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The Pandemic’s Influence on U.S. Fertility Rates
The COVID-19 pandemic appears to have had a negative impact on fertility for U.S. women ages 30-34, though birth rates did increase among women ages 20-24.
The Household Shift from Paid Work to Home Production
When U.S. workers lose their jobs or have reduced work hours, how does this affect time spent on activities like cooking and child care?
Working Paper
Home Production and Leisure During the COVID-19 Recession
Between the months of February and April of 2020, average weekly market hours dropped by 6.25, meanwhile 35% of commuting workers reported switching to remote work arrangements. In this paper, we examine implications of these changes for the time allocation of different households, and on aggregate. We estimate that home production activity increased by 2.1 hours a week, or 34% of lost market hours, whereas leisure activity increased by 3.8 hours a week. The monthly value of home production increased by $30.83 billion – that is 10.5% of the concurrent $292.61 billion drop in monthly GDP. ...
What Are the Trade-offs of Meritocratic College Admissions?
St. Louis Fed research suggests that removing certain constraints in college admission standards and higher-education funding could boost entry and graduation rates and earnings.
Working Paper
Imperfect Information Transmission from Banks to Investors: Macroeconomic Implications
Our goal is to elucidate the interaction of banks' screening effort and strategic information production in loan-backed asset markets using a general equilibrium framework. Asset quality is unobserved by investors, but banks may purchase error-prone ratings. The premium paid on highly rated assets emerges as the main determinant of banks' screening effort. The fact that rating strategies reflect banks' private information about asset quality helps keep this premium high. Conventional regulatory policies interfere with this decision margin, thereby reducing signaling value of high ratings and ...
Working Paper
Why did Rich Families Increase their Fertility? Inequality and Marketization of Child Care
A negative relationship between income and fertility has persisted for so long that its existence is often taken for granted. One economic theory builds on this relationship and argues that rising inequality leads to greater differential fertility between rich and poor. We show that the relationship between income and fertility has ?attened between 1980 and 2010 in the US, a time of increasing inequality, as high income families increased their fertility. These facts challenge the standard theory. We propose that marketization of parental time costs can explain the changing relationship ...
How Child Care Impacts Parents’ Labor Force Participation
An analysis finds that women with a partner and young children—those most likely to be sensitive to child care costs—had the strongest rebound in LFP since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Are Higher Child Care Wages Affecting the Labor Supply?
An analysis suggests that a rebound in labor force participation among women with a partner and child could have been stronger during the pandemic if not dampened by child care costs.
Journal Article
The Changing Role of Family Income in College Selection and Beyond
Previous literature has established that the role of family income has grown substantially at predicting college entry decisions when comparing the 1979 and 1997 National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth (e.g., Belley and Lochner (2007)). In this article, I further examine the changing role of family income as a determinant of college quality choice, degree attainment, and post-schooling earnings. I document that the role of family income has remained important and relatively stable at explaining college quality choice, its importance increasing only for the choice of four- over two-year ...
Making Progress on Diversity in the Economics Profession
Three prominent economists discuss their efforts as American Economic Association leaders to help diversify their profession.