This paper provides a historical and geographical perspective on the composition of households in present-day Europe. Many more people today live on their own than was the case in pre-industrial England, but there are some surprising continuities in household composition. In particular,...

We offer a rationale for the decision to extend the franchise to women within a politico-economic model where men are richer than women, women display a higher preference for public goods, and women’s disenfranchisement carries a societal cost. We first derive the tax rate chosen by the male...

The economic theory of marriage developed by Gary Becker is used to guide the estimation and interpretation of socioeconomic influences on the probabilities of marital dissolution at particular durations of marriage and the probability of remarriage within three years of dissolution. The...

We study the effect of culture on important economic outcomes by using the 1970 Census to examine the work and fertility behaviour of women 30-40 years old, born in the US, but whose parents were born elsewhere. We use past female labour force participation and total fertility rates from the...