I contribute to the literature on the growth of public spending in Western economies with a novel mechanism that ties it to the marketization process, i.e. the substitution of home with market production. I argue that a key contributor to the expansion of social spending is the replacement of family-based transfers with public pensions and other public transfer programs. I provide empirical support for this hypothesis by establishing the long-run relationship between government size and marketization, alongside other established determinants of government spending, in a panel of Western economies. I then illustrate a potential mechanism behind the results with a theoretical model in which, as a result of the productivity advantage of the market over the home sector, family-based intergenerational transfers decline unexpectedly, providing a rationale for government intervention in the form of public pensions with a poverty relief component.

This study explores the relationship between maternal working hours and a child's emotional well-being using data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study. Child well-being is assessed through self-reported happiness and a well-being index that includes concerns, temperament, bullying, and behaviour. Results show a positive association between maternal employment and child well-being, supported by factor analysis combining child, mother, and teacher reports. The association remains consistent across income levels and is unaffected by commuting time or cohabitation status. These findings highlight the importance of maternal employment and contextual factors in shaping child well-being.

We study the effect of an immigration ban on the self-selection of immigrants along cultural traits, and the transmission of these traits to the second generation. We show theoretically that restricting immigration incentivizes to settle abroad individuals with higher attachment to their origin culture, who, under free mobility, would rather choose circular migration. Once abroad, these individuals tend to convey their cultural traits to their children. As a consequence, restrictive immigration policies can foster the diffusion of cultural traits across boundaries and generations. We focus on religiosity, which is one of the most persistent and distinctive cultural traits, and exploit the 1973 immigration ban in West Germany (Anwerbestopp) as a natural experiment. Through a diff-in-diff analysis, we find that second generations born to parents treated by the Anwerbestopp show higher religiosity.

This paper examines how the number of siblings that parents have affects their fertility decisions in China. The population control policies in China affected individuals unequally across birth cohorts and regions. The exogenous variation in fertility is used to identify the effect of the number of siblings on the number of children for the next generation. The results show that a couple tends to have 0.034–0.068 more children (2.3–4.6% of the average number of children) and is 2.4–6.8 percentage points more likely to violate the One-Child Policy (9.3–27.1% of the violation rate) if the husband and the wife have one more sibling each. Moreover, the effect on fertility is stronger for couples in lower-income provinces where the fertility rate is higher and in rural areas where the One-Child Policy was enforced less strictly. Finally, I show that the ideal family size of the husband and wife is an important channel through which the number of siblings affects fertility. I also find that the effect of people's number of siblings has a larger effect on their ideal number of children than on their actual number of children, suggesting that they are constrained from achieving their fertility ideals.

This study examines disparities in health and nutrition among native and Syrian refugee children in Turkey. To understand the need for targeted programs addressing child well-being among the refugee population, we analyze the Turkey Demographic and Health Survey (TDHS) – which provides representative data for a large refugee and native population. We find no evidence of a difference in infant or child mortality between refugee children born in Turkey and native children. However, refugee infants born in Turkey have lower birthweight and age-adjusted weight and height than native infants. When we account for a rich set of birth and socioeconomic characteristics that display substantial differences between natives and refugees, the gaps in birthweight and age-adjusted height persist, but the gap in age-adjusted weight disappears. Moreover, the remaining gaps in birthweight and anthropometric outcomes are limited to the lower end of the distribution. The observed gaps are even larger for refugee infants born before migrating to Turkey, suggesting that the remaining deficits reflect conditions in the source country before migration rather than deficits in access to health services within Turkey. Finally, comparing children by the country of their first trimester, we find evidence of the detrimental effects of stress exposure during pregnancy.

We study whether the increased adoption of available automation technologies allows economies to avoid the negative effect of aging on per capita output. We develop a quantitative theory in which firms choose to which extent they automate in response to a declining workforce and rising old-age dependency. An important element in our model is the integration of two capital types: automation capital that acts as a substitute to human labor, and traditional capital that is a complement to labor. Empirically, our model's predictions largely match data regarding automation (robotization) density across OECD countries. Simulating the model, we find that aging-induced automation only partially compensates the negative growth effect of aging in the absence of technical progress in automation technology. One reason is that automated tasks are no perfect substitutes for non-automated tasks. A second reason is that automation raises the interest rate and thus inhibits positive behavioral reactions to aging (later retirement and investment in human capital). Moreover, increased automation generates a falling net labor share of income and rising welfare inequality. We evaluate alternative policy responses to cope with this inequality.

Individuals who serve in the military substitute work experience for post-secondary educational attainment after high school, leading to large educational attainment gaps between new veterans and observably similar nonveterans. Little is known about the evolution of these gaps by age and across cohorts. We investigate the life-cycle attainment of veterans relative to nonveterans using a synthetic panel data approach. Following five multiyear birth cohorts we find that, on average, veterans close a 20-percentage point gap in attainment of a bachelor's or greater over time and significantly outpace observably similar nonveterans in attainment of an associate's degree. Female and minority veterans exceeded the attainment of similar nonveterans over time, and more recent birth cohorts began with larger gaps but closed them at younger ages due to increasing levels of both enrollment and enrollment intensity. Our findings highlight the important role of military service in facilitating social mobility through educational attainment.

Many Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries invest heavily in labor-market programs to prolong careers. Although active labor-market programs have frequently been evaluated, less is known about passive programs supporting unemployed seniors financially. We focus on the latter by investigating the hiring opportunities of candidates who partake in a regime that ensures dismissed seniors a company supplement alongside regular unemployment benefits. Therefore, we conduct a scenario experiment in which genuine recruiters evaluate fictitious candidates who have spent varying durations unemployed in regimes with and without the company supplement. Because recruiters evaluate candidates' hireability and productivity perceptions, we can identify underlying mechanisms. Overall, we find no evidence of employer-side stigma hindering the re-employment of seniors unemployed in the program. Conversely, longer-term unemployed even benefit from this regime because it mitigates regular stigmatization of long-term unemployment, especially for men. Specifically, recruiters judge them more mildly – particularly regarding flexibility – when they receive the supplement and still apply.

This paper introduces a new set of comprehensive and cross-country-comparable indexes of migration policy selectivity. Crucially, these reflect the multidimensional nature of the differential treatment of migrants. We use these indexes to study the evolution of migration policy selectivity and estimate how they affect migration flows. Combining all publicly available and relevant data since WWII, we build three composite indexes that identify selectivity in terms of skills, economic resources and nationality. First, we use these to characterize migration policies in 42 countries between 1990 and 2014. Second, we examine the relationship between the selectivity of migration policy and migration flows. Each of the three dimensions of migration policy is found to correlate strongly and significantly with both the size and structure of migration flows.

While the Chinese government's stated position is to support religious freedom, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is officially atheist. Individuals who profess faith are typically unable to join and members who practice a religion face expulsion and a loss of benefits. This paper analyzes the extent to which the CCP's policies regarding religion may influence religious identification over the life cycle in China. To do so, we contrast changes in religious affiliation before and after retirement for CCP members and non-CCP members. We find a significant increase of religious activities and religious faith in CCP members after retirement – suggesting: (1) people's acknowledgment of religious belief is significantly influenced by CCP regulations and (2) the biggest influence from a material benefits perspective occurs for those CCP members employed in the Chinese government system.

We are the first to study how the resources freed up when a child, child-in-law, or grandchild moves out of a household are reallocated, taking into account the age of the leaver. Using the 2011 and 2013 waves of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, we document that, on average, the remaining household members save part of the resources freed up by the leaver and consume another part. Differentiating the leavers by age, we find that after the departure of a member of the younger generation aged 0–24, the remaining household members save the resources freed up by the leaver. However, if the leaver is above 24, they spend the freed-up resources. Our results are robust to the use of different specifications, estimation methods, and consumption aggregates. Finally, we observe that remittances directed toward non-resident offspring do not increase after the departure of a member of the younger generation.

Since 2006, Rwanda has experienced a substantial rise in the facility-based delivery (FBD) rate, attributed to various health initiatives. This paper investigates the impact of multiple health reforms on maternal service utilization and neonatal mortality rates. Employing a difference-in-differences framework utilizing geographical variation in the baseline FBD rate, our estimates indicate a 10–17 percentage point increase in FBD and a 0.15–0.18 times increase in the number of antenatal care visits. While our analysis indicates some evidence of a reduction in neonatal mortality rates, the findings are inconclusive. Nevertheless, our results suggest that the effect of the reforms on neonatal mortality rates was weakly intensified for those residing near district hospitals providing care for complicated pregnancies.

Fertility control strategies became widespread in rural Spain through the twentieth century: a significant number of parents decided to reduce their marital fertility once the advantages of control strategies became widely known. This paper explores the impact of those practices on children through a comparative study of the heights and occupations of grandparents, parents, and children. We analyze more than 1,200 individuals from three different generations born between 1835 and 1959 in 14 rural Spanish villages, studying whether the advantages associated with fertility control were maintained over time favoring a better family status or whether they were diluted in the next generation. The largest increases in height were among children whose parents controlled their fertility by stopping having children before the mother's 36th birthday. However, it does not seem that this increase in biological well-being was accompanied by major episodes of upward social mobility.

This paper explores whether a positive unexpected exogenous (unearned) wealth shock affects household structure decisions in different Spanish regions. The Christmas draw of the Spanish National Lottery is used in a natural experiment as a proxy for exogenous random variations in provincial wealth. A static and dynamic linear panel event-study design allows for control of changing economic and demographic conditions at the province level and the dynamic effects on the analyzed decisions. The evidence is consistent with families getting divorced and having children when the province in which they live experiences an unexpected increase in wealth, but no conclusive effect on wedding plans is found.

Following the most dramatic migration episode of the 21st century, Turkey hosted the largest number of Syrian refugees in the world. This paper assesses the impact of the arrival of Syrian refugees on the Turkish children's health, with a focus on height – a standard nutritional outcome. Accounting for the endogenous choice of immigrant location, our results show that Turkish children residing in provinces with a large share of refugees exhibit a significant improvement in their height as compared to those living in provinces with fewer refugees. Against other potential channels, a refugee-induced increase in maternal unemployment and the associated increase in maternal care seem to explain the observed positive effect on children's health.

This paper examines the impact of female education on fertility outcomes by using the Universal Primary Education (UPE) program in Malawi as a natural experiment. The finding indicates that the UPE policy improves rural women's educational attainment by 0.42 years and an additional year of female education decreases women's number of children ever born and the number of living children by 0.39 and 0.34, respectively. An analysis of potential mechanisms suggests that the decreased fertility rates are likely driven by the reduction in women's fertility preferences, the postponement of marriage, and the delay of motherhood. Contrarily, the study finds no evidence that increased female education affects women's labor force participation and the use of modern contraception.

Existing empirical literature provides converging evidence that selective emigration enhances human capital accumulation in the world's poorest countries. However, the within-country distribution of such brain gain effects has received limited attention. Focusing on Senegal, we provide evidence that the brain gain mechanism primarily benefits the wealthiest regions that are internationally connected and have better access to education. Conversely, human capital responses are negligible in regions lacking international connectivity, and even negative in better connected regions with inadequate educational opportunities. These results extend to internal migration, implying that highly vulnerable populations are trapped in the least developed areas.

We show that the exposure to war-related violence increases the quantity of children temporarily, with permanent negative consequences for the quality of the current and previous cohorts. Our empirical evidence is based on Nepal, which experienced a 10 year long civil conflict of varying intensity. We exploit that villages affected by the conflict had the same trend in fertility as non-affected villages prior to the onset of conflict and employ a difference-in-differences estimator. We find that women in affected villages increased their fertility during the conflict by 19%, while child height-for-age declined by 10%. Supporting evidence suggests that the temporary fertility increase was the main pathway leading to reduced child height, as opposed to direct impacts of the conflict.

We use novel survey data to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Libya. Our analysis compares the effects of the pandemic for displaced and non-displaced citizens, controlling for individual and household characteristics and geo-localized measures of economic activity and conflict intensity. In our sample, 9.5% of respondents report that a household member has been infected by COVID-19, while 24.7% of them have suffered economic damages and 14.6% have experienced negative health effects due to the pandemic. IDPs do not display higher incidence of COVID-19 relative to comparable non-displaced individuals, but are about 60% more likely to report negative economic and health impacts caused by the pandemic. We provide suggestive evidence that the larger damages suffered by IDPs can be explained by their weaker economic status—which leads to more food insecurity and indebtedness—and by the discrimination they face in accessing health care.