Causes and Consequences of a Father's Child Leave: Evidence from a Reform of Leave Schemes

Many OECD countries have implemented policies to induce couples to share parental leave. This paper investigates how responsive intra-household leave-sharing is to changes in economic incentives. To investigate this fundamental question, we are forced to look at one of the Nordic countries which are the most progressive when it comes to family-friendly policies. An extensive reform of child leave schemes in Denmark affected couples differently depending on whether the parents where employed in the same or in different parts of the public sector. Based on a difference-in-differences strategy, I find that economic incentives are very important for intra-household leave-sharing. Increasing the couples' after tax income by $9 per day of leave which is transferred from the mother to the father is found to lead to a one day transfer. This corresponds to a supply elasticity close to unity.fathers, parental leave, child leave

The Educational Asset Market: A Finance Perspective on Human Capital Investment

Like the stock market, the human capital market consists of a wide range of assets, i.e. educations. Each young individual chooses the educational asset that matches his preferred combination of risk and return in terms of future income. A unique register-based data set with exact information on type and level of education enables us to focus on the shared features between human capital and stock investments. An innovative finance-labor approach is applied to study the educational asset market. A risk-return trade-off is revealed which is not directly related to the length of education.Efficient Frontier; Human Capital Investment; Mean-Variance; Performance Measures.

Educational Homogamy: Preferences or Opportunities?

Individuals match on length and type of education. We investigate whether the systematic relationship between educations of partners is explained by opportunities (e.g. low search frictions) or preferences (e.g. complementarities in household production or portfolio optimization). We find that half of the systematic sorting on education is due to low search frictions in marriage markets of the educational institutions. The other half is attributed to complementarities in household production, since income properties of the joint income process show no influence on partner selection.positive assortative matching on education; search frictions; hedging; complementarities in household production

Estimating the Effect of Student Aid on College Enrollment: Evidence from a Government Grant Policy Reform

In this paper, we investigate the responsiveness of the demand for college to changes in student aid arising from a Danish reform. We separately identify the effect of aid from that of other observed and unobserved variables such as parental income. We exploit the combination of a kinked aid scheme and a reform of the student aid scheme to identify the effect of direct costs on college enrollment. To allow for heterogeneous responses due to borrowing constraints, we use detailed information on parents' assets. We find that enrollment is less responsive than found in other studies and that the presence of borrowing constraints only deters college enrollment to a minor extent.college attendance, educational subsidies, reform, kink regression

Does the Gap in Family-friendly Policies Drive the Family Gap?

A segregation of the labour market into a family-friendly and a non-family friendly sector has the effect that women self-select into the sectors depending on institutional constraints, preferences for family-friendly working conditions and expected wage differences. We find that neglecting the sector dimension tends to understate the effect of birth-related interruptions in both sectors. The combined effect of a large depreciation effect and no recovery means that females in the non-family friendly sector (e.g. private sector) are punished severely after childbirth. In the family friendly sector (e.g. public sector), we find complete catch up.Fertility; family gap; career interruptions; wages; public vs. private sector

Marriage Migration: Just another case of positive assortative matching?

It is a stylized fact that marriage formation generally involves positive assortative matching (PAM) on education. We test whether this is also the case for immigrants who tend to import their spouses and potentially use education as an exchange mechanism. We find that only women match positively on education. For Turks the results robustly confirm PAM, whereas for Pakistanis there is no evidence of PAM. For men there is local support to the exchange hypothesis, since cultural assimilation or conflicts with parents, through less spouse import, increase the likelihood of marrying a highly educated spouse.assortative matching; homogamy; exchange; marriage migration; spouse import

The Effects of Children's ADHD on Parents' Relationship Dissolution and Labor Supply

This paper uses Danish register-based data for the population of children born in 1990-1997 to investigate the effects on parents of having a child with attention-deficit/hyperactivity-disorder (ADHD). Ten years after birth, parents of children diagnosed with ADHD have a 75% higher probability of having dissolved their relationship and a 7-13% lower labor supply. Exploiting detailed information about documented risk factors behind ADHD, we find that roughly half of this gap is due to selection. However, a statistically and economically significant gap is left, which is likely related to the impact of high psychic costs of coping with a child with ADHD.ADHD, child health, marital dissolution, labor supply

Child Labor: A Microeconomic Perspective

In an empirical microeconomic analysis that allows individual heterogeneity, we test four main hypotheses from the recent macroeconomic literature on child labor: the substitution, subsistence, capital market and parental education hypotheses. Using two rich Indian data sets, we find that the reduction in child labor and/or non-school-enrollment from 1987/88 to 1993/94 is closely associated with the increased household incomes. However, reduced capital constraints and improved literacy rates among the parent generation also play minor roles in increasing enrollment rates. A small counteracting effect comes from an increased need for and an increased value of substituting children for working household heads.Child labor; Education; Substitution; Subsistence; Capital markets; Parental human capital; India