Using data of adult women from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we find that risk tolerance is associated with a higher probability of an out-of-partnership birth. In contrast, we find no association between risk tolerance and the probability of a cohabiting birth

Spousal characteristics such as age, height, and earnings are often used in social science research to infer social preferences. For example, a "male taller" norm has been inferred from the fact that fewer wives are taller than their husbands than would occur with random matching. The large...

The formation of economic preferences in childhood and adolescence has long-term consequences for life-time outcomes. We study in an experiment with 525 teenagers how both birth order and siblings' sex composition affect risk, time and social preferences. We find that second born children are...

If participation in the labor market helps to secure women's outside options in the case of divorce/separation, an increase in the perceived risk of marital dissolution may accelerate the increase in female labor supply. This simple prediction has been tested in the literature using time and/or...

This paper estimates the impact of the extension of compulsory schooling in Turkey from 5 to 8 years on the marriage and fertility behavior of teenage women in Turkey using the 2008 Turkish Demographic and Health Survey. We find that the new education policy reduces the probability of marriage...

This paper investigates, both theoretically and empirically, the effect of sociability on the age of marriage. Theoretically, a more sociable individual has higher chances of finding a suitable partner for marriage early in life, and hence is expected to marry earlier than an otherwise similar...

This paper presents an overlapping generations model to explain why humans live in families rather than in other pair groupings. Since most non-human species are not familial, something special must be behind the family. It is shown that the two necessary features that explain the origin of the...

This paper examines if the effect of parental labor market shocks on child development depends on the age of the child at the time of the shock. To address this question, we leverage rich Norwegian population-wide register data and exploit mass layoffs and establishment closures as a source of...

We analyze the impact of an increase in the risk of divorce on the saving behaviour of married couples. From a theoretical perspective, the expected sign of the effect is ambiguous. We take advantage of the legalization of divorce in Ireland in 1996 as an exogenous increase in the likelihood of...

This paper studies the impact of peer behavior on living arrangements of young adults in the U.S. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) we analyze the influence of high school friends on the nest-leaving decision of young adults. We achieve...