Governments are grappling with falling birth rates. Could a “baby bonus” help? Our new work looks at Australia’s experience—and shows that direct cash incentives can shape fertility decisions. e61.in/cash-for-kid...
In the past, policymakers have sought to address the fiscal pressures of an ageing population by increasing the Age Pension eligibility age. We find that doing so can come with unintended demographic consequences. e61.in/pension-chan...
What do multiple-choice tests really measure? We explore this in a new @nber.org paper with Kala Krishna & @esmaozer.bsky.social We find time pressure affects sorting—and impacts men and women differently. More in my chat with @tvhe.substack.com
Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/2KXvuD6...
Immigration has been the main tool for managing Australia’s demographic challenges. But with political support for high immigration receding, my colleague Rose Khattar and I discussed how policymakers may begin to shift their focus to declining fertility. e61.in/rethinking-a...
Screenshot of front page. Title is "In the wake of Dobbs: The effect of state abortion bans on women's college choices." Author is Samantha B. Kane at Harvard University. The abstract reads: This paper studies the impact of state reproductive rights laws on women’s human capital decisions after the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022). Using data from the Common App, the undergraduate college admission application, I implement a difference-in-differences design that compares high-achieving women’s college choices to those of their male peers. I find that abortion bans caused a 2.7 percentage point decrease in the proportion of high-achieving women who applied to a school in one of the 13 states with a total ban. Effects were larger for applicants from states without a restriction on abortion, as well as for applicants from the most liberal counties in the United States. Further, treatment effects first emerged in the 2021-22 college application season after several Court actions suggested that it would overturn Roe v. Wade (1973) the following year, increased in magnitude in the 2022-23 college application season, and persisted in the 2023-24 college application season.
New edworkingpaper that I knew I had to share when it first came across my virtual desk.
tl;dr: "[state] abortion bans caused a 2.7 percentage point decrease in the proportion of high-achieving women who applied to a school in one of the 13 states with a total ban."
edworkingpapers.com/ai25-1126
Recently accepted by #QJE, “Cognitive Endurance as Human Capital,” by Brown(@clbrown.bsky.social), Kaur, Kingdon, and Schofield: doi.org/10.1093/qje/...
Leveraging past quasi-experiments for a cost-benefit analysis of potential US paid leave programs, finding long-run returns on society's initial investment of between 7:1 and 29:1, from Wang, Slopen, Garfinkel, Ananat, Collyer, Hartley, Koutavas, and Wimer https://www.nber.org/papers/w33279
ADHD diagnoses among children increase on Halloween, consistent with changes in behavior and highlighting subjectivity in the medical diagnosis, from Christopher Worsham, Charles Bray, and Anupam Jena https://www.nber.org/papers/w33232
Using data from the Turkish University Entrance Exam to examine the extent of the gender gap in college placement, from Pelin Akyol, Kala Krishna, and Sergey Lychagin https://www.nber.org/papers/w33074
