Source Themes

Does Paid Family Leave Cause Mothers to Have More Children? Evidence from California

Using the universe of U.S. births and a difference-in-differences strategy, we find that access to leave increases fertility by 2.8 percent, driven by higher order births to mothers in their 30s as well as Hispanic mothers and those with a high school degree.

Equality Pays: Equal Pay Laws and Women’s Life Choices

Improved labor market opportunities for women increase returns to human capital investments and the opportunity cost of marriage and childbearing. This paper uses 1940-1980 U.S. Census data to examine whether equal pay laws designed to reduce sex …

Who are the Essential and Frontline Workers?

We develop a working definition and provide data on the demographic and labor market composition of these workers. We find that the broader group of essential workers comprises a large share of the labor force and tends to mirror its demographic and labor market characteristics. In contrast, the narrower category of frontline workers is, on average, less educated, has lower wages, and has a higher representation of men, disadvantaged minorities, especially Hispanics, and immigrants.

Knowing or Approving?: Abortion Laws and Teen Sexual Behavior

Currently, 37 states in the US have parental involvement in abortion laws. Previous research on risky sexual behavior has lumped the two types of parental involvement laws (notification and consent) into one treatment variable with mixed findings. …

The Association Between Family Factors and the Gender Wage Gap: The Case of Computer Science

Encouraging women to pursue degrees and employment in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields is a key component of government and industry efforts to reduce gender inequality. Yet women’s representation in computer science …

Culture and gender allocation of tasks: source country characteristics and the division of non-market work among US immigrants

Using data from the 2003–2017 waves of the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), we find that first-generation immigrants, both women and men, from source countries with more gender equality (as measured by the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index) allocate tasks more equally, while those from less gender equal source countries allocate tasks more traditionally.