income and education historically raised the average education of the next generation but they now reduce it while the reversal is unrelated to changes in gdp per capita women s work sectoral composition or health roughly half is attributable to rising aggregate education in the parents generation the results support a model in which rising skill returns lowered the minimum income at which parents invest in education

bequest receipt and family size effects i introduction the seminal economic models of intergenerational human capital investment demonstrate the potential importance of credit market failure in determining child achievement becker and barro 1988 becker and lewis 1973 becker and tomes 1986 willis 1973 1 without the ability to borrow against future child earnings additional children raise the cost of providing a given level of child quality alternatively the greater the level of child quality the higher the cost of having an additional child 2 the resulting negative relationship between family size and child outcomes is termed a quality quantity trade off early empirical studies found large negative family size effects consistent with significant credit market failure kessler 1991 includes a brief survey of this literature however kessler points out that this early literature often ignored the possible effects of birth order because birth order is inherently correlated with family size this omitted variable might account for observed family size effects if first or early born children are advantaged due to preferential parental investments or innate advantages see behrman and taubman 1986 for a discussion of biological psychological and economic reasons for such birth order effects studies that include both family size and birth order controls report conflicting results 3 using data from the national longitudinal survey of youth kessler 1991 finds that neither birth order nor family size affect the level or growth rate of wages he does find a family size effect in the hours worked by women though the direction of the effect depends on age using a sample from norway black devereux and salvanes 2005 find significant family size effects with ordinary least squares even with birth order controls however when family size is instrumented with twinning the effect becomes statistically indistinguishable from zero though the standard errors are large and the results are also consistent with very large family size effects in britain grawe 2008 finds sizable family size effects even after controlling for birth order of course the presence or absence of family size effects in the population as a whole is weak evidence for or against the importance of credit constraints both reason and theory suggest that some families will be free from such hurdles two existing studies have compared family size effects between groups that are more and less likely to be constrained the norwegian study of black devereux and salvanes 2005 divides the sample according to mother s education greater than or equal to 12 or 12 yr their estimates based on instrumental variables using twinning as the instrument do not clearly show greater family size effects among the presumably more constraint prone low mother s education group however the coefficients are imprecisely estimated and so the test has low power grawe 2008 examines the family size effect in britain dividing the sample by father s earnings those with fathers in the top 20 of the income distribution are presumably financially unconstrained yet strong family size effects are found in educational performance among children in these families these articles suggest that financial constraints do not explain family size effects in norway and britain but the experiences in these countries may say little about access to credit markets in the united states in particular both norway and britain provide free access to higher education within the past few years british universities have been allowed to charge as much as 3 000 pounds sterling for tuition but the individuals studied by grawe born in 1958 completed their educations long ago the present article explores the relevance of credit to family size effects in the united states dividing families based on bequest receipt of the children theory suggests that only those unconstrained by credit access would receive a financial bequest

estimating the effects of family background on the return to schooling this article examines the causal link between family background characteristics parental education and family size and returns to schooling i implement a model of schooling and earnings with heterogeneous returns to education using data from the occupational change in a generation survey i find that men raised in larger families have substantially lower returns to education whereas the combined effects of parental education are more modest in addition like other supply side instrumental variables studies of the causal effect of education i find two stage least squares estimates that are larger than the corresponding ordinary least squares estimates the results suggest an alternative explanation for this phenomenon constant marginal return to schooling combined with a negative absolute ability bias and a positive comparative advantage bias

correlations of brothers earnings and intergenerational transmission correlations between parent and child earnings reflect intergenerational mobility and more broadly correlations between siblings earnings reflect shared community and family background these earnings relationships capture important aspects of relations in socioeconomic status more generally we estimate intergenerational transmission and sibling correlations of life cycle earnings jointly within a unified framework that nests previous models using data on the danish population of father first son second son triads we find that intergenerational effects account for on average 72 percent of sibling correlations this share is higher than all previous studies because we allow for heterogeneous intergenerational transmission between families sibling correlations exhibit a u shape over the working life consistent with differences in human capital investments between families

the higher returns to formal education for entrepreneurs versus employees how valuable is formal education for entrepreneurs income relative to employees and if the income returns to formal education are different for entrepreneurs vis a vis employees what might be a plausible explanation to explore these questions we analyze a large representative us panel we show that entrepreneurs have higher returns to formal education than employees we refer to this as the entrepreneurship returns puzzle we run post hoc analyses to explore a number of potential explanations of this puzzle indirectly our analysis indicates that the higher returns to formal education for entrepreneurs might be due to the fewer organizational constraints they face leading to more personal control over how to use their human capital compared to employees

birth order and human capital development evidence from ecuador in this paper we examine the effect of birth order on human capital development in ecuador using family fixed effects models we find positive and persistent birth order effects earlier born children stay behind in their human capital development from infancy to adolescence turning to potential mechanisms we find that earlier born children receive less quality time from their mothers additionally they are breastfed shorter poverty plays a key role in explaining these birth order patterns we observe the largest birth order effects in poor and low educated families accompanied with reversed birth order effects in rich and high educated families

birth order schooling and earnings birth order effects are posited by many to affect earnings and schooling we show how such effects can be interpreted to shift either the earnings possibility frontier for siblings or parental preferences we find empirical evidence for birth order effects on age adjusted schooling and on earnings for young u s adults though the latter is not robust for all specifications the examination of intrahousehold allocations suggests that these birth order differences occur despite parental preferences or prices by birth order favoring later borns apparently because of stronger endowment effects that favor firstborns

games parents and adolescents play risky behaviors parental reputation and strategic transfers this article examines parental reputation formation in intra familial interactions in a repeated two stage game children decide whether to drop out of high school or daughters decide whether to have births as teens and parents then decide whether to provide support to their children beyond age 18 drawing on milgrom and roberts 1982 and kreps and wilson 1982 we show that under certain conditions parents have the incentive to penalise older children for their adolescent risk taking behaviour in order to dissuade their younger children from such behaviour when reaching adolescence we find evidence in favour of this parental reputation model

the value of children inter generational support fertility and human capital abstract this paper offers robust empirical evidence of a darwinian pro natalist mechanism parents can improve their old age support with an additional child using the incidence of first born twins as an instrument for fertility outcomes i find that chinese senior parents with more children receive more financial transfers and are more likely to co reside with an adult child they are also less likely to work past retirement age the estimated effects are large despite the evidence that adult children from larger families are less educated and earn significantly less interestingly the effect of an increase in the number of children on old age support does not depend on the child s gender

europe s tired poor huddled masses self selection and economic outcomes in the age of mass migration during the age of mass migration 1850 1913 one of the largest migration episodes in history the united states maintained a nearly open border allowing the study of migrant decisions unhindered by entry restrictions we estimate the return to migration while accounting for migrant selection by comparing norway to us migrants with their brothers who stayed in norway in the late nineteenth century we also compare fathers of migrants and nonmigrants by wealth and occupation we find that the return to migration was relatively low 70 percent and that migrants from urban areas were negatively selected from the sending population keep ancient lands your storied pomp cries she with silent lips give me your tired your poor your huddled masses yearning to breathe free the wretched refuse of your teeming shore send these the homeless tempest tost to me i lift my lamp beside the golden door emma lazarus 1883

chronic disease burden and the interaction of education fertility and growth abstract this study considers the eradication of hookworm disease from the american south circa 1910 as a test of the quantity quality q q framework of fertility eradication was principally a shock to the price of quality because of three factors hookworm i depresses the return to human capital investment ii had a very low case fatality rate and iii had negligible prevalence among adults consistent with the q q model we find a significant decline in fertility associated with eradication

corruption fertility and human capital abstract we build an overlapping generations model in which reproductive households face a child quantity child quality trade off and bureaucrats are delegated with the task of delivering public services that support the accumulation of human capital by integrating the theoretical analyses of endogenous growth corruption and fertility choices we show that the negative relation between fertility and economic development may also be affected by differences in the magnitude of bureaucratic corruption

birth order family size and achievement family structure and wage determination do birth order and the size of one s childhood family influence environment thereby potentially affecting future achievement this article investigates the hypothesis that they do presenting two major empirical findings first neither birth order nor childhood family size significantly influences the level or growth rate of wages a result that is consistent with previous research second family size is both a statistically and economically significant determinant of women s employment status women from small families work less than women from large families when they are young and more than women from large families when they are more mature

new evidence of the causal effect of family size on child quality in a developing country this paper presents new evidence of the causal effect of family size on child quality in a developing country context we estimate the impact of family size on child labor and educational outcomes among brazilian children and young adults by exploring the exogenous variation of family size driven by the presence of twins in the family using the brazilian census data for 1991 we find that the exogenous increase in family size is positively related to labor force participation for boys and girls and to household chores for young women we also find negative effects on educational outcomes for boys and girls and negative impacts on human capital formation for young female adults moreover we obtain suggestive evidence that credit and time constraints faced by poor families may explain the findings

the pizza night game conflict of interest and payoff inequality in tacit bargaining games with focal points we report the results of a new tacit bargaining experiment that provides two key insights about the effects of payoff inequality on coordination and cooperation towards efficient outcomes the experiment features the novel pizza night game which can disentangle the effects of payoff inequality and conflict of interest when coordination relies on focal points based on labelling properties payoff inequality does not interfere with the successful use of those properties when there are efficiency cues that assist coordination payoff inequality is not an obstacle to the maximisation of efficiency conflict of interest is the main barrier to successful coordination

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

the early bird gets the worm birth order effects in a dynamic family model the great advantage of living in a large family is that early lesson of life s essential unfairness nancy mitford http www quotegarden com family html i introduction birth order effects well established in both the academic and the popular psychology literature have received considerable attention in recent empirical economics studies for example ejrnaes and portner 2004 black devereux and salvanes 2005 conley and glauber 2006 and kantarevic and mechoulan 2006 find significant differences between firstborn and later born children in outcomes such as educational attainment and or earnings price 2008 finds differences in inputs in general the firstborn in the family is advantaged hanushek 1992 suggests that these differences arise because children of different birth order within the same family are born into different intellectual environments with later borns entering less stimulating environments price 2008 looks at quality time that parents spend with each child in multiple child families and finds that children of higher birth order receive less quality time with parents at any given age than do children of lower birth order at the same age zajonc 1976 suggests that older siblings partly replace parents in providing some of this quality time this benefits the firstborns because they have the opportunity to be teachers from an early age theoretical economic models of the family are typically atemporal when it comes to the decision of how much of the family s resources to devote to children and hence birth order effects do not emerge endogenously our article fills an important gap in the theoretical literature on families with children by explicit consideration of the temporal production of both the child s well being and its human capital and the influence of birth order on the production conditions for children who are close in age we show cases in which the firstborn receives more resources overall than the second so the second born never has higher utility than the firstborn at any stage proposition 1 in this case we can make clear predictions about outcomes as well as inputs and we would expect tests to reveal higher scores of the firstborn regardless of the age at which they are administered in other cases the mix of resources devoted to children differs with birth order with ambiguous predictions for outcomes at some ages propositions 2a and 3 or all ages see e g propositions 2b and 5 we investigate the trade off parents make between spending time with children and working for income to purchase consumption goods for family members we consider a three stage model of parental decision making a family has two children who are born sequentially older children have different needs than younger ones so the sequential nature of child rearing matters each child spends two periods with their parents the firstborn is a single child in its first period of life and an older sibling in its second and the second born is a younger sibling in its first period and the sole child in the household in its second thus each child spends one period with parents and a sibling and one period alone with its parents the children differ with respect to the sequencing of these two phases in the second period the presence of two children of different ages and with different needs but both requiring some supervision time raises the issue of economies of scope in childcare 1 is a given amount of parental childcare as productive if shared by two children rather than devoted to one there is little direct evidence on the nature of the home production function for child quality but mocan 1997 found evidence suggesting the existence of both scale and scope economies in the production functions for day care centers in the main body of the article we assume economies of scope for parents 2 parents care about both the contemporaneous utility of each child and their well being as adults we assume no societal or personal biases in favor of either child

investing in health the long term impact of head start on smoking i introduction there is a strong evidence that early childhood socioeconomic conditions have long term economic consequences reinforcing and sustaining disparities over the lifecourse 1 this observation provides a compelling rationale for public investments targeted toward disadvantaged children to expand opportunities and break the cycle of poverty head start is the principal federally funded program through which the united states invests directly in the human capital of disadvantaged preschool children since its inception in 1965 as part of president lyndon johnson s war on poverty head start has provided services to more than 23 million preschool children in 2005 there were more than 900 000 children enrolled in the program at a total cost of 6 8 billion office of head start 2006a to achieve its overall goal of increasing the school readiness of participants head start provides a comprehensive set of services including education health nutritional and social services to participants and their families research has shown that head start has positive impacts on participants human capital both in childhood and in adulthood 2 in recent years questions have arisen about the relative effectiveness of head start and whether it should be continued in its present form u s department of health and human services 2003 much of the debate has centered on the magnitude and persistence of the cognitive achievements of head start participants however given the link between education and health 3 and the comprehensive nature of head start with substantial health components one could reasonably expect it to have a favorable impact on participants health as well as education if significant health effects were found to persist into adulthood this in itself could alter the evaluation of head start and have important implications for the associated policy debate smoking is the leading preventable cause of mortality in the united states mokdad et al 2004 it is linked to an extensive list of diseases chaloupka and warner 2000 and imposes large economic costs on society centers for disease control and prevention 2002 tobacco use generally begins before individuals graduate high school and as an addictive behavior youth smoking is linked to adult smoking u s department of health and human services 1994 adolescents from low socioeconomic status households with low academic achievement are more likely to use tobacco products u s department of health and human services 1994 thus comprehensive development programs targeted toward disadvantaged youths that are designed to improve child outcomes have the potential to influence smoking improve health over the lifecourse and reduce the social costs from smoking suggestive evidence that head start might influence the smoking behavior of participants comes from evaluations of other preschool programs that targeted low income children participants in both the carolina abecedarian preschool program and the high scope perry preschool program were much less likely to smoke as adults barnett and masse 2007 belfield et al 2006 in this article we assess the impact of head start participation on adult smoking behavior using data from the panel study of income dynamics psid and its supplements on early childhood education and health we examine the cohort of adults above age 21 in 1999 whose age is low enough to have potentially participated in a head start program following currie and thomas 1995 and garces thomas and currie 2002 we employ a sibling based model to control for unobservable family characteristics that may affect smoking or the decision to participate in head start our results show that head start participation significantly influences smoking related behavior we estimate that if head start participants had not enrolled in the program these individuals would be approximately 20 percentage points more likely to smoke cigarettes beyond age 25

gender differences in the intergenerational transmission of education in spain the role of parents employment status and education this article examines the influence of parents education and employment status on the attained educational level of their children with special reference to gender differences our study analysed

from the cradle to the labor market the effect of birth weight on adult outcomes lower birth weight babies have worse outcomes both short run in terms of one year mortality rates and longer run in terms of educational attainment and earnings however recent research has called into question whether birth weight itself is important or whether it simply reflects other hard to measure characteristics by applying within twin techniques using an unusually rich dataset from norway we examine the effects of birth weight on both short run and long run outcomes for the same cohorts we find that birth weight does matter despite short run twin fixed effects estimates that are much smaller than ols estimates the effects on longer run outcomes such as adult height iq earnings and education are significant and similar in magnitude to ols estimates

intergenerational transmission of education and mediating channels evidence from a compulsory schooling reform in germany in this paper i estimate the causal effect that an additional year of schooling for parents has on their children s education by exploiting a compulsory schooling reform that was implemented in all west german states between 1946 and 1969 although previous research indicates that the reform had no effect on earnings i find that an additional year of schooling for women strongly affects the education of their sons there is no effect for the other parent child gender pairs i investigate numerous channels that might mediate the positive effect of the education of mothers most importantly i find that individuals with more schooling value their children s educational success as more important

family investment responses to childhood health conditions intrafamily allocation of resources the onset of a health condition during childhood impairs skill formation a number of studies have investigated the long lasting effects of poor health during childhood on later in life outcomes however this evidence ignores how parents respond to the onset of health conditions do their investments reinforce the health condition or compensate or behave neutrally if parents change their investments the relationship between early health and later outcomes combines the biological effect and the investment responses to address this question i use within sibling variation in the incidence of health conditions to control for selection from unobserved household heterogeneity parents invest on average 0 16 standard deviations less in children with mental conditions relative to their healthy siblings using a measure of investment that includes time and resources on the contrary when children have a physical condition parental investments do not differ across siblings results are robust to alternative measures of health conditions and the inclusion of child fixed effects

children s schooling and parents behavior evidence from the head start impact study abstract parents may have important effects on their children but little work in economics explores whether children s schooling opportunities crowd out or encourage parents investment in children we analyze data from the head start impact study which granted randomly chosen preschool aged children the opportunity to attend head start we find that head start causes a substantial increase in parents involvement with their children such as time spent reading to children math activities or days spent with children by fathers who do not live with their children both during and after the period when their children are potentially enrolled in head start

the economics of grief we study the short run and long run economic impact of one of the largest losses that an individual can face the death of a child we utilise unique registers on the entire swedish population combining information on the date and cause of death with parental outcomes we exploit the longitudinal dimension of the data and deal with several selection issues losing a child has adverse effects on labour income employment status marital status and hospitalisation the value of policy measures aimed at preventing mortal accidents of children is underestimated if it does not take bereavement effects on parents into account

teacher characteristics and academic achievement identifying the impact of teacher characteristics on academic achievement has been a salient and reoccurring topic in education we employ a twin by year identification strategy using matched teach

the effect of sibling sex composition on women s education and earnings this paper documents the impact of siblings on the education of men and women born in the united states between 1920 and 1965 we examine the effect of the number and sex composition of a boy or girl s siblings on that child s educational attainment we find that throughout the century women s educational choices have been systematically affected by the sex composition of her siblings and that men s choices have not women raised only with brothers have received on average significantly more education than women raised with any sisters controlling for household size since sibling sex composition affects women s educational attainment and plausibly may be unrelated to other determinants of earnings it may provide a useful instrument for education in earnings functions for women our results suggest that standard estimates significantly underestimate the return to schooling for women

the economic consequences of unwed motherhood using twin births as a natural experiment social scientists have long concluded that premarital childbearing exacerbates problems of both poverty and family instability out of wedlock and adolescent childbearing may reduce a mothers educational attainment lower the probability of her eventual marriage increase her probability of welfare recipiency and decrease family income the authors use an exogenous fertility event the birth of twins to estimate the economic effects of unplanned births the approach compares the economic outcomes of women experiencing premarital twin first births to those experiencing premarital single first births in the attempt to identify the consequences of an unplanned birth upon womens future fertility and marital decisions education labor force participation labor earnings welfare receipt and poverty status 1970 and 1980 us census micro data are used to identify twin births to unmarried women analysis found large short term effects of unplanned births on labor force participation poverty and welfare recipiency among unwed mothers but not among married mothers furthermore most adverse economic effects of unplanned motherhood dissipate over time for whites but larger and more persistent negative effects weigh upon black unwed mothers

religion religiosity and educational attainment evidence from the compulsory education system in england this paper investigates the effect of religion on the educational attainment of pupils in their final year of compulsory education in england the results show that pupils that identify with any re

fertility household size and poverty in nepal population control policies keep attracting attention by increasing the household size having more children would directly contribute to a household s poverty using nationally representative household level data from nepal we investigate the links between a household s fertility decisions and variations in their size and composition we show that the relationship between number of births and household size is positive when the mothers are young but becomes negative as the mothers grow older elderly couples who had fewer children host on average more relatives who are outside the immediate family unit this result sheds light on the heterogeneous relation between the number of children and household size over the life cycle it also implies that reductions in a household s fertility may have an ambiguous impact on its per capita consumption which depends on how the household s composition responds to new births and changes over time in this sample an old household s per capita consumption is not affected by the number of births we use the gender of the first born child to instrument the total number of consecutive children

the economics of vocation or why is a badly paid nurse a good nurse abstract given the longstanding shortage of nurses in many jurisdictions why could not nursing wages be raised to attract more people into the profession we tell a story in which the status of nursing as a vocation implies that increasing wages reduces the average quality of applicants attracted the underlying mechanism accords with the notion that increasing wages might attract the wrong sort of people into the profession and highlights an in efficiency wage mechanism particular to vocations which makes wages sticky up wards the analysis has implications for job design in vocation based sectors such as nursing and teaching

do birth order and family size matter for intergenerational income mobility evidence from sweden previous studies of intergenerational income mobility have not considered potential birth order or family size effects in the estimated income elasticity this article uses a large sample of individuals born between 1962 and 1964 income elasticities with respect to parents incomes are estimated for individuals with different birth order positions and family sizes results based on labour income and total income for sons and daughters are reported separately the elasticity tends to decrease with family size as well as with birth order for a given family size especially in the labour income analysis of fathers and sons

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

has european customs union agreement really affected turkey s trade the numerous discussions regarding the advantages and disadvantages of turkey s becoming a member of the customs union has been inconclusive the empirical analysis that mostly focus on the changes in the volume of trade without much regard to the conjectural changes have also been insufficient this study attempts to shed light on this issue in a formal analysis of turkey s international trade by empirically accounting for the changes before and after the customs union agreement cua in doing so we explicitly account for the concurrent changes in the macroeconomic environment that may have affected turkey s trade with the rest of the world our empirical findings indicate that cua has not only positively impacted on turkey s trade but also led to changes in the behaviour of both exports and imports with regards to their responsiveness to underlying variables

cooperatives and happiness cross country evidence on the role of relational capital why is the share of happy people higher in some countries than in their equally developed neighbours we conjecture that the apparent contradiction might depend on a country s endowment of relation

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

marriage institutions and sibling competition evidence from south asia using data from south asia this article examines how arranged marriage cultivates rivalry among sisters during marriage search parents with multiple daughters reduce the reservation quality for an older daughters groom rushing her marriage to allow sufficient time to marry off her younger sisters relative to younger brothers younger sisters increase a girls marriage risk relative to younger singleton sisters younger twin sisters have the same effect these effects intensify in marriage markets with lower sex ratios or greater parental involvement in marriage arrangements in contrast older sisters delay a girls marriage because girls leave school when they marry and face limited earning opportunities when they reach adulthood the number of sisters has well being consequences over the life cycle younger sisters cause earlier school leaving lower literacy a match to a husband with less education and a less skilled occupation and marginally lower adult economic status data from a broader set of countries indicate that these cross sister pressures on marriage age are common throughout the developing world although the schooling costs vary by setting

food for thought the birth order effect and resource allocation in indonesia abstractdespite the large literature linking birth order to socio economic outcomes research uncovering the mechanisms that drive these effects has been rare we construct a unique measure of nutritional variety to examine whether differential resource allocation among siblings explains the birth order effect on cognitive ability we document birth order differences among children and young adults showing that second and third borns perform worse on cognitive assessments compared to their firstborn siblings we find further evidence suggesting that second and third born children frequently eat a smaller variety of food than their first born counterparts however this differentiation in food allocation does not appear to drive the differences in cognitive ability in our sample to our knowledge this article is the first both to confirm the presence of a birth order effect on cognition in a developing country and to test empirically whether a difference in food allocation contributes to this effect

how large are the effects from changes in family environment a study of korean american adoptees i analyze a new set of data on korean american adoptees who were quasi randomly assigned to adoptive families i find large effects on adoptees education income and health from assignment to parents with more education and from assignment to smaller families parental education and family size are significantly more correlated with adoptee outcomes than are parental income or neighborhood characteristics outcomes such as drinking smoking and the selectivity of college attended are more determined by nurture than is educational attainment using the standard behavioral genetics variance decomposition i find that shared family environment explains 14 percent of the variation in educational attainment 35 percent ofthe variation in college selectivity and 33 percent of the variation in drinking behavior

catholic schooling and further education abstract using new estimation methods and data i find that catholic schooling substantially increases years of schooling by 0 42 to 0 47 the estimates are robust to various specifications that account for potential selection bias

on the production of skills and the birth order effect first born children tend to outperform their younger siblings on measures such as cognitive exams wages educational attainment and employment using a framework similar to cunha and heckman 2008 and cunha heckman and schennach 2010 this paper finds that differences in parents investments across siblings can account for more than one half of the gap in cognitive skills among siblings the study s framework accommodates for endogeneity in parents investments measurement error missing observations and dynamic impacts of parental investments

occupational variation in quantity quality trade off in a brawn based economy the paper revisits the theory of the quantity quality trade off and demonstrates that the relationship between quantity and health of children is subject to occupational variation in physical energ

early childhood nutrition schooling and sibling inequality in a dynamic context evidence from south africa abstract this article examines the effects of early childhood nutrition on schooling investments and outcomes to assess the dynamic nature of human capital production using panel data from south africa height for age z score is used as a measure of health and nutritional status in early childhood based on a comparison of siblings the empirical analysis shows that improving children s health significantly lowers the age when they start school increases grade attainment decreases grade repetition and improves learning performance in the early stage of schooling however the observed effect diminishes as a child ages which implies that i height at ages earlier than three better explains subsequent schooling outcomes and or ii the role of health capital changes from one schooling stage to another

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

children and their parents a review of fertility and causality childbearing decisions are not made in isolation they are taken in concert with decisions regarding work marriage health investments and stocks as well as many other observable and non observable considerations drawing causal inferences regarding the effect of additional children on family outcomes is complicated by these endogenous factors this paper lays out the issues involved in estimating the effect of additional child births on family outcomes and the assumptions underlying the range of estimators and methodologies proposed in the economic literature the common pitfalls of these estimators are discussed as well as their potential to bias our interpretation of the effect additional births have on children and parents both in the existing literature and in future work in the face of changing patterns of childbearing and child rearing

the effects of child bearing on married women s labor supply and earnings using twin births as a natural experiment we use exogenous variations in fertility due to twin births to measure the impact of an unplanned child on married women s labor supply and earnings although the overall effects of an unplanned birth on labor supply are small we find significant effects in the years immediately following the unplanned birth especially in 1970 we estimate that declining fertility explains between 6 and 13 percent of the increase in married women s labor supply between 1970 and 1980 twin births are also associated with a substantial short run loss in earnings this effect persists longer than the labor supply effects though it does eventually disappear

organization of disaster aid delivery spending your donations abstractthis article examines how different organizational structures in disaster aid delivery affect house aid quality we analyze three waves of survey data on fishermen and fishing villages in aceh indonesia following the 2004 tsunami we categorize four organizational structures based on whether and to whom donors contract aid implementation compared to bilateral contracting between donors and implementers donors that vertically integrate and do their own implementation offer the highest quality housing as rated by village heads and have fewer counts of faults such as leaky roofs and cracked walls as reported by fishermen however they shade in quality as they lose dominance as the leading aid agency in a village domestic implementers and the government agency that was responsible for significant portions of aid delivery provide significantly lower quality aid we also examine how the imposition of shared ownership the primary social agenda for boat aid agencies affects boat aid quality we

sex in marriage is a divine gift for whom evidence from the manila contraceptive ban we analyze the tradeoff between child quantity and quality in developing countries by estimating the effect of family size on child education in urban philippines to isolate exogenous changes in family size we exploit a policy shock in the late 1990s the mayor of manila enacted a municipal ban on modern contraceptives since other comparable cities in the manila metropolitan area were not affected by the ban this allows us to implement a difference in difference estimation of the effect of family size we also exploit the fact that older mothers were less likely to become pregnant during the ban our results indicate that the contraceptive ban led to a significant increase in family size they also provide evidence of a quality quantity tradeoff increased family size led to a sizable decrease in school performance

disease control and inequality reduction evidence from a tuberculosis testing and vaccination campaign this article examines the economic impact of a tuberculosis control program launched in norway in 1948 in the 1940s norway had one of the highest tuberculosis infection rates in europe affecting about 85 of the inhabitants to lower the disease burden the norwegian government launched a large scale tuberculosis testing and vaccination campaign that substantially reduced tuberculosis infection rates among children we find that cohorts in school during and after the campaign in municipalities with high tuberculosis prevalence gained more in terms of education earnings longevity and height following this public health intervention furthermore the gains from the disease control program are not limited to the initially treated cohorts but also affect their children the results also suggest that individuals from a low socioeconomic background benefited more from the intervention and we present new evidence that a narrowing of the gap in childhood health can lead to a reduction in socioeconomic inequalities in adulthood

children and their parents labor supply evidence from exogenous variation in family size although theoretical models of labor supply and the family are well developed there are few credible estimates of key empirical relationships in the work family nexus this study uses a new instrumental variable the sex composition of the first two births in families with at least two children to estimate the effect of additional children on parents labor supply in the united states instrumental variables estimates using the sex mix are substantial but smaller than the corresponding ordinary least squares ols estimates moreover unlike the ols estimates the female labor supply effects estimated using sex mix instruments appear to be absent among more educated women and women with high wage husbands we also find that married women who have a third child reduce their labor supply by as much as women in the full sample while there is no relationship between wives child bearing and husbands labor supply excerpt

the role of birth order in child labour and schooling does when a child was born relative to his or her siblings affect whether the child attends school or participates in child labour we investigate this question by estimating the causal effect of birth order on the probabilities of school attendance and child labour participation to address the potential endogeneity of family size we use instrumental variable approach where the proportion of boys in the family is used to instrument family size using a longitudinal household survey data from ethiopia we estimate unobserved effects bivariate probit instrumental variable model of school attendance and child labour choices the results suggest that the probability of child labour participation decreases with birth order but we find no evidence that suggests birth order affects the probability of school attendance however among children who are going to school hours spent studying increases with birth order results from complementary time use analysis reveal that there is no birth order effect on hour

the twin instrument fertility and human capital investment twin births are often used as an instrument to address selection of women into fertility however recent work shows selection of women into twin birth such that while ols estimates tend to be downward biased twin iv estimates will tend to be upward biased this is pertinent given the emerging consensus that fertility has limited impacts on women s labour supply or on investments in children using data for developing countries and the united states to estimate the trade off between fertility and children s human capital we demonstrate the nature and size of the bias in the twin iv estimator and estimate bounds on the true parameter

on the regional labour market determinants of female university enrolment in europe casarico a profeta p and pronzato c d on the regional labour market determinants of female university enrolment in europe regional studies this paper empirically investigates how young women s decisions of investing in post secondary education are affected by labour market outcomes of older women living in the same region eu silc data on educational decisions of women who completed secondary schooling are used and indicators of the regional labour market are constructed exploiting regional and time variability it is found that the share of working women with young children of women with managerial positions and the self employed positively affect the probability to enrol significant effects of these variables for men are not found

a review essay on isabel sawhill s generation unbound drifting into sex and parenting without marriage and laurence steinberg s age of opportunity lessons from the new science of adolescence sawhill and steinberg approach risky behavior among youth from two different angles steinberg argues for intervention during the adolescent years to alter behavior in ways that prioritize patience and self regulation while sawhill advocates interventions that mitigate the negative effects of risky behavior both argue that disadvantaged youth suffer worse consequences as a result of risky behavior and therefore stand to gain the most from interventions while the authors develop strong arguments for adolescent interventions the existing evidence on their effectiveness is less compelling to reconcile the promise with the reality i argue that growing up in environments of significant uncertainty reduces the returns to forward thinking behavior in the daily lives of disadvantaged youths interventions to develop adolescent decision making skills so as to reduce risky behavior will not be effective if they are inconsistent with the incentives generated by a local environment that is often characterized by uncertainty

the more the merrier the effect of family size and birth order on children s education there is an extensive theoretical literature that postulates a tradeoff between child quantity and quality within a family however there is little causal evidence that speaks to this theory using a rich dataset on the entire population of norway over an extended period of time we examine the effects of family size and birth order on the educational attainment of children while we find a negative correlation between family size and children s education when we include indicators for birth order and or use twin births as an instrument family size effects become negligible in addition birth order has a significant and large negative effect on children s education we also study adult earnings employment and teenage childbearing and find strong evidence for birth order effects with these outcomes particularly among women these findings suggest the need to revisit economic models of fertility and child production focusing not only on differences across families but differences within families as well

the economic consequences of mutual help in extended families in the absence of well developed markets for credit and insurance extended families play a major role as a traditional system of mutual help however these arrangements have important consequences on economic choices in this paper we use first hand data from western cameroon to explore this question we find that the large majority of transfers follow a given pattern whereby elder siblings support their younger siblings in the early stages of their lives who in turn reciprocate by supporting their elder siblings when they have children we interpret this pattern as a generalised system of reciprocal credit within the extended family we propose a simple overlapping generation model to investigate its welfare properties we then explore the implications of this pattern on labour market outcomes and find evidence of large disincentive effects this pattern of transfers also implies that younger siblings are more educated but have fewer and less educated children

for love or money or both this paper explores the implications for economic analysis societal well being and public policy of the movement of care services such as child and elder care from home to market a broad empirical overview sets the stage for the argument that this process cannot be properly evaluated using only a priori judgments about the suitability of marketization the context in which markets operate is crucial and while the growth of market provision poses some risks it also offers some potential benefits

sibling gender and wage differences abstractfamily influences on economic performance are investigated in particular sibship sex composition is related to hourly wages using data from the national longitudinal survey of youth 1979 the wages of men are increasing in the proportion of siblings who are brothers but the wages of women are insensitive to sibling gender nonwage outcomes are generally unaffected contrasts by age structure and demographic group are also presented the analysis addresses econometric challenges like the endogeneity of fertility and selection into the workforce in addition mechanisms such as labour market interactions human capital investment and role model effects are documented a questionnaire on job search indicates a same gender bias in the use of brothers and sisters in obtaining employment developmental and psychological assessments suggest that brothers may be associated with worse childhood home environments and more traditional family attitudes among women the findings are policy relevant and cont

the toll of fertility on mothers wellbeing using multiple births as source of variation we study the impact of fertility on the overall wellbeing of mothers first using us census data for the year 1980 we study the impact of number of children on family arrangements welfare participation and poverty status second using the national health interview survey nhis for the period 1982 2003 we study the impact on a series of health risk factors the findings reveal first that an increase in family size increases the likelihood of marital breakdown second we find evidence that mothers facing an increase in family size are not only more likely to live with other family members such as grandparents aunts and uncles they are also more likely to receive help from welfare programs third consistent with an increase in welfare participation families mothers are more likely to fall below the poverty line and they face a reduction in total family income the results using nhis confirm a negative impact of fertility on marriage stability and an increase in welfare participation measured by the likelihood of using medicaid and for some samples a reduction in the take up of private health insurance finally we find evidence that a shock in fertility increases the likelihood of mothers suffering from high blood pressure and becoming obese

does the birth order affect the cognitive development of a child this article investigates the link between position in the birth order and early scholastic ability using matched mother child data from the national longitudinal survey of youth 1979 cohort nlsy79 i find that being the first born is beneficial even after controlling for nonlinear effects of family size and child characteristics the verbal ability of first borns is about one tenth of a sd higher than for children in the middle of the birth order there is no evidence that last borns fare better than intermediate children the first born advantage is confirmed by estimates from within family variation models and i argue that the findings are consistent with the resource dilution hypothesis

priceless the nonpecuniary benefits of schooling copyright 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 by the american economic association permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of american economic association publications for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not distributed for profit or direct commercial advantage and that copies show this notice on the first page or initial screen of a display along with the full citation including the name of the author copyrights for components of this work owned by others than aea must be honored abstracting with credit is permitted the author has the right to republish post on servers redistribute to lists and use any component of this work in other works for others to do so requires prior specific permission and or a fee permissions may be requested from the american economic association administrative office by going to the contact us form and choosing copyright permissions request from the menu copyright 2016 aea

spillovers in education choice abstract this paper examines how skills are shaped by social interactions in families we show that older siblings causally affect younger sibling s educational choices and early career earnings we focus on critical course choices in high school and overcome the identification challenges of estimating spillover effects in education by exploiting exogenous variation in choice sets stemming from a pilot program the pilot induced an essentially random subset of older siblings to choose advanced math science at a lower cost while not directly affecting the course choices of younger siblings we find that younger siblings are 2 3 percentage points more likely to choose math science if their older sibling unexpectedly could choose math science at a lower cost we argue that the main influence of the pilot program on the younger siblings may be attributed to the social influence of the older sibling spillovers are strongest among closely spaced siblings in particular brothers and they have a lasting impact on the career outcomes of younger brothers we argue that competition is likely one of the driving forces behind younger siblings conforming to their older siblings choices

natural natural experiments in economics the recent literature exploiting natural events as natural experiment instruments is reviewed to assess to what extent it has advanced empirical knowledge a weakness of the studies that adopt this approach is that the necessary set of behavioral market and technological assumptions made by the authors in justifying their interpretations of the estimates is often absent the methodology and findings from twenty studies are summarized and simple economic models are used to elucidate the implicit assumptions made by the authors and to demonstrate the sensitivity of the interpretations of the findings to the relaxation of some of these assumptions

tough love and intergenerational altruism this chapter develops and studies a tough love model of intergenerational altruism we model tough love by modifying the barro becker standard altruism model in two ways first the child s discount factor is endogenously determined so lower childhood consumption leads to a higher discount factor later in life second the parent evaluates the child s lifetime utility with a constant high discount factor our model predicts that parental transfers will fall when the child s discount factor falls this is in contrast with the standard altruism model which predicts that parental transfers are independent of exogenous changes in the child s discount factor