This paper provides new insights on the importance of family background by linking 1.7 million Dutch children's incomes to an exceptionally rich set of family characteristics - including income, wealth, education, occupation, crime, and health. Using a machine learning approach, I show that...

Families play an important role in providing insurance against adverse shocks, but little is known about how shocks affect the family structure itself. We study the impact of a labor market shock on divorce and intra-household allocation of resources, exploiting a naturalexperimental earthquake...

Since 1972, the General Social Survey has periodically asked whether people are happy with Yes, Maybe or No type answers. Here I use a net "happiness" measure, which is percentage Yes less percentage No with Maybe treated as zero. Average happiness is around +20 on this scale for all respondents...

In unified growth models, the evolving nexus between population dynamics and technological change is key to achieving sustained economic growth. This paper uses genealogical records of 23,449 males and their spouses to investigate this interplay-the intergenerational transmission of reproduction...