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We revisit the effect of long run income growth on population fertility in some of the poorest countries in the world. Causal inference is enabled through proxying income windfalls by oil price shocks in oil rich versus oil poor provinces. We find that long run income growth, following oil windfalls, significantly and robustly reduces fertility in oil producing provinces. To explain these results, we document that oil windfalls have translated to higher incomes in oil-producing provinces promoting parents to invest in the human capital of their children, in terms of acquiring more schooling and delaying girls' age of marriage. Investing in women's education has persisted over the long-run causing a further delay in the age of first marriage and the giving of first birth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Adverse weather shocks in the form of droughts increases violent crime rate in rural Brazil. • This effect appears to persist beyond the growing season and over the medium run. • Weather fluctuations are positively associated with agriculture yields as well as the overall economic activity. • The dominance of opportunity cost mechanism reflected in the income fluctuations of the agriculture and unskilled workers. This paper examines the effect of weather shocks on violent crime using disaggregated data from Brazilian municipalities over the period 1991–2015. Employing a distributed lag model that takes into account temporal correlations of weather shocks and spatial correlation of crime rates, I document that adverse weather shocks in the form of droughts lead to a significant increase in violent crime in rural regions. This effect appears to persist beyond the growing season and over the medium run in contrast to the conventional view perceiving weather effects as transitory. To explain this persistence, I show that weather fluctuations are positively associated not only with agriculture yields, but also with the overall economic activity. Moreover, evidence shows the dominance of opportunity cost mechanism reflected in the fluctuations of the earnings especially for the agriculture and unskilled workers, giving credence that it is indeed the income that matters and not the general socio-economic conditions. Other factors such as local government budget capacity, (un)-employment, poverty, inequality, and psychological factors do not seem to explain violent crime rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]