Born in the Family: Preferences for Boys and the Gender Gap in Math

By:	Dossi, Gaia (Columbia University); Figlio, David N. (Northwestern University); Giuliano, Paola (University of California, Los Angeles); Sapienza, Paola (Northwestern University)
Abstract:	We study the correlation between parental gender attitudes and the performance in mathematics of girls using two different approaches and data. First, we identify families with a preference for boys by using fertility stopping rules in a population of households whose children attend public schools in Florida. Girls growing up in a boy-biased family score 3 percentage points lower on math tests when compared to girls raised in other families. Second, we find similar strong effects when we study the correlations between girls’ performance in mathematics and maternal gender role attitudes, using evidence from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. We conclude that socialization at home can explain a non-trivial part of the observed gender disparities in mathematics performance and document that maternal gender attitudes correlate with those of their children, supporting the hypothesis that preferences transmitted through the family impact children behavior.
Keywords:	gender Differences, cultural transmission, math performance
JEL:	A13 I20 J16 Z1
URL:	http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12156&r=ltv

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Children, Unhappiness and Family Finances: Evidence from One Million Europeans

By:	David G. Blanchflower; Andrew E. Clark
Abstract:	The common finding of a zero or negative correlation between the presence of children and parental well-being continues to generate research interest. We here consider over one million observations on Europeans from ten years of Eurobarometer surveys, and in the first instance replicate this negative finding, both in the overall data and then for most different marital statuses. Children are expensive, and controlling for financial difficulties turns almost all of our estimated child coefficients positive. We argue that financial difficulties explain the pattern of existing results by parental education and income, and country income and social support. Marital status matters. Kids do not raise happiness for singles, the divorced, separated or widowed. Last, we underline that all children are not the same, with step-children commonly having a more negative correlation than children from the current relationship.
JEL:	D14 I31 J13
URL:	http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25597&r=ltv

Work of the Past, Work of the Future

By:	David Autor
Abstract:	Labor markets in U.S. cities today are vastly more educated and skill-intensive than they were five decades ago. Yet, urban non-college workers perform substantially less skilled work than decades earlier. This deskilling reflects the joint effects of automation and international trade, which have eliminated the bulk of non-college production, administrative support, and clerical jobs, yielding a disproportionate polarization of urban labor markets. The unwinding of the urban non-college occupational skill gradient has, I argue, abetted a secular fall in real non-college wages by: (1) shunting non-college workers out of specialized middle-skill occupations into low-wage occupations that require only generic skills; (2) diminishing the set of non-college workers that hold middle-skill jobs in high-wage cities; and (3) attenuating, to a startling degree, the steep urban wage premium for non-college workers that prevailed in earlier decades. Changes in the nature of work—many of which are technological in origin—have been more disruptive and less beneficial for non-college than college workers.
JEL:	J23 J24 J31 J6 O33 R12
URL:	http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25588&r=ltv

Toward an Understanding of the Development of Time Preferences: Evidence from Field Experiments

By:	James Andreoni; Michael A. Kuhn; John A. List; Anya Samek; Kevin Sokal; Charles Sprenger
Abstract:	Time preferences have been correlated with a range of life outcomes, yet little is known about their early development. We conduct a field experiment to elicit time preferences of over 1,200 children ages 3-12, who make several intertemporal decisions. To shed light on how such primitives form, we explore various channels that might affect time preferences, from background characteristics to the causal impact of an early schooling program that we developed and operated. Our results suggest that time preferences evolve substantially during this period, with younger children displaying more impatience than older children. We also find a strong association with race: black children, relative to white or Hispanic children, are more impatient. Finally, assignment to different schooling opportunities is not significantly associated with child time preferences.
JEL:	C9 C93 D03
URL:	http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25590&r=ltv

Inequality and globalization: A review essay

By:	Martin Ravallion (Georgetown University, U.S.A.)
As normally measured, “global inequality” is the relative inequality of incomes found among all people in the world no matter where they live. Francois Bourguignon and Branko Milanovic have written insightful and timely books on global inequality, emphasizing the role of globalization. The books are complementary; Milanovic provides an ambitious broad-brush picture, with some intriguing hypotheses on the processes at work; Bourguignon provides a deep and suitably qualified, economic analysis. The paper questions the thesis of both books that globalization has been a major driving force of inequality between or within countries. The paper also questions the robustness of the evidence for declining global inequality, and notes some conceptual limitations of standard measures in capturing the concerns of many observers in the ongoing debates about globalization and the policy responses.
URL:	http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2017-435&r=ltv

Ageing Poorly?: Accounting for the Decline in Earnings Inequality in Brazil, 1995-2012

By:	Francisco H. G. Ferreira ; Sergio P. Firpo ; Julián Messina
The Gini coefficient of labor earnings in Brazil fell by nearly a fifth between 1995 and 2012, from 0.50 to 0.41. The decline in earnings inequality was even larger by other measures, with the 90-10 percentile ratio falling by almost 40 percent. Although the conventional explanation of a falling education premium did play a role, an RIF regression-based decomposition analysis suggests that the decline in returns to potential experience was the main factor behind lower wage disparities during the period. Substantial reductions in the gender, race, informality and urbanrural wage gaps, conditional on human capital and institutional variables, also contributed to the decline. Although rising minimum wages were equalizing during 2003-2012, they had the opposite effects during 1995-2003, because of declining compliance. Over the entire period, the direct effect of minimum wages on inequality was muted.
Keywords:	Wage Gap, Household Income, Human Capital, Income Inequality, Wage Disparity, Wage Growth, Wage Premium, Informal Employment, Formal Employment, income inequality, household income, human capital, wage gaps
JEL:	J31 D31
URL:	http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:idb:brikps:98197&r=ltv