Some studies suggest that resource-rich countries tend to allocate talent and investment toward the resource sector and away from manufacturing or agriculture reducing the competitiveness of these other sectors. Because mining overwhelmingly employs men, when other sectors shrink so do employment opportunities for women (Ross, 2008). This could significantly affect core social structures. Using plausibly exogenous variation in natural resource wealth due to giant oil discoveries and an event study design, this paper finds that giant oil discoveries are associated with relatively worse female outcomes as measured by higher male/female population ratios, higher teen birth rates, and lower educational attendance of tertiary education among women relative to men. However, the impact on health outcomes tapers off within 8 years. Additionally, during periods of increasing oil prices, there is no significant evidence of such effects possibly due to an income effect.

This study identifies the link between women's asset ownership and women's empowerment. Women's empowerment is measured by their decision-making role related to their health, large household purchases, and their social interaction. Using Demographic and Health Surveys data for 18 countries from South Asia, the Middle East, and sub-Saharan Africa, we found that the women who owned assets were 14% more likely to be empowered compared with the women who did not own any asset (odds ratio: 1.14, 95% confidence interval: 1.10–1.185). At a disaggregated country level, asset ownership was positively and significantly associated with women's empowerment in nine countries, negatively associated in one country, and had no significant association in the other eight countries. This study provides important insights into the link between women's asset ownership and empowerment and may inform public policy related to gender equality through women's empowerment.

This paper examines the effect of national income on the total fertility rate (children born per woman). We estimate the effects on fertility of shocks to national per capita income using plausibly exogenous variations in oil price shock as an instrument for income and using instrumental variable generalized quantile regressions (IV-GQR). Using data for a panel of 122 countries spanning the period 1965–2020, our results show that national per capita income has generally a negative and significant effect on the total fertility rate. Looking at the entire spectrum of the fertility distribution, the IV-GQR estimates exhibit considerable heterogeneity in the impact of income on fertility. The income elasticity of fertility is relatively low at the upper tail of the distribution (for countries with high fertility) compared to the value at the median.

Using detailed data from the third round of the District Level Household Survey of India, this paper examines in detail the effect of child marriage of women on contraceptive usage and access to skilled care during pregnancy and delivery. This paper particularly focuses on sixteen different outcome variables categorized under four broad sub-groups; namely, family planning and contraceptive usage, birth history, utilization of antenatal care; and finally, natal and postnatal care. The overall results presented in the paper suggest that women who marry early, i.e. before they reach the legal age of marriage are more likely to have experienced miscarriage, give birth before they turn 18 and lose children. They also lack current contraception usage and are less likely to access public health facilities during both pregnancy and childbirth. These results, however, vary widely based on the state of residence and age of the women in question.

We highlight the role of home productivity and social norms in explaining the gender gap in labor force participation (LFP), and the non-monotonic relationship of women's LFP with their education in India. We construct a model of couples’ time allocation decisions allowing for both market and home productivity to improve with own education. Incorporating individual preference to produce a minimum level of the home good due to social norms, we show that our theoretical model can closely replicate the U-shaped relationship between women's education and their labor supply. Our analysis suggests that home productivity, along with social benchmarks on couples’ time allocation to home good, can be critical determinants of women's labor supply in developing countries.

Using household data from Northern Ghana, this study examines how cognitive skills affect the allocation of schooling across the children of a household. The analysis reveals that relative to the rest of the siblings in the household, an increase of one standard deviation in the score of cognitive tests increases by 0.123–0.237 the number of years of schooling attended in the following four years, depending on the cognitive test used. These results are consistent with the main prediction of the theoretical model for intra-household allocation of resources developed in the seminal paper Becker (1981): parents reinforce cognitive differences between siblings through allocating more human capital resources to the more able siblings. We find larger effects for boys than for girls while they do not differ significantly among poorer and less poorer households.

In about last three decades, many developing countries have experienced a large decline in maternal mortality rates. Global initiatives leading to better maternal health policies may have contributed to this decline. In this paper, we investigate whether maternal health intervention also improves the fetal survival rate. For this purpose, we consider the Village Midwife Program in Indonesia, which was launched in 1989 as a part of the safe motherhood strategy. Using the Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS), we investigate the impact of midwives on fetal survival rate in terms of a change in the likelihood of a live birth being male. Our results show that the provision of a midwife in a community increases the probability of a live birth being male by about 3 percentage points. Greater antenatal care, skilled birth-attendance, and an improvement in nutrition among reproductive-age women—in terms of greater BMI—are the likely pathways. We do not find the results to be driven by pre-treatment trends, and they remain robust to a number of checks.

This paper investigates whether the availability of breastfeeding facilities at the workplace helps to reconcile breastfeeding and work commitments, and whether it has beneficial effects for the health of the child. Using data from the UK Infant Feeding Survey, we find that the availability of breastfeeding facilities at work is associated with longer breastfeeding durations for all women and shorter maternity leave spells for higher educated women. We also find that children born to mothers whose employer offers breastfeeding facilities experience significantly fewer sickness in the first 6 months of life.

This paper investigates the association between religion and female labor market outcomes using new micro-level data on two distinct Muslim denominations in Turkey: Sunni and Alevi Muslims. We find a positive and significant association between being an Alevi Muslim and female labor force participation and employment, whereas there are no significant differences in male labor market outcomes between the two denominations. We provide evidence that Alevi Muslims have more gender-equal views regarding the role of women in the labor market and consider themselves as more modern. Both Sunnis and Alevis consider themselves as believers in religion (Islam). However, Sunnis are more likely to abide by the rules of religion. We argue that differences in views on gender roles and self-identity regarding modernity between the two denominations drive the results on female labor market outcomes.

We study changes in educational homogamy in the US and four European countries over the decade covering the Great Recession. The marital preferences identified point to the widening of the social gap between different educational groups since these preferences have increased the inclination of the individuals to match with others of similar educational traits in all five countries. We obtain this finding with an aggregate measure characterizing revealed preferences of individuals in relationship. We apply a novel approach for validating our finding: we compare our aggregate measure with dating data informative about the reservation points not only of those people who will be in a couple, but also those who will remain single. Finally, we challenge a commonly held view: we argue that marital preferences should not be blamed for the documented increase of the social gap since preferences are not exogenous, but are shaped by changes in the employment prospects of the potential partners.

In 1960s Pakistan, every woman was giving birth to more than 6 children on average. In 2021, Pakistan still has the second-highest fertility rate in South Asia with every woman giving birth to 3.4 children on average. This paper uses four waves of Demographic and Health Survey data to empirically analyze trends in fertility in Pakistan between 1990 and 2018; accounting for wealth, education and locational differences, this paper looks at three additional pathways for reducing fertility: (i) electrification, (ii) access to TV and (iii) family planning commercials broadcast on television. Results show that electricity does not reduce fertility whereas access to television has a significant effect in reducing fertility rates. The content and evolution of Pakistani soap-operas are also discussed, and it is argued that the role models, the types of households and the messages conveyed by these soap-operas may represent strong pathways for the fertility decline.

This paper analyzes the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the within-household gender gap in relation to paid work hours in full-time employed heterosexual couples in Spain. Using the Spanish Labor Force Survey (2019–2020) and a difference-in-differences method, we analyze three stages of the pandemic: strict lockdown, de-escalation, and partial closures to study the short-term effects and potential medium-term effects on gender inequality in terms of paid work hours. Our results suggest that during the strict lockdown period there was a tendency to fall back on traditional family gendered patterns to manage the work–life balance, especially when young children are present in male-headed households. However, this phenomenon seems to be a short-term consequence of the pandemic. The sector of activity (essential or non-essential) has also played a key role, the gender gap increased in male-headed households with female partners employed in non-essential sectors.