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A childhood intervention to improve the social skills and self-control of at-risk kindergarten boys in the 1980s had positive impacts over the life course: higher trust and self-control as adolescents; increased social group membership, education, and reduced criminality as young adults; and increased marriage and employment as adults. Using administrative data, we find this intervention increased average yearly employment income by about 20 percent and decreased average yearly social transfers by almost 40 percent. We estimate that $1 invested in this program around age 8 yields about $11 in benefits by age 39, with an internal rate of return of around 17 percent. (JEL I21, I26, I28, J13, J24, J31, Z13)

The present paper investigates the correlation between the French tax rebate triggered by the birth of a child and the probability to bring forward childbirth from late December to early January. Using administrative tax data from 2010 to 2016, we precisely simulate the corresponding tax rebate for households in which a child was born from mid-December to mid-January. Contrary to prior research, we did not find clear evidence of a significant link between the tax rebate brought about by a supplementary dependent child on the tax return and the probability of a December birth. Either the amount of the incentive may not be large enough or households may not correctly anticipate the corresponding tax rebate. Nevertheless, a small learning effect is present. According to our results, a significant correlation between the tax rebate and the probability of having a child in December is only observed among the wealthiest half of households that also benefit from a relatively large tax rebate. However, this seems to be due to a spurious correlation. Instead, our results reflect the willingness of parents to avoid childbirth on a public holiday.

International audience; We estimate the causal effect of losing a father in the U.S. Civil War on children's long-run socioeconomic outcomes. Linking military records from the 2.2 million Union Army soldiers with the 1860 U.S. population census, we track soldiers' sons into the 1880 and 1900 census. Sons of soldiers who died had lower occupational income scores and were less likely to work in a high-or semiskilled job as opposed to being low-skilled or farmers. These effects persisted at least until the 1900 census. Our results are robust to instrumenting paternal death with the mortality rate of the father's regiment, which we argue was driven by military strategy that did not take into account the social origins of soldiers. Prewar family wealth is a strong mitigating factor: there is no effect of losing a father in the top quartile of the wealth distribution.

We use an overlapping generations setup with two reproductive periods to explore how fertility decisions may differ in response to economic incentives in early and late adulthood. In particular, we analyze the interplay between fertility choices-related to career opportunities-and wages, and investigate the role played by late fertility. We show that young adults only postpone parenthood above a certain wage threshold and that late fertility increases with investment in human capital. The long run trend is either to a low productivity equilibrium, involving high early fertility, no investment in human capital and relatively low income, or to a high productivity equilibrium, where households postpone parenthood to invest in their human capital, with higher late fertility and higher levels of income. A convergence to the latter state would explain the postponement of parenthood and the fertility rebound observed in Europe in recent decades.

International audience; The old-age security motive for fertility postulates that people’s needs for old-age support raise the demand for children. We exploit the extension of social pensions in Namibia during the 1990s to provide a quasi-experimental quantification of this widespread idea. The reform eliminated inequalities in pension coverage and benefits across regions and ethnic groups. Combining differences in pre-reform pensions and differences in exposure across cohorts, we show that pensions substantially reduce fertility, especially in late reproductive life. The results suggest that improving social protection for the elderly could go a long way in fostering fertility decline in sub-Saharan Africa. (JEL H55, I38, J13, J14, O15)

I study the reaction of donors to the US allocation of family planning aid. Family planning offers an interesting case to understand donor interactions. First, projects are relatively similar from one donor to another, easing substitution between donors. Second, one donor, the US, dominates the sector but its foreign policy on family planning has undergone several changes, related to domestic debates on abortion. European donors clearly express their position against these changes and pledge to substitute the US. Exploiting the timing of the Mexico City Policy to instrument the US allocation, I find that, on average, other donors do not react to the US. Donors only react in countries where abortion is on request suggesting that budget constraints do not allow donors to compensate for the US withdrawal in all countries.

International audience; L'aide internationale au planning familial est dominée par un bailleur de fonds, les USA, dont l'allocation dépend de débats nationaux autour de l'avortement. Ce papier regarde comment les autres donateurs ajustent leur financement en réaction. Les autres donateurs s'emparent alors de ce problème pour exister dans le secteur du planning familial. Sous les mandatures de G.W. Bush et de D. Trump, les pays européens, par l'intermédiaire du parlement européen et des commissaires en charge de l'aide au développement, ont ainsi condamné cette politique et affirmé qu'ils allaient compenser les pertes. Toutefois plusieurs raisons suggèrent que la réalité puisse être différente. La taille des budgets des autres donateurs est relativement faible 1 Ce travail a bénéficié d'une aide de l'Etat opérée par l'Agence Nationale de la Recherche au titre du plan d'investissement France 2030 portant la référence ANR-17-EURE-0020 et de l'Initiative d'Excellence d'Aix-Marseille Université-A* MIDEX. 2 Cela regroupe les activités permettant aux femmes de contrôler le nombre et le calendrier de ses grossesses : conseil, contraception, avortement, procréation médicalement assistée en cas d'infertilité. 3 L'aide est interdite pour les pays pratiquant des stérilisations forcées, mise en avant les méthodes traditionnelles et naturelles de contraception, fin de la recherche sur la pilule abortive…

A large literature points towards the importance of early life circumstance in determining long-run human capital and wellbeing outcomes. This literature often justifies a focus on the very early years by citing the first 1000 days of life as a 'critical period' for child development, but this notion has rarely been directly tested. In a setting in which children are potentially subject to shocks in every year of their childhood, I estimate the impact of early life weather shocks on adult cognitive and socioemotional outcomes for individuals born in rural Indonesia between 1988 and 2000. There is a strong critical period for these shocks at age 2 for cognitive development, but no similar critical period for socioemotional development. The impacts of the shocks are likely to be taking place through nutritional and agricultural income channels. These impacts are initially latent, only appearing after age 15. I show suggestive evidence for dynamic complementarity in early life investments.

Job insecurity is one of the risks that workers face on the labour market. As with any risk, individuals can choose to insure against it, and we here consider marriage as one potential source of this insurance. The 1999 rise in the French Delalande tax, paid by larger private firms when they laid off workers aged 50 or over, led to an exogenous rise in job insecurity for the uncovered (younger workers) in these larger firms. A difference-in-differences analysis using French panel data reveals that this greater job insecurity for the under-50s led to a significant rise in their probability of marriage, and especially when the partner had greater job security, consistent with marriage providing insurance against labour-market risk.

This paper investigates the impact of income shocks and bride price on early marriage in Turkey. Weather shocks provide an exogenous source of variation of household income through agricultural production. A decrease in rainfall observed over the 9 months period corresponding to the growing season is found to negatively affect both agricultural production and returns for the majority of crops and vegetables. Data on weather shocks are merged with individual and household level data from the Turkish Demographic and Health Surveys 1998 to 2013. The practice of bride-price, still vivid in many regions of the country, may provide incentives for parents to marry their daughter earlier, when faced with a negative income shock. In addition, marriages precipitated by negative income shocks may present specific features (endogamy, age and education difference between spouses). To study the role of payments to the bride's parents, we interact our measure of shocks with a province-level indicator of a high prevalence of bride-price. We find that girls living in provinces with a high practice of bride-price and exposed to a negative income shocks when aged 12-14 (resp. 12-17) have a 28% (resp. 20%) higher probability to be married before the age of 15 (resp. 18). Such women are also more likely to give birth to their first child before 18 and for those who married religiously first, the civil ceremony is delayed by 2 months on average. Our results suggest that girl marriage still participates to household strategies aimed at mitigating negative income shocks in contemporary Turkey.

Current measurement of sex-selective abortion is based on observing an imbalance be tween the sex ratio at birth and the natural sex ratio, providing us with the number of missing female foetuses. However, this measure does not tell us how widespread this phenomenon is, i.e., how many women abort, which will not be equal to the number of sex-selective abortions if there is repeated sex-selective abortion. In this paper, we show that the number of women that abort between two consecutive births and whether they do so repeatedly can be inferred using sex ratios and information on birth spacing. We apply our model to Indian DHS data to estimate how many women abort and to assess whether they do so repeatedly between two births. The results depend on the birth order and siblings composition: For example, we find that women whose first born is a girl abort at most once before the birth of the second child, i.e., (almost) none of them abort a second time if again pregnant with a girl after a first abortion. In contrast, we find evidence of repeated sex-selective abortion before the birth of the third child among women whose first two children are girls. We also introduce a novel constrained maximum likelihood estimator that imposes a (set of) random constraint(s) and that may be of independent interest.

Stay-at-home policies due to the Covid-19 pandemic have drastically increased housework and childcare. During the lockdown, couples were harshly challenged by this novel situation which could notably redistribute roles and/or could also lead to intrahousehold conflicts. In this paper, we use individual data collected from an online survey on French partnered women during the confinement of the 2020 Spring to investigate the lockdown’s effects on the household chores allocation and tensions in the couple. We show that the lockdown did not offer an opportunity to strongly renegotiate the housework and childcare division between the partners, as women still did the lion’s share during this period. Men only changed their participation in household chores when they became a ”quasi-leisure” because of the pandemic (as for shopping or playing with child). We also document that an unbalanced division of the increased household chores during the lockdown, in particular on cleaning and childcare, is directly linked to an increase of the intrahousehold conflicts. To conclude, this period did not structurally affect gender roles and stereotypes at home, despite minor intrahousehold changes.

There is a large literature on the existence of a child penalty for mothers after the birth of a child. There is little discernible effect on fathers’ labour incomes, although some studies find that there is a premium. We measure the penalty due to the birth of a first child for both parents for cohorts of young adults after leaving the educational system. Using an event study approach, this paper contributes to the literature by examining the child penalty in France not only in terms of monthly earnings, but also the employment rate, working hours, hourly earnings, and other outcomes. Using on a rich dataset, we estimate child penalty by educational level and for different cohorts. We find evidence of a significant child penalty for mothers: 23% in monthly earnings overall, rising to 35% for those with secondary education only. For the 2010 cohort, we observe the same level of absolute child penalties for mothers, whereas the relative penalty has narrowed. This is due to a decrease in monthly earnings, and more precisely in employment rate of fathers before and after the birth of the child in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis.

International audience; Recent theoretical developments in growth models, triggered particularly by unified theories of growth, suggest that the child quantity-quality trade-off is a defining element in our explanation of a transition from Malthusian stagnation to a sustained growth path. This paper presents a model and derives a testable empirical framework to investigate the role of gender in the trade-off between education and fertility for 86 French counties during the 19th century. Endogeneity-mitigated mean-and median-based regressions offer robust empirical predictions for gender-empowered quantity-quality trade-off. In particular, we find the existence of a significant and negative association between education and fertility. Further, while gauging the differential effects of schooling on fertility, we find that the short-run differences between male and female are small whilst the long-run effects are large. From policy perspective, our results imply that for stable long-run growth it matters not just that parents educate their children, but specifically that they choose to educate girls.

The paper aims to highlight the impact of youth resentment on violent conflicts in Burkina Faso. This work takes advantage of one of the latest nationwide UNICEF-sponsored surveys conducted in Burkina Faso before some parts of the country became inaccessible because of attacks. Among other information, this survey collected data on youth resentment towards the ability of their household to fulfill their needs. This resentment is closely related to perceived relative deprivation. We merge this survey into an original dataset that gathers data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), mining data from the MINEX project, and distances data computed using Burkina Faso’s roads information. The results of an event count model show that youth resentment explains the occurrence of conflicts. Moreover, the presence of mining companies, the remoteness from infrastructures, ethnic diversity, and polarization also significantly affect violence against civilians.

Does exposure to tropical cyclones affect fertility? This paper tackles this issue byexploiting geolocated microdata from the Malagasy Demographic and Health Surveytogether with wind field data generated by tropical cyclones hitting Madagascar duringthe 1985-2009 period. The mothers’ fertility history available in the microdata allowsus to construct a panel dataset indicating if a mother gave birth during a given yearand if she has been exposed to a tropical cyclone. By means of panel regressions, thatallows a full control of unobserved heterogeneities, we then estimate the causal effect oftropical cyclone shocks on female likelihood of giving birth. We find evidence that theeffect of tropical cyclone exposure on motherhood is significantly negative. In particular,being exposed to wind speed of 100 km/h implies a fall in the probability of giving birthof 25.6 points in the current year together with further decline of 5.9 and 2.0 pointsrespectively one and two years after being exposed. Alternative specifications of ourbaseline model provide further insights. First, we find mixed evidence of intensificationeffects. Second, we find no evidence of non-linearities in the effect. Third, the negativeeffect is stronger before 1998. Fourth, the effect of tropical cyclone on motherhood ispersistent since in an extended model estimated coefficients are significantly negativeup to seven years after being exposed. The estimated effect is shown to be robust tothe use of alternative formulation of the wind speed variable but also to an alternativetreatment of geolocated data.

We investigate the effects of early-life exposure to war on adult health outcomes including cancer, hypertension, angina, infarction, diabetes and obesity. We combine data from the French prospective cohort study E3N on women employed in the French National Education with historical data on World War II. To identify causal effects, we exploit exogenous spatial and temporal variation in war exposure related to the German invasion of France during the Battle of France. The number of French military casualties at the level of the postcode area serves as main measure of exposure. Our results suggest that exposure to the war during the first 5 years of life has significant adverse effects on health in adulthood. A 10 percent increase in the number of deaths per 100,000 inhabitants in the individual's postcode area of birth increases the probability of suffering from any of the health conditions considered in this study by 0.08 percentage points. This is relative to a mean of 49 percent for the sample as a whole.

This paper examines a novel negative impact of trade tariffs and the costs they induce by documenting how protectionism reversed the long-term improvements in education and the fertility transition that were well under way in late 19th-century France. The Méline tariff, a tariff on cereals introduced in 1892, was a major protectionist shock that shifted relative prices in favor of agriculture and away from industry. In a context in which the latter was more intensive in skills than agriculture, the tariff reduced the relative return to education, which in turn affected parents' decisions about the quantity and quality of children. We use regional differences in the importance of cereal production in the local economy to estimate the impact of the tariff. Our findings indicate that the tariff reduced enrolment in primary education and increased birth rates and fertility. The magnitude of these effects was substantial, with the tariff offsetting the increasing trend in enrolment rates and the decreasing one in birth rates by a decade.

Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we analyze the effects of exposure to trade on the fertility and marital behavior of German workers. We find that individuals working in sectors that were more affected by import competition from Eastern Europe and suffered worse labor market outcomes were less likely to have children. In contrast, workers in sectors that benefited from increased exports had better employment prospects and higher fertility. These effects are driven by low-educated and married men, and reflect changes in the likelihood of having any child (extensive margin). While among workers exposed to import competition there is evidence of some fertility postponement, we find a significant reduction of completed fertility. There is instead little evidence of any significant effect on marital behavior.

Although it is recognized that parental time is a strong determinant of child development, little is known about heterogeneity across the effects of parental time. Using the Longitudinal Survey of Australian Children, I model the cognitive and socio-emotional skills production functions for children born in 1999-2000, from 4 to 11 years old, using, among others, a cumulative value-added and a generalized method of moments model. I find that the effect on children's verbal and socioemotional skills of time spent on educational activities with the father is smaller than that with the mother or both parents together. For socio-emotional skills, this difference seems to be driven by fathers who spend little time with their children.

International audience; The aim of this article is to examine the extent to which the reform of parental leave, which came into force in January 2015, may have changed the likelihood of mothers using this system, since the parental leave benefit no longer covers the entire period from birth to the child’s schooling. To identify the causal impact of this reform, we use the data from the Labour Force Survey and implement an empirical methodology that combines a discontinuity design with a difference-in-differences approach. This reform has reduced the likelihood of taking full-time parental leave by around 10 percentage points. In addition, the mothers most affected by this reform are the least educated and private sector employees.; L’objectif de cet article est d’étudier dans quelle mesure la réforme du congé parental, entrée en vigueur en janvier 2015, a pu modifier la probabilité des mères d’avoir recours à ce dispositif, l’indemnisation ne couvrant plus désormais l’intégralité de la période allant de la naissance jusqu’à la scolarisation de l’enfant. Pour identifier l’effet causal de cette réforme, nous exploitons les données de l’enquête Emploi et mettons en œuvre une méthodologie combinant régression sur discontinuité et doubles différences. Cette réforme a eu pour conséquence de réduire la probabilité de recourir au congé parental à temps plein d’environ 10 points de pourcentage. En outre, les mères les plus particulièrement affectées par cette réforme sont les moins diplômées et les salariées du secteur privé.

We revisit fertility analysis in Tunisia by examining family interference in birth control through: woman's marriage age, post-marriage delay in the first use of contraception, past and current contraceptive use, and choice of the birth control methods. Using data from the 2001 PAP-FAM Tunisian survey, we find that the significant effects of covariates arise and vanish across stage-specific equations as women progress in their lifecycle. In Tunisia, family links and socio-cultural environment appear to greatly shape fertility regulation in the direction of higher fertility. This calls for more intensive involvement of the extended families in family planning policies. This also suggests that the resurgence of traditionalist politico-religious movements, often associated with youth radicalization, may affect future fertility in Tunisia through an increase in family influences on birth control by married women.

I examine the causal effect of paternal absence during the first years of life on early childhood development. I take advantage of Young Lives study, a unique panel dataset including skill outcomes of pairs of siblings with different levels of paternal involvement. With a difference in difference approach, I first compare the younger sibling exposed to the father's absence in the early years versus the older one exposed at age 5. Then, I control for the gap in skills between siblings living in households with no absence. Results show that paternal absence in the early years leads to a relative worsening in nutritional outcomes when 5 years old. The gap persists when 8 and 12 years old, with no evidence of cumulative effects. On the contrary, younger siblings relatively outperform their older counterparts in cognition in Peru and Vietnam, sta tistically significant for the former country. These findings are consistent with critical windows for ability development during the first 1,000 days of life. I find support for this conclusion as I observe no strong evidence on differences in development when absence occurs at age 5 for the younger and 8 for the older sibling.

This study exploits the introduction of high subsidies for anti-malaria products in Senegal in 2009 to investigate if malaria prevents parents to invest in child health. Building upon the seminal paper of Dow et al. (1999), we develop a simple model of health investments under competing mortality risks, in which people allocate expenses to equalize lifetime across all causes of death. We predict that private health investments to fight malaria as well as other diseases should increase in response to anti-malaria public interventions. To test this prediction, we use original panel data from a Senegalese household survey combined with geographical information on malaria prevalence. Our strategy is to compare the evolution of child health expenditures before and after anti-malaria interventions, between malarious and non-malarious regions of Senegal. We find that health expenditures in malarious regions catch up with non-malarious regions, at the extensive and intensive margins, and both in level and in composition. The same result holds for parental health-seeking behavior in case of other diseases like diarrhea. We provide evidence that these patterns cannot be explained by differential trends in total income or access to healthcare or child morbidity between malarious and non-malarious regions. Our results suggest that behavioral responses to anti-malaria campaigns magnify their impact on all-cause mortality for children.

The paper aims to highlight the impact of youth satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) on the occurrence of violent conflicts in Burkina Faso. This work takes advantage of one of the latest nationwide UNICEF-sponsored survey conducted in Burkina Faso before some parts of the country became inaccessible because of attacks. Among other pieces of information, this survey collected data on youth resentment towards the ability of their household to fulfill their needs. Alongside data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), mining data from the MINEX project, and distances data computed using Burkina Faso's roads information are mobilized. Relying on the negative binomial regressor, our results show that youth resentment has a positive and significant impact on the occurrence of conflicts. Moreover, the presence of mining companies, the remoteness from infrastructures, ethnic diversity, and polarization also affect significantly the occurrence of violence against civilians.

International audience; Although it is widely acknowledged that non-cognitive skills matter for adult outcomes, little is known about the role played by family environment in the formation of these skills. We use a longitudinal survey of children born in the UK in 2000–2001, the Millennium Cohort Study by the Centre for Longitudinal Studies, to estimate the effect of family size on socio-emotional skills, measured by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. To account for the endogeneity of fertility decisions, we use a well-known instrumental approach that exploits parents’ preference for children’s gender diversity. We show that the birth of a third child negatively affects the socio-emotional skills of the first two children in a persistent manner. However, we show that this negative effect is entirely driven by girls. We provide evidence that this gender effect is partly driven by an unequal response of parents’ time investment in favour of boys and, to a lesser extent, by an unequal demand for household chores.

International audience; In this study, we ask whether the U-shaped relationship between life satisfactionand age is flatter for individuals who are partnered. An analysis of cross-sectionalEU-SILC data indicates that the decline in life satisfaction from the teens to thefifties is almost four times larger for non-partnered than for partnered individuals,whose life satisfaction essentially follows a slight downward trajectory with age.However, the same analysis applied to three panel datasets (BHPS, SOEP andHILDA) reveals a U-shape for both groups, albeit somewhat flatter for the partneredthan for the non-partnered individuals. We suggest that the difference between thecross-sectional and the panel results reflects compositional effects: i.e., there isa significant shift of the relatively dissatisfied out of marriage in mid-life. Thesecompositional effects tend to flatten the U-shape in age for the partnered individualsin the cross-sectional data.

Son preference prevails widely in South and East Asia and is demonstrated by sex-selection methods such as differential stopping and sex-selective abortion. Differential birth-spacing is another possible way by which this disproportionate desire for sons could manifest itself. The time span before moving on to the next pregnancy may be short as long as sons have not been born. Shorter birth spacing leads to higher demand on the mother's body, leading to higher health risk to both mother and child. In addition there is greater competition among siblings for parental care and resources. In this study, we examine this phenomenon by using three demographic and health surveys of Pakistani households covering the period from 1990-91 to 2012-13 and carrying out a set of duration model estimations. We investigate if and how preference for sons affects birth-spacing, if this relationship has evolved over time, if it depends on the order, number or overall proportion of sons born,and whether it increases the probability of risky births (those less than 24 or 18 months from the previous birth). We gauge the type of households in which this phenomenon appears to be more prevalent. We find strong evidence for differential behaviour at early parities throughout the period. Women whose first or second children are sons have significantly longer subsequent birth intervals compared with women with no sons. Birth-spacing differs substantially by parity and number of children. Sex of the firstborn is another significant factor. The association seems to have undergone little significant change over the past two decades. Besides, the likelihood of risky births is higher among women without one or more sons. This phenomenon of gender-specific lengthy and risky birth intervals is prevalent more among households that are wealthier or nuclear and among women with greater say in intra-household decisions.; L’espacement différencié entre les naissances est un exemple démontrant comment le phénomène de préférence pour les garçons peut se manifester. La période précédant la prochaine grossesse peut être courte tant que le nombre désiré des garçons n’est pas né. Une période limitée entre les naissances entraine plus de pression sur le corps des femmes, plus de risques en matière de santé pour la mère et son enfant. De plus, il existe une plus grande rivalité entre les enfants concernant les soins et les ressources des parents.Nous étudions ce phénomène à partir de trois enquêtes démographiques et de santé réalisées auprès de différents ménages pakistanais de 1990-91 à 2012-2013. Nous voulons savoir si et comment la préférence pour les garçons affecte l’écart entre deux naissances, si cette relation évolue sur la période, si elle dépend de l’ordre de naissance, du nombre ou de la part de garçons nés, et si cela accroit la probabilité de naissances risquées. Nous étudions également le profil de ménage où ce phénomène est plus récurrent.En utilisant des méthodes d’estimation paramétriques semi et non paramétriques, nous trouvons des indices forts en faveure d’espacement différencié pour les premières naissances tout au long de la période. Les femmes qui ont d’abord eu deux garçons attendent entre 13 et 17% plus de temps avant une troisième naissance que celles qui n’ont pas eu de garçons. L’espacement varie de façon significative par ordre des naissances et le nombre d’enfants. Le sexe du premier enfant également joue un rôle important. En outre il existe une probabilité plus forte de naissances risquées.Ce comportement est plus répandu dans les familles plus riches ou nucléaires, avec des femmes plus âgées, plus éduquées ou qui ont un poids plus important dans les prises de décision au sein du ménage. Ces résultats ont des répercussions importantes pour la santé maternelle et infantile au Pakistan.

Job insecurity can have wide-ranging consequences outside of the labour market. We here argue that it reduces fertility amongst the employed. The 1999 rise in the French Delalande tax, paid by large private firms when they laid off workers aged over 50, produced an exogenous rise in job insecurity for younger workers in these firms. A difference-in-differences analysis of French ECHP data reveals that this greater job insecurity for these under-50s significantly reduced their probability of having a new child by 3.9 percentage points. Reduced fertility is only found at the intensive margin: job insecurity reduces family size but not the probability of parenthood itself. Our results also suggest negative selection into parenthood, as this fertility effect does not appear for low-income and less-educated workers.

How to allocate limited resources among children is a crucial household decision, especially in developing countries where it might have strong implications for children and family survival. We study how variations in parental income in the early life of their children affect subsequent child health and parental investments across siblings, using micro data from multiple waves of the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) spanning 54 developing countries. Variations in the world prices of locally produced crops are used as measures of local income. We find that children born in periods of higher income durably enjoy better health and receive better human capital (health and education) investments than their siblings. Children whose older siblings were born during favourable income periods receive less investment and exhibit worse health in absolute terms. We interpret these within-household reallocations in light of economic and evolutionary theories that highlight the importance of efficiency considerations in competitive environments. Finally, we study the implications of these for aggregate child health inequality, which is found to be higher in regions exposed to more volatile crop prices.

We use quasi-random variation in graduation years during the onset of a very deep national recession to study the relationship between early labor market conditions and young females' family formation outcomes. A policy-pilot affecting the length of upper-secondary education in Swedish vocational schools allows us to compare females who graduated into the onset of the Swedish financial crisis of the 1990s to those graduating during the final phase of the preceding economic boom while netting out the main effect of the policy. We find that graduating straight into the recession had negative labor market consequences during the first few years but we find no evidence of permanent labor market scars. In contrast, graduating into the crisis had lasting effects on family formation outcomes of low-grade students in particular. Those who graduated into the recession because of the policy-pilot formed their first stable partnerships earlier and had their first children earlier. Their partners had lower grades, which we show to be a strong predictor of divorce, and worse labor market performance. Divorces were more prevalent and the ensuing increase in single motherhood was long-lasting. These negative effects on marital stability generated persistent increases in the use of welfare benefits despite the short-lived impact on labor market outcomes. The results suggest that young women respond to early labor market prospects by changing the quality threshold for entering into family formation, a process which affects the frequency of welfare-dependent single mothers during more than a decade thereafter.

International audience; This paper investigates the effect of parental separation on children's allocation of their time and on the time spent with their parents. Based on detailed time-use diaries from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics-Child Development Supplement, I estimate an individual fixed-effect model and find that being in a single-parent family decreases time with a parent accessible by 18% of a standard deviation (3 hours 30 minutes per week). Time spent with both parents together and alone with the non-custodial parent is greatly affected, but the custodial parent partially compensates for this decrease. The decrease in time with a parent actively engaged in activities is, however, not statistically significant. Younger children continue spending as much time with their parents after separation. Effects on boys and girls differ, but this difference depends on the type of parental time investment we consider. Time spent with a grandparent acts as a recovery channel in single-mother families. Time with a step-parent increases but does not lead to an accumulation of parental time.

We examine the extent to which recent declines in child mortality and fertility in Sub-Saharan Africa can be attributed to insecticide-treated bed nets (ITNs). Exploiting the rapid increase in ITNs since the mid-2000s, we employ a difference-in-differences estimation strategy to identify the causal effect of ITNs on mortality and fertility. We show that the ITN distribution campaigns reduced all-cause child mortality, but surprisingly increased total fertility rates in the short run in spite of reduced desire for children and increased contraceptive use. We explain this paradox in two ways. First, we show evidence for an unexpected increase in fecundity and sexual activity due to the better health environment after the ITN distribution. Second, we show evidence that the effect on fertility is positive only temporarily – lasting only 1-3 years after the beginning of the ITN distribution programs – and then becomes negative. Taken together, these results suggest the ITN distribution campaigns may have caused fertility to increase unexpectedly and temporarily, or that these increases may just be a tempo effect – changes in fertility timing which do not lead to increased completed fertility.

Results from a randomized experiment conducted with teenage schoolgirls in Cameroon suggest that HIV prevention interventions can be effective at reducing the incidence of teen pregnancy in the following 9-12 months by over 25 percent. We find little difference in effectiveness between one-time, one-hour sessions delivered directly to students by specialized consultants and sessions delivered through regularschool staff trained over two days by specialized consultants. We also find little difference between the standard “Abstain, Be Faithful, Use Condoms” curriculum and an enriched curriculum that includes informationon the heightened risk of cross-generational sex. Lastly, a one-time, one-hour self-administered questionnaire on HIV and sexual behavior has an equally large impact on teen pregnancy. These results suggest that rural teenage schoolgirls’ sexual behavior is highly responsive to even small interventions that make the risks of HIV and pregnancy salient. We find no effects among urban schoolgirls, who are more exposed to information and experience much lower rates of teenage pregnancy under the statusquo.

This paper combines detailed household-level data on child health with geo-coded incidences of vi- olence in Iraq to estimate the impact of in-utero exposure to violence on biometric, behavioral and cognitive outcomes of children. Rich data on severity (duration and casualties), type (bombings, ex- plosions, gun_re etc.), and perpetrators of violence (coalition, insurgent, or sectarian) on the district level allow me to discriminate between two possible mechanisms: damages to the infrastructure versus violence-induced pre-natal stress for mothers. Comparing siblings within the same household, I find that one single violent incidence during pregnancy significantly increases the risk of stuntedness, malnutrition and weakens major cognitive and behavioral skills. While the type of violence does not seem to play a major role, the perpetrator of violence seems to matter. Violent acts that explicitly target the civilian population, even if they have little e_ect on the general infrastructure, appear to be the driver behind the effect.

Although it is widely acknowledged that non-cognitive skills matter for adult outcomes, little is known about the role played by family environment in the formation of these skills. We use a longitudinal survey of children born in the UK in 2000-2001, the Millennium Cohort Study by the Centre for Longitudinal Studies, to estimate the effect of family size on socio-emotional skills, measured by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. To account for the endogeneity of fertility decisions, we use a well-known instrumental approach that exploits parents' preference for children's gender diversity. We show that the birth of a third child negatively affects the socio-emotional skills of the first two children in a persistent manner. However, we show that this negative effect is entirely driven by girls. We provide evidence that this gender effect is partly driven by an unequal response of parents' time investment in favour of boys and, to a lesser extent, by an unequal demand for household chores.

Because energy is usually absent from modern growth analysis, Unified growth models designed to study the economic take-off process have tended to focus on the role of human capital accumulation and its interaction with technical change. However, prominent economic historians claim that the transition to coal and its use in steam engines was the main driver of the Industrial Revolution. In order to try to reunite these diverging point of views, we provide in this article a quantitative analysis of the role of energy in long-term growth, accounting for the interaction between human capital accumulation and technological change. To do so, we design a unified growth model featuring fertility and educational choices, energy resources extraction, directed technical change, and endogenous general purpose technologies (GPTs) diffusion. The associated energy transition results from the endogenous shortage in the availability of renewable resources (wood), and the arrival of new GPTs that, together, redirect technical change towards the exploitation of previously unprofitable exhaustible energy (coal). A calibrated version of the model replicates the historical episode of the British Industrial Revolution, for which counterfactual simulations are performed to characterize the impact of the energy transition on the timing and magnitude of the economic take-off. Another numerical exercise provides a comparative analysis of Western Europe and Eastern Asia, emphasizing the relevance of discrepancies in terms of energy resources accessibility to explain the diverging dynamics of thesetwo world regions. Our findings show that, whenever demographic dynamics and human capital accumulation are accounted for, energy use appears as a vital catalyst for the economic take-off process.

In communities highly dependent on rainfed agriculture for their livelihoods, the common oc-currence of climatic shocks such as droughts can lower the opportunity cost of having children, and raise fertility. Using longitudinal household data from Madagascar, we estimate the causal effect of drought occurrences on fertility, and explore the nature of potential mechanisms driving this effect. We exploit exogenous within-district year-to-year variation in rainfall deficits, and find that droughts occurring during the agricultural season significantly increase the number of children born to women living in agrarian communities. This effect is long lasting, as it is not reversed within four years following the drought occurrence. Analyzing the mechanism, we find that droughts have no effect on common underlying factors of high fertility such as marriage timing and child mortality. Furthermore, droughts have no significant effect on fertility if they occur during the non-agricultural season or in non-agrarian communities, and their positive effect in agrarian communities is mitigated by irrigation. These findings provide evidence that a low opportunity cost of having children is the main channel driving the fertility effect of drought in agrarian communities.

This chapter is a first step toward a comparative history of child adoption law and practices in Western Europe since child adoption became legal in Germany (1900), Sweden (1917), France (1923), England and Wales (1927), and Italy (1942). Relying mainly on long-time series from these five countries, I analyze the incidence and the developments of domestic adoptions of both unrelated and related children and more recent developments in intercountry adoption. In most Western European countries, child adoption incidence increased from the early twentieth century to approximately the 1970s, likely because of rising demand for child adoption. Child adoption incidence has decreased since the 1970s because of a fall in adoptable children from both domestic and foreign backgrounds. In addition, the people of Sweden and England and Wales have long adopted children much more frequently than those of Germany, let alone France and Italy. The history of child adoption in Western Europe thus reflects major demographic trends since 1900 as well as a North-South gradient in child adoption incidence.

International audience; A large literature has documented the impact of parental separation on children’s financial poverty. However, income has been increasingly criticized as an indicator of childhood living conditions and deprivation. In this paper, we propose a conceptual framework and adapt existing measures of adult multi-domain deprivation to produce childhood deprivation indicators that are age-specific and child-centred. These new indicators allow within individual, longitudinal analyses to measure the impact of a shock on childrens living conditions.We apply this method to explore the long term effects of parental separation on childhood deprivation, considering four dimensions of children’s lives: leisure; material conditions; parenting behaviours and routines; and basic material goods. We track children over the first decade of life by using a nationally representative UK cohort of over 18,000 children. Using a fixed-effects framework, we find that, while the increase in income poverty after parental separation is large, the impact on childhood deprivation was more mixed. Our results suggest that, while facing strong financial constraints, separated parents cut back on normative but costly activities such as holidays and outings, but attempt to maintain children’s basic material circumstances and their day-to-day parenting and routines, at least around separation. However, heterogeneous effects exist, suggesting that parents’ pre-separation social and economic capital may play an important role. This approach therefore adds more precision and nuance to our understanding of the processes around parental separation and its impacts on children.

International audience; The consequences of orphanhood have been an important topic on the research agenda in recent years, particularly against the backdrop of the AIDS epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa. Previous literature has highlighted negative effects on children from prime-age adult deaths in the household. Some authors have however pointed out that the effects are small, possibly as a result of well-functioning coping mechanisms prevailing in the region. Furthermore, previous literature has not focused on the role of household living and budgetary arrangements. In this article, we investigate the links between deaths in the household and subsequent economic outcomes of children. Exploiting an unusually rich dataset from Senegal that permits us to precisely identify the main caregiver of a given child in the household, we test whether impacts on children differ according to their relationship with the deceased. We find robust evidence that this is the case: deaths in the household are not associated with diminished school presence for those children who are not under the direct responsibility of the deceased. They however have a strong significantnegative effect for those children who are. On the basis of our results, which include effects on child labor, we argue that in large and complex households, intra-household inequality in access to resources are an essential part of the story that may well lead to a heterogeneous absorption of shocks among family members. As such, there may be important limits to African informal safety nets.

International audience; This paper offers an explanation for the convergence of fertility rates across French départements in the second half of the nineteenth century that emphasises the diffusion of information through internal migration. It tests how migration affected fertility by building a decennial bilateral migration matrix between French départements for 1861‐1911. The identification strategy uses exogenous variation in transportation costs resulting from the construction of railways. The results suggest that the convergence towards low birth rates can be explained by the diffusion of cultural and economic information pertaining to low‐fertility behaviour by migrants, especially by migrants to and from Paris.

International audience; During the last century, fertility has exhibited, in industrialized economies, two distinct trends: the cohort total fertility rate follows a decreasing pattern, while the cohort average age at motherhood exhibits a U-shaped pattern. This paper proposes a Unified Growth Theory aimed at rationalizing those two demographic stylized facts. We develop a three-period OLG model with two periods of fertility, and show how a traditional economy, where individuals do not invest in education, and where income rises push towards advancing births, can progressively converge towards a modern economy, where individuals invest in education, and where income rises encourage postponing births. Our findings are illustrated numerically by replicating the dynamics of the quantum and the tempo of births for cohorts 1906–1975 of the Human Fertility Database.

This paper examines the effect of fertility on parental labor-force participation in a developing country in the Balkans, with particular attention to the intervening role of childcare provided by grandparents in extended families. In order to address the potential endogeneity in the fertility decision, I exploit Albanian parental preference for having sons combined with the siblings sex-composition instrument as an exogenous source of variation. Using a repeated cross-section of parents with at least two children, I find a positive and statistically significant effect of fertility on parental labor supply for those parents who are more likely to be younger, less educated or live in extended families. In particular, IV estimates for mothers show that they increase labor supply, especially in terms of hours worked per week and the likelihood of working off-farm. Similarly, father's likelihood of working off-farm and having a second occupation increase as a consequence of further childbearing. The heterogeneity analysis suggests that this positive effect might be the result of two plausible mechanisms: childcare provided by non-parental adults in extended families and greater financial costs of maintaining more children.

Son preference is common in many Asian countries. Though a growing body of literature examines the drivers and socioeconomic impacts of phenomenon in case of China and India, work on other Asian countries is scarce. This study uses nationally representative survey of over 13 thousand households from Pakistan (PDHS 2012-13) to analyze the effects of observed preference for sons on women’s participation in intra-household decision-making. Four key intra-household decisions are considered: decisions regarding healthcare, family visits, large household purchases and spending husband's income. These correspond to four categories of household decisions, namely healthcare, social, consumption and financial. Probit and Ordered Probit are employed as the main estimation techniques and other determinants of household decision-making are controlled for. Besides, a number of matching routines are employed to account for the possibility of potential selection bias.We find that women with at least one son have more say in household decisions. Bearing at least one son is associated with 5%, 7% and 5% higher say in decisions involving healthcare, social and consumption matters respectively. Women's role in financial affairs, however, does not differ significantly from women with no sons. Female participation in decisionmaking grows significantly with the number of sons but only up to the third parity. These results are particularly visible among younger, wealthier and educated women, and those who got married earlier. The findings suggest a limited improvement in women's bargaining power at home resulting from the birth of one or more sons. This in part explains higherdesire for sons expressed by women compared to men in household surveys.; La préférence pour les garçons est courante en asie. Alors que beaucoup d’étudess’intéressent aux facteurs et aux impacts socioéconomiques de ce phénomène en Chine et enInde, les travaux sur les autres pays asiatiques sont plus rares. A partir d’une enquêtenationale réalisée sur plus de 13 000 ménages pakistanais (PDHS 2012-13), cette étudeanalyse les effets de la préférence pour les garçons sur la participation des femmes auxdécisions prises dans le ménage. Quatre décisions importantes du ménage seront prises encompte : celles relatives aux soins de santé, aux visites de famille, sur les achats du ménage etsur l’affectation des dépenses des revenus du mari. Celles-ci représentent quatre catégoriesdes décisions au sain du ménage : les décisions lié à la santé, aux liens sociaux, à laconsommation et aux affaires financières. Les méthodes Probit et Probit Ordinal sontutilisées pour les estimations de base et d’autres déterminants liés aux décisions prises dans leménage seront pris en compte. De plus, méthodes d’appariment sont utilisées pour tenircompte d’éventuels biais de sélection.Les résultats indiquent que le fait d’avoir au moins un fils a une influence sur les décisions duménage. Le fait d’avoir au moins un fils est associé à une hausse de 5%, 7% et 5% sur lesdécisions impliquant respectivement les soins de santé, les relations sociales et laconsommation. L’implication des femmes dans les finances du ménage ne varie pourtant passignificativement avec celle des femmes sans fils. La participation des femmes dans les prisesde décision augmente avec le nombre de fils mais seulement jusqu’à 3 garçons. Ce résultatentraine une amélioration relative sur le pouvoir de négociation des femmes au sein duménage suite à la naissance d’un ou plusieurs garçons. Cela explique en partie le désir plusfort des femmes d’avoir des fils par rapport aux hommes, selon les enquêtes ménages.

(english) In January 2010, Haiti has been hit by the worst earthquake in its dramatic history. It was followed by an unprecedented international mobilization. Since then, a succession of natural disasters has struck the country (floods, epidemics, etc.). At the commemoration of the fourth anniversary of the seism, we examine the place and the role played by the Youth in this context of exception. This paper focuses on the insertion of the Youth on the labour market. Labour markets are the transmission belt between the macroeconomic dynamics and household living conditions, as the job earnings constitute the main households resources in developing countries, especially the poor. The thorough analysis of their situation is guided by a key thread: have they been spared, compared to their elders, whether through family solidarity or through international assistance; or conversely, have the Youth been sacrificed as the generational "weak link". Our analysis is based on the first socioeconomic survey post-earthquake. Conducted at the national level the last quarter of 2012 by the National Statistics Office of Haiti with the scientific support of the authors, the results are available for the first time. To study the dynamics, they are compared with those from a comparable survey conducted in 2007 by the same partners. Our results show that young people, and those from disadvantaged social origin in the first place, were the main victims of the downward adjustment caused by the earthquake. The sharp deterioration of their labour market conditions is not only iniquitous but it also compromises the development of Haiti in the medium term. _________________________________ (français) En janvier 2010, Haïti était touché par le plus terrible tremblement de terre de son histoire tourmentée, suivi d’une mobilisation internationale sans précédent. Depuis lors, une succession de catastrophes naturelles se sont abattues sur le pays (inondations, épidémies, etc.). A l'heure de la commémoration du 4ème anniversaire du séisme, nous nous interrogerons sur la place et le rôle joués par les jeunes dans ce contexte d'exception. L'accent porte sur l'insertion de ces derniers sur le marché du travail, étant entendu que l'emploi est de loin la principale source de revenu des populations, permettant en particulier la survie des plus pauvres. La description fouillée de leur situation sera guidée par un fil rouge : les jeunes ont-ils été épargnés, relativement à leurs aînés, que ce soit grâce aux solidarités familiales ou via l'aide internationale, ou au contraire, ont-ils été sacrifiés en tant que "maillon faible" générationnel. Pour étayer nos analyses, nous mobiliserons la première enquête socio-économique post-séisme à couverture nationale, réalisée fin 2012 par l'Institut Haïtien de Statistique avec l'appui scientifique des auteurs, et dont les résultats sont encore inédits. Pour étudier la dynamique, ces derniers seront confrontés à ceux issus d'une enquête similaire conduite en 2007 par les mêmes partenaires. Nos résultats montrent que les jeunes, et ceux d'origine modeste au premier chef, ont été les principales victimes de l'ajustement à la baisse provoqué par le séisme. La dégradation brutale du sort qui leur est fait est non seulement inique mais elle comprend le développement d’Haïti à moyen terme.

International audience; Research has shown that having children reduces women's employment; yet, how this effect differs for racial minorities has received less attention. Using random effects models and data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 4,526), this study investigates the association between motherhood and employment among Whites, Hispanics, and Blacks over women's entire reproductive span. Results indicate that having children reduces labor force participation primarily by deterring full-time employment. This effect is stronger and lasts longer among Whites, smaller and shorter among Hispanics, and brief among Blacks. Motherhood reduces part-time employment for young mothers, but temporarily increases it for older mothers. Early childbearing partly explains Black and Hispanic women's low employment rates at young ages; interestingly, the evidence indicates that their employment prospects would benefit the most from delaying childbearing. This study highlights the relevance of intersectionality and the life course perspective for investigating inequality in the labor market.; La recherche a montré qu'avoir des enfants réduit l'emploi des femmes ; pourtant comment cet effet diffère pour les minorités raciales a reçu moins d'attention. En utilisant des modèles à effets aléatoires et les données de l'Enquête Longitudinale Nationale sur la Jeunesse (N = 4 526), cette étude examine les associations entre maternité et emploi parmi les femmes blanches, hispaniques et noires sur toute la période de leur vie reproductive. Les résultats montrent qu'avoir des enfants réduit la participation au marché du travail principalement en dissuadant l’emploi à plein temps. Cet effet est plus fort et dure plus longtemps chez les Blanches, est plus réduit et plus court chez les Hispaniques, et est bref chez les Noires. La maternité réduit l’emploi à temps partiel pour les jeunes mères, mais l'augmente temporairement pour les mères plus âgées. La maternité précoce explique partiellement le faible taux d'emploi chez les jeunes femmes Noires et Hispaniques ; et fait intéressante, l’évidence indique que leurs possibilités d’emploi bénéficieraient davantage de retarder la maternité. Cette étude souligne la pertinence des perspectives de l'intersectionnalité et du parcours de vie pour étudier l'inégalité dans le marché du travail.

International audience; This paper constructs a simple theoretical political economy model to analyze the dynamic interactions between redistribution, public good provision and cultural integration of minority groups. Cultural differentiation erodes the support for general public good provision and vertical redistribution, reducing in turn the attractiveness of adoption of the mainstream culture by the minority groups. Our model shows the possibility for multiple politico-cultural steady state trajectories depending strongly on the initial degree of cultural differentiation in the society. An exogenous increase in income inequality is shown to increase the likelihood of multiple steady state trajectories. In a context with multiple minority groups, cultural fragmentation favors integration into the mainstream culture.

International audience; Since the seminal work of Becker, the dynamics of endogenous fertility has been based on the trade-off faced by parents between the quantity and the quality of their children. However, in developing countries, when child labor is an indispensable source of household income, parents actually incur a negative cost for having an extra child, so that the trade-offdisappears. The purpose of this paper is to restore the Beckerian quantity-quality trade-off in the case intergenerational transfers are upstream, so as to keep fertility endogenous. We do that by adding a negative “sibship size effect” on human capital formation to the standard Becker model. With a simple specification, we obtain multiplicity of steady states or, more fundamentally, the possibility of a jump from a state with high fertility and low income to a state with low fertility and high income, triggered by a continuous increase in the productivity of human capital formation.