We analyse the impact on schooling outcomes of growing up in a family headed by a single mother. Growing up in a non-intact family in Germany is associated with worse outcomes in models that do not control for possible correlations between common unobserved determinants of family structure and...

We estimate effects of center-based care on parenting activities using time use data for Germany. Our estimates imply that center-based care reduces the overall time that parents spend with the enrolled child, but has only small negative effects on time spent doing activities together....

In this paper, we investigate the intergenerational transmission of smoking behavior from parents to their children using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, surveyed in 1999 including 813 youths aged 16 through 19. We find strong evidence, that parental smoking significantly increases...

In developing countries illness shocks can have a severe impact on household income. Few studies have so fare examined the effects of mortality. The major difference between illness and mortality shocks is that a death of a household member does not only induce direct costs such as medical and...

In this paper, we use 2008-2013 American Community Survey data to update and further probe evidence on son preference in the United States. In light of the substantial increase in immigration, we examine this question separately for natives and immigrants. Dahl and Moretti (2008) found earlier...

Individuals typically traverse several life phases before forming a family. We analyse whether changing the duration of one of these phases, the education phase, affects the timing of marriage and childbearing. For this purpose, we exploit the introduction of short school years in Germany in...

Previous research on orphanhood has established that parental death has a negative effect in terms of school enrollment and grade progression, but the relation between orphanhood and socioeconomic outcomes in young adults has been largely ignored in the literature. In this paper, I use a...

Over the past decades, the share of very young children in daycare has increased significantly in many OECD countries, including Germany. Despite the relevance of child health for child development and later life success, the effect of early daycare attendance on health has received little...

In contemporary households, women often shoulder most organisation and caregiving responsibilities leading them to play a crucial role in family dynamics. While previous research has established that public early childcare affects child outcomes and maternal employment, less attention has been...

We use newly available data from Germany to study the relationship between parental income and child health. We find a strong gradient between parental income and subjective child health as has been documented earlier in the US, Canada and the UK. The relationship in Germany is about as strong...