A preference in parents for a son is thought to affect their fertility. However, even if parents do not have a preference for a son, the people who surround them possibly have a preference for a son. In this case, social pressure can influence parents’ behavior and fertility. This study...

Almost 50 years after domestic US family planning programs began, their effects on childbearing remain controversial. Using the county-level roll-out of these programs from 1964 to 1973, this paper reevaluates their shorter and longer term effects on US fertility rates. I find that the...

I discuss recent books offering differing explanations for persistent U.S. poverty. Desmond (2023) argues that aid to low-income Americans is captured by more powerful market actors. I contextualize this concern as about incidence and consider both policies for changing incidence (by changing...

The analysis uses a unique set of data matching mothers and their young adult children to study the impact of family background on young people’s educational attainments. The data is derived from the first five years (1991–5) of the British Household Panel Study. Mother’s education is...

Wealth accumulation has important implications for the relative well-being of households. This article describes how household wealth in the United States varies by gender and family type. Evidence is found of large differences in observed wealth between single-female-headed households and...

Labor market investigations attribute the weak labor force participation of German women to traditional role patterns. This article explores whether this interpretation can be confirmed by an alternate indicator--the proportion of female household-heads. Using PSID-GSOEP panel data, changes in...

Does the absence of missing baby girls in sub-Saharan Africa imply a lack of son preference in the region? This paper uncovers systematic gendered effects on family structure and fertility in sub-Saharan Africa. Using data from Demographic and Health Surveys, we show that having a firstborn...