Increasing the length of parents' birth-related leave: The effect on children's long-term educational outcomes

Investments in children are generally seen as investments in the future economy. In this study I focus on time investments in children as I investigate the long-term educational effects on children of increasing parents' birth-related leave from 14 to 20 weeks using a natural experiment from 1984 in Denmark. The causal effect of the reform is identified using regression discontinuity design to compare a population sample of children born shortly before and shortly after the reform took effect. Results indicate that increasing parents' access to birth-related leave has no measurable effect on children's long-term educational outcomes. Mothers' incomes and career opportunities are slightly positively affected by the reform.     

Job losses and child outcomes

Based on matched employer–employee data from Norway, we analyze the effects of worker displacement in 1986–1987 on their children's earnings in 1999–2001. Using displacement of fathers to indicate an exogenous earnings shock we seek to identify whether family resources have a direct effect on children's economic outcome. Job losses appear to have a negative effect on earnings and employment of those affected, while we find no significant effects on earnings of the next generation.     

Estimating the Consequences of Unintended Fertility for Child Health and Education in Romania: An Analysis Using Twins Data*

We use the natural experiment of twins at first birth to estimate the effects of unplanned fertility on the nutritional status and school enrolment of children in Romania, a country with a unique fertility history. A first‐birth twins shock has negative impacts on children's human capital investments, particularly for later‐born siblings. We infer that harsh pronatalist policies prior to the 1989 Revolution had adverse consequences for the human capital of Romanian children, and that policies to make fertility control easier will have significant positive impacts on children's health and schooling.     

MATERNAL EDUCATION AND CHILD ATTAINMENT IN JAMAICA: TESTING THE BARGAINING POWER HYPOTHESIS†

In a bargaining model of household decision-making, any variable reflecting the outside opportunities of household members will influence household demand patterns. Mother's education has been found to be an important determinant of children's education and health outcomes. This paper argues that within a bargaining framework, mother's education may influence children's health and education by shifting bargaining power within the household. An empirical strategy is developed and applied to data on teenage grade attainment and school enrolment in Jamaica. The results support the bargaining power hypothesis, and imply a broader role for mother's education than has previously been considered.     

Public school availability for two-year olds and mothers' labour supply

French children start public school either the year they turn two or the year they turn three. We evaluate the impact of this unique schooling policy on maternal labour supply. Using a Regression–Discontinuity design, we show that early school availability has a significant employment effect on lone mothers, but no effect on two-parent families. Also we show that the effect grows larger as the child grows older and as the family loses eligibility for child benefits. Finally, we provide some new evidence that school enrolment at the age of two has no adverse effect on children's subsequent educational outcomes.     

A new quantile treatment effect model for studying smoking effect on birth weight during Mother's pregnancy

This paper proposes a new quantile regression model to characterize the heterogeneity for distributional effects of maternal smoking during pregnancy on infant birth weight across different the mother's age. By imposing a parametric restriction on the quantile functions of the potential outcome distributions conditional on the mother's age, we estimate the quantile treatment effects of maternal smoking during pregnancy on her baby's birth weight across different age groups of mothers. The results show strongly that the quantile effects of maternal smoking on low infant birth weight are negative and substantially heterogenous across different ages.     

Self-employment,educational attainment and employment protection legislation

We analyse how educational attainment and employment protection influence an individual's decision to become self-employed. By altering expected income from dependent employment, employment protection is likely to affect an individual's choice of occupation, although such a link has not been established in the literature so far. We argue that an interaction between an individual's educational attainment and the institution of employment protection exists when it comes to the decision regarding whether to become self-employed. Based on survey data from OECD countries, we find evidence for a negative interaction, and conclude that only after taking this interaction into account can the effect of employment protection and educational attainment on self-employment rates be assessed.     

Family income and children's education: Using the Norwegian oil boom as a natural experiment

Parental income is positively correlated with children's educational attainment. This paper addresses the causality of this observed link. We have a unique data set for Norwegians born in the period 1967–1969, with a measure of permanent family income in the children's adolescence. This enables us to examine the long-term effect of family income on children's educational attainment. The Norwegian oil shock in the 1970s is used as an instrument, because this – in some regions but not in others – implied a general increase in income unrelated to parents' abilities. This variation in income is used to estimate the causal effect of family income on children's educational attainment. We find no such causal relationship. This result is robust with respect to different specification tests.     

An empirical model of a household's choice of activities

This paper analyses how households of school-age children choose to participate in the labour force, volunteer work, democratic assemblies, and child-related leisure activities. Contrary to previous studies, the model presented in this paper treats all of these household's choice of activities involving time allocation decisions as simultaneously determined. The empirical section uses qualitative data estimation techniques which permit a wide range of joint and interaction effects among the variables of the model. The results confirm the importance of time-opportunity cost variables as major determinants of household's choice of activities with the mother's education consituting a particularly important factor.     

Family Arrangements and Children's Education Among Migrants: A Case Study of China

As China is experiencing an urban revolution with massive rural-to-urban migration, millions of children are profoundly affected by their parents’ migration and their decisions about family arrangements. With the discriminatory hukou system and harsh living conditions in cities, the dilemma migrant parents face is whether they should take their children with them to the city or leave them behind. This decision determines the household, school and community environments that children live in, which, in turn, shape their well-being. With a unique strategy of comparing ‘left-behind children’ to ‘migrant children’ and a gendered perspective, this article examines how different family arrangements among migrants and consequent housing conditions and gender dynamics affect children's educational well-being. Our findings demonstrate the complex impact of family arrangements on children, which is conditioned by wage income and the gender of the absent parent and the child. We find that children from less favorable socio-economic backgrounds benefit more from moving to cities. Children living with both parents and those living with their mother or grandparents tend to do better. While the effect of housing conditions is marginal, family arrangements have a gendered effect on children. Related policy recommendations are provided.     

STUDENT DEBT EFFECTS ON FINANCIAL WELL‐BEING: RESEARCH AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS

Reviewing the data regarding effects of student debt on students’ financial outcomes following college – whether successful graduation or premature exit – makes clear that there is a price to pay for having to borrow money to go to college. Indebted college graduates have lower net worth, less home equity, and compromised ability to accumulate assets, as compared to their peers with the same level of education but no student debt. They may also experience poorer educational outcomes, with independent effects on earning power and, then, later wealth accumulation. Especially given the relationship between initial household wealth and children's later educational outcomes, these findings about the post‐college financial outcomes of indebted students and graduates raise the specter of ongoing, sustained, and cross‐generational perpetuation of societal divides. In the United States, higher education is valued not just as a good in itself, but also as a means to the end of greater economic security and the primary lever for economic mobility. Evaluating student loans through this lens underscores the long‐term, volatile, and often hidden effects of student loan dependence and raises the stakes for consideration of alternative approaches to higher education finance.     

Maternity rights and mothers' return to work

This paper uses a cohort of 12,000 births to examine the effect of maternity rights on mothers' post-birth return to employment decisions. It uses a discrete hazard model to disentangle the effects of the terms of maternity rights entitlements from other factors that influence the timing of a mother's return to work. Mothers with rights have an underlying (but unobserved) stronger attachment to the labour market that prompts earlier return than on average. We take this into account by estimating a counterfactual distribution of return times using a sample of women who failed to qualify for maternity rights but who have similar levels of labour market attachment. Even when differential attachment is taken into account there remains a substantial impact of maternity rights on behaviour.     

Part‐Time Work,Fixed‐Term Contracts,and the Returns to Experience

Using data from Spanish Social Security records, we investigate the returns to experience for female workers in different flexible work arrangements. Our model consists of four random‐effects equations simultaneously estimated using Markov Chain Monte Carlo techniques. We find a large negative wage effect of working part‐time (PT), which differs by motherhood status and contract type. We also find that working PT involves lower returns to experience than standard full‐time employment and thus a substantial negative wage effect accumulates over time for those employed PT. Finally, our simulations reveal that working PT also raises the probability of working under a fixed‐term contract.     

The effects of mandatory employment arbitration systems on applicants' attraction to organizations

This study draws on organizational justice theory to investigate the effects of mandatory employment arbitration on organizational attraction. Specific attention is given to the characteristics of employment arbitration procedures that moderate the adverse effects these programs have on applicants' intentions to continue with the recruitment process. A total of 389 professional and executive MBA students read simulated employment brochures. Making employment arbitration mandatory was found to have a significant negative main effect on applicant attraction. This negative effect was mitigated when procedures afforded employees more due process considerations and when employees were given a just‐cause protection in return for giving up their right to sue. Finally, this negative effect was greater among minorities than nonminorities. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Marriage Market,Parents’ Bargaining Powers,and Children's Nutrition and Education*

Test of resource pooling and test of effect of sex ratio in the marriage market on intrahousehold resource allocation are combined to test the unitary household model. The consistency condition between the two tests is derived to test the Nash household bargaining and Pareto‐efficient household models. I examine intrahousehold resource allocation to children's nutrition and education in Indonesia. For children's nutrition, the unitary household model is rejected in favour of the non‐unitary models. The results for investment in education are mixed. The decision‐making process may differ depending on the type of decision being made.     

Young people living as couples: How women's labour supply is adapting to the crisis. Spain as a case study

In this paper, we focus on the effects of the Great Recession on the decisions of young women regarding their labour supply. Considering the profound effect of the economic recession on the Spanish labour market, and in particular on the labour supply of young people, the focus of the empirical part of this paper is on Spain. Using EU-SILC 2007 and 2012 micro data for Spain, the labour supply models of women are estimated by age group, with a particular focus on the 20 to 29 and 30 to 39 age bands, in order to establish how young women living in couples exhibit different labour supply propensities according to their partner's labour market status. Correction is made for the non-random selection of women living in couples in the younger age groups. This first analytical step reveals a negative effect on the likelihood of forming a new household in the context of precarious employment conditions. Analytical results regarding the labour supply of women by age group confirmed a discouraging effect of young children on the labour supply of the youngest mothers, as well as a positive effect from being the owner of a house purchased under mortgage.The literature shows that different effects can be at work within the crisis: an added worker effect (AWE), which is countercyclical labour supply behaviour involving an increase in individual labour supply in response to transitory shocks in the partner's earnings, and a procyclical discouraged worker effect. The resulting estimations of the present study suggest an AWE in 2012 for young women living in couples. While in 2012 the discouragement effect was only prevalent for women over 40, in 2007 it was also prevalent among younger women. Women's higher propensity to enter the labour market when their partner becomes unemployed or is persistently unemployed, coupled with their likelihood to be inactive in the presence of young children, would suggest a need for labour market policies targeted towards young women. Childcare facilities could mitigate the latter effect and produce a more continuous work profile, avoiding the negative effects of work experience interruptions on labour supply during the female lifecycle.     

On the Production of Cognitive Achievement and Gaps in Test Scores

Accumulation of cognitive achievement is investigated using an indirect production function, a dynamic econometric model and a rich data set. Gaps between scores of black and white children remain constant, narrow, or disappear entirely as children grow older, depending upon the measure and the family structure. Income elasticities are higher for children of black families, and there are differences in elasticities with respect to parents' educational levels. The effects of fathers' and mothers' educational levels differ. Between children of two‐parent families and mother‐only families, there is a gap that is at least as important as the racial gap.     

TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION AND EMPLOYMENT IN DERIVED LABOUR DEMAND MODELS: A HIERARCHICAL META‐REGRESSION ANALYSIS

The effect of technological innovation on employment is of major concern for workers and their unions, policy makers and academic researchers. We meta‐analyse 570 estimates from 35 primary studies that estimate a derived labour demand model. We contribute to existing attempts at evidence synthesis by addressing the risks of selection bias and that of data dependence in observational studies. Our findings indicate that: (i) hierarchical meta‐regression models are sufficiently versatile for addressing both selection bias and data dependence in observational data; (ii) innovation's effect on employment is positive but small and highly heterogeneous; (iii) only a small part of residual heterogeneity is explained by moderating factors; (iv) selection bias tends to reflect preference for upholding prevalent hypotheses on the employment effects of process and product innovations; (v) country‐specific effect‐size estimates are related to labour market and product market regulation in six OECD countries in a U‐shaped fashion; and (vi) OLS estimates reflect upward bias whereas those based on time‐differenced or within estimators reflect a downward bias. Our findings point out to a range of data quality and modelling issues that should be addressed in future research.     

Are some sectors more “youth friendly” than others? Employment regimes,sectors, and gender disparities in the Great Recession

Despite national differences in youth employment, many countries share striking similarities in the uneven sectoral distribution of job opportunities for young women and men in Europe. A shift‐share analysis of European Labour Force data identifies “youth‐friendly” sectors, how this varies between countries, and how this changed during the Great Recession. This reveals how youth job opportunities were lost because the sector shrank or because employers were less likely to offer full‐time, permanent contracts. New jobs for youth were more likely to be in part‐time and temporary employment. Youth vulnerability to unemployment is contingent not only on employers' engagement with institutions shaping school‐to‐work transitions but also on gender segregation and to the fact that some sectors have been particularly fragile during the economic crisis. Future research needs to link institutional effects with employers' business strategies to understand how these shape job opportunities for young women and men.     

Involuntary part‐time workers in Britain: evidence from the labour force survey

Part‐time employment is widely considered functional for the economy, with both benign and detrimental implications for employees. However, specific analyses of involuntary part‐time work in Britain are surprisingly absent from the flexibility debate, and workers in such positions remain largely under‐researched. This article explores involuntary part‐time employment in relation to socio‐economic circumstances. We analyse Labour Force Survey data, using logistic regression modelling to identify the segments of workers filling part‐time jobs involuntarily. The results suggest that involuntariness for part‐time jobs is affected by a range of demographic and work‐related characteristics considered. Being a couple with dependent children, for example, reduces the likelihood of involuntariness among female part‐time employees whereas lower educational and occupational levels imply a higher involuntariness across both sexes.