Journal of Population Economics最新文献

Abstract

We study the impact of an extension of paid family leave in the Czech Republic from 3 to 4 years on children’s long-term outcomes. We find that an additional year of maternal care at age 3 has an adverse effect on children’s human capital investments and labor market attachment. Affected children are 6 percentage points less likely to be enrolled in college and 4 percentage points more likely to be not in education, employment, or training (NEET) at age 21–22. While the negative impact on education is persistent, with an 8 percentage points lower probability of completing college by the age of 27, the effect on NEET is short-lived. The results are driven by children of low-educated mothers, whose education and NEET outcomes are affected by as much as 12 percentage points. Our findings are consistent with previously documented positive effects of universal childcare on child long-term outcomes and with the fact that the extended maternal care induced by the extension of family leave led to a postponement of public kindergarten enrollment.

Fertility and income are negatively related at the aggregate level. However, evidence from recent periods suggests that increasing income leads to higher fertility at the individual level. In this paper, I provide a simple theory that resolves the apparent contradiction. I consider the education and fertility choices of individuals with different learning abilities. Acquiring higher education requires an investment of time and income. As a result, people with higher education have fewer children but, controlling for the level of education, increasing income leads to higher fertility. Rising income and skill premiums motivate more people to pursue higher education, resulting in a negative income-fertility association at the aggregate level. I investigate the explanatory power of the theory in a model calibrated for the US during 1950–2010.

I investigate the impact of the inflow of Syrian refugees to Jordan on school enrollment rates of 16–21-year-old Jordanians. Using an instrumented difference-in-differences identification strategy that utilizes the variation in the share of refugees across time and space, I show that the refugee influx resulted in a decline in school enrollment, primarily among males and youths with less educated parents. Next, I show that the effect would have been larger in the absence of post-influx investments in educational infrastructure in the most impacted areas. Finally, I show an increase in employment among Jordanian youths, pointing to a potential labor market mechanism for the estimated impact.

Abstract

This paper studies the long-run mortality effects of in utero and early-life economic conditions. We examine how local economic conditions experienced during the Great Depression, proxied by county-level banking deposits during in utero and first years of life, influences old-age longevity. We find that a one-standard-deviation rise in per capita bank deposits is associated with an approximately 1.7 month increase in males’ longevity at old age. Additional analyses comparing state-level versus county-level economic measures provide insight on the importance of controlling for local-level confounders and exploiting more granular measures when exploring the relationship between early-life conditions and later-life mortality.

This paper introduces an index for assessing local attitudes toward women in the United States, leveraging the Google search index and a machine learning methodology. Exploiting the constructed measure of sexism, our investigation reveals that the #MeToo movement garnered greater attention in areas characterized by low measured sexism in the pre-MeToo era. Additionally, a substantial increase in reported sex crimes is observed in those areas post-MeToo compared to those with higher sexism measures. Further empirical findings indicate that the surge in documented sex crimes primarily stems from changes in reporting behavior rather than substantive shifts in actual incidents.

We examine the effect of school shootings on risky health behaviors, health, and human capital outcomes of exposed students as adults and on their migration during middle and high school and a few years beyond. We use shootings data compiled by the Center for Homeland Defense and Security along with 2003–2012 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data to examine risky behaviors, health, and human capital outcomes, and the 2004–2018 American Community Survey to examine migration. We find that students exposed to school shootings experience declines in health and well-being, engage in more risky behaviors, and have worse education and labor market outcomes as young adults. There is no evidence of migration in response to school shootings.

Our work sheds light on the joint role of human capital and geography during the early stages of the transition from stagnation to growth in early twentieth century Greece. We uncover a robust association between geography and literacy. We also show that geography is correlated with land inequality and thus establish that land distribution is a channel through which geography influences literacy. Finally, the impact of geography on human capital formation weakens with industrialization. Our work contributes to the literature on geography and human capital in the transition from stagnation to growth since Greece was at the early stages of the industrial era during the study period.

Abstract

This study investigates the conditions under which welfare fraud and incomplete take-up emerge simultaneously and persist for a long time, which has been observed in many countries, particularly Japan and Germany. To do this, we extend models of statistical discrimination and taxpayers’ resentment to simple models of population dynamics. We find two stable boundary equilibria in the first model. One of these equilibria entails low welfare fraud and (100%) incomplete take-up, and the other entails high welfare fraud and (100%) take-up. In contrast, we find a unique stable equilibrium in the tax resentment model, which is interior and thus allows for the coexistence of welfare fraud and incomplete take-up in a long run. Hence, we conclude that this unique long-run equilibrium of the dynamic taxpayers’ resentment model provides a better explanation for the observation of simultaneous and persistent presence of welfare fraud and incomplete take-up in actual economies.

This study investigates how the global adoption of modern electrical batteries influenced women’s fertility choices in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a country rich in cobalt, an essential component of lithium-ion batteries. The findings reveal that women living in cobalt-rich villages experience higher fertility rates and a greater desire for children relative to those in non-cobalt-rich communities. I attribute this phenomenon to the use of children in cobalt mines, as opposed to other mineral mining activities, which leads to a short-term increase in household wealth and motivates parents to have more children. These results provide novel insights into our understanding of the complex relationship between economic development, natural resources, and fertility decisions in developing economies.

This study unveils the causal effect of authoritative violence on individuals’ likelihood to migrate. Specifically, we examine the migration patterns of Venezuelans during the 2017–2018 political and economic crisis. We draw insights from regional-level data on civilian casualties caused by security forces, along with information extracted from the ENCOVI-2018 survey data that captures migration flows. The estimates rely on travel time from the capital city as an instrumental variable and are robust to the inclusion of several household- and socio-economic regional-level characteristics. The findings strongly suggest that authoritative violence is a significant non-economic push factor for international migration. Moreover, additional evidence indicates that this type of violence influences the skill composition of migrants, especially in the context of South-to-South migration flows.