Explaining Divorce Gaps in Cognitive and Noncognitive Skills of Children

To what extent does parental selection into divorce explain the gap in skills between children of intact and disrupted families? Using the UK Millennium Cohort Study this paper shows that the disadvantage in skills typically found among children of divorce mainly reflects the selection effect, whereby more disadvantaged parents are more likely to divorce. In an Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition of children's cognitive and noncognitive skills up until age 11, evidence indicates that pre-divorce characteristics, namely parents' education, family financial resources and interparental conflicts are the most important factors accounting for the divorce gaps in children's skills, implying a negligible impact of divorce itself. Interparental conflicts are often neglected in the literature but are shown to play a major role particularly for noncognitive skills of children. These results suggest that to reduce the disadvantage in skills among children of divorce, interventions targeting these pre-divorce characteristics would be potentially more effective than policies discouraging divorce

Turning back the clock: Beliefs about gender roles during lockdown

We study the impact of lockdown measures on beliefs about gender roles. We collect data from a representative sample of 1000 individuals in France during the first COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. To measure beliefs about gender roles, we use questions from the 2018 wave of the European Values Study, and match respondents from the two surveys to compare beliefs before and during lockdown. We find evidence that the lockdown period was associated with a shift towards more traditional beliefs about gender roles. The effects are concentrated among men from the most time-constrained households and from households where bargaining with a partner over sharing responsibility for household production was likely to be an issue. Finally, we find correlational evidence that beliefs in equal gender roles increase with household income. Overall, our results suggest that men are more likely to hold egalitarian beliefs about gender roles when these beliefs are not costly for them

Child Socio-Emotional Skills: The Role of Parental Inputs

Informed by the psychological literature and our empirical evidence we provide new insights into the technology of socio-emotional skill formation in middle childhood. In line with economic evidence, increasing parental inputs that enrich the child home environment and reduce stress has larger returns for children with higher socio-emotional skills in early childhood (complementarity), but only for levels of inputs that are high. For low levels of inputs, i.e. levels implying a stressful home environment, an increase has a higher return for children with lower socio-emotional skills in early childhood (substitutability). Consequently, well targeted policies can reduce middle childhood socio-emotional gaps

Prolonged worklife among grandfathers: Spillover effects on grandchildren’s educational outcomes

Recent policies aiming to prolong worklives have increased older males' labor supply. Yet, little is known about their intergenerational effects. Using unique Dutch administrative data covering three consecutive generations, this paper studies the impact of increased grandfathers' labor supply following a reform in unemployment insurance for persons aged 57.5+ on grandchildren's educational performance. We find that increased grandfathers' labor supply increases grandchildren's test scores in 6th grade. The effect is driven by substitution of grandparents' informal care by formal childcare

Activering werkloze grootvaders beïnvloedt leerresultaten van kleinkinderen

Activering van ouderen op de arbeidsmarkt is een belangrijk speerpunt voor beleidsmakers. Maar wat betekent die activering voor de andere activiteiten die niet-werkende ouderen ondernemen? Wat is het effect op de arbeidsparticipatie van kinderen van de grootouders en de leerresultaten van klein­kinderen als de mogelijkheden tot informele zorg en opvang door grootouders worden beperkt

Turning back the clock: Beliefs about gender roles during lockdown

We study the impact of lockdown measures on beliefs regarding gender norms. We collect data from a representative sample of 1,000 individuals in France during the first COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. To measure beliefs in gender norms, we use questions from the European Values Study, and matchrespondents from the two surveys to compare beliefs before and during lockdown. We find evidence that the first lockdown was associated with a shift towards more traditional beliefs in gender norms. The effect is mainly driven by men and individuals who were the most time constrained during lockdown: individuals with young children living in the household. We also find evidence that is consistent with a “conservative shift” hypothesis: beliefs in traditional gender roles increase more for individuals from economically vulnerable groups. Overall, our results suggest that there is no ratchet effect regarding beliefs in gender norms: when there is a reversal in the conditions that enable individuals to believe in equal gender norms (such as the ability to outsource householdproduction or economic stability), individuals shift their beliefs towards less equal gender norms