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If mothers take care of children more than fathers, then after the onset of COVID-19 mothers' employment is expected to drop more than that of fathers. This gender gap is likely to be larger where women are less concerned about the financial repercussions of opting out of the labor force, and therefore the gender gap in employment is likely to grow more where community property or homemaking provisions give more protection to homemakers in case of union dissolution. Difference-in-differences and dynamic study estimations applied to CPS data for 2019-2020 show that after the onset of COVID-19 the labor force participation of mothers of school-age children-but not of fathers--dropped more in states with marital property laws more generous to parental caregivers. These results stand in contrast to how these groups' labor force participation changed after the Great Recession, compared to pre-recession levels.

The global burden of tuberculosis (TB) in children remains high. There is increasing attention from clinicians and public health perspectives about this trend, as new occurrence of TB in children is a sentinel event and an indicator of ongoing transmission in the community. The variation in clinical presentations, lack of standardized case definition, difficulty in making diagnosis and subsequent notification made the management and control of tuberculosis in pediatric population very challenging. Over the past decade, there are noticeable advances in our understanding of the disease, diagnostics and management TB in children. This article provides an overview and update on the epidemiology, natural history, clinical manifestations, various diagnostic tests and treatment of TB in children.

The liberalization of divorce laws has reduced the commitment value of marriage and household specialization. I examine how the homemaking provision in family law that gives recognition to the contribution of homemakers in marriage in the division of marital properties at divorce affects spousal time allocation. Conceivably such law could enhance the gender division of labor within the household. I develop a non-cooperative household model to analyze the effects of the provision on spousal behavior. The empirical findings provide support for the non-cooperative household model, particularly under unilateral divorce regimes where it is difficult for partners to make long-term commitment to their partners. Consistent with the implications from the model, the results show that the unilateral divorce regimes with the homemaking provision is associated with wives increasing their housework and reducing their labor supply. The study highlights the importance in legally delineating the property rights of homemakers in marital property division at divorce, in inducing women to invest in their marriage, especially when divorce is unilateral, which could hinder spousal co-operation.

Since the end of the 1990s, increasingly more states in the US have proposed introducing or lengthening the separation/waiting periods required for divorce as a policy tool to strengthen marriage and discourage divorce. I use the variation in the timing of states’ implementation of shortened waiting periods for divorce to analyze the effects of divorce waiting periods on remarriage. I find remarriage rates to decrease among younger age cohorts but increase among their older counterparts when the waiting period is reduced to 1.5 years or less. To the extent that remarriage is an important route for aging women impoverished by divorce to recover their economic and emotional wellbeing, the results suggest that while introducing a cooling-off period for divorce might allow for the preservation of some marriages, a lengthy separation period could also harm older divorced women by hampering their remarriage prospects.

Positive assortative matching in terms of traits like ethnicity, race and personality has been prevalent in marital formation. One possible explanation for this is that spouses in endogamous marriages have complementary skills and tastes that increase marital surplus. This paper aims to estimate the effects of ethnic assortative matching on a variety of household outcomes by using the exogenous variation in immigrant flows in the United States during the period 1900-1930 to disentangle the selection effect of partners. The major finding is that the complementarities in home production from same ethnic marriage enhance investment in household public goods such as childrearing and home ownership and reduce the market labor supply of wives. OLS estimates of this effect appear to be substantially biased downward, indicating positive selection into intermarriage in terms of unobservable traits that increase marital surplus.

Since the end of 1990s increasingly more states propose to introduce or lengthen waiting periods required for divorce as a policy tool to strengthen marriage and discourage divorce. I make use of the variation in the timing of states that shortened their separation requirement for divorce during the period of the liberalization of divorce to analyze the effects of the length of separation period on divorce and remarriage. I find that divorce rates rose when states shortened their waiting period but the remarriage rates among the older age cohorts were also increased by the shortened separation period, particularly for women. To the extent that remarriage is an important route for women impoverished by divorce to recover their economic and emotional wellbeing, the results suggest that while introducing a cooling-off period for divorce might allow for preservation of some marriages, a lengthy separation period might also worsen the remarriage prospects of divorced women.

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) was enacted under Clinton administration to strengthen the child support system and promote parental responsibility through tougher enforcement and paternity establishment. Low-income fathers are particularly hard hit by the enforcement. This paper uses state-level data to analyze the effect of tougher child support enforcement and paternity establishment on crime rates. I find a strong, positive effect between the child support order rate and the introduction of income withholding for child support on crime. But an increase in the paternity establishment rate will lower crime rate.

A variety of states in the United States have adopted the "homemaking provision" in their divorce laws since the 1980's. The provision requires judges to recognize homemakers' contribution to their marriages in dividing marital properties at divorce. I model the marital decisions of couples as a sequential game, in which the gain to marriage increases with household specialization. The potential wife's decision in whether to specialize in home production depends on whether she is legally protected by the homemaking provision, as the law would reinforce her post-divorce property rights and therefore increase her bargaining power within marriage. This in turn affects the equilibrium marital outcomes. I use the variation in the timing of the passage of the homemaking provision to identify its effect on marriage. I find that the provision substantially increases marriages using both state and individual level data.

I examine John Maynard Keynes’ struggle with the doctrine of the classical forced saving during the period 1924-1936 from when he worked on 'A Treatise on Money' to the completion of his 'General Theory'. The forced saving notion has been developed as a key mechanism of how monetary expansion results in wealth redistribution and change in production in the classical school. I primarily focus on the role of discussion and criticism in the development of Keynes’ thought. I investigate what led John Maynard Keynes to completely abolish ideas related to forced saving and place his emphasis on effective demand in the 'General Theory' and its process. I provide evidence suggesting that the development of the 'General Theory' is closely linked with the abolition of the forced saving doctrine and argue that such notion is internally inconsistent with 'Fundamental Equations' and subsequent theory of effective demand in the explanation of the problem of unemployment.