This chapter reviews the literature on the causal effects of policies on fertility. It focuses on evidence from experiments and quasi-experiments in low fertility contexts, including studies from Europe, Northern America, Oceania and Asia. Making no a priori restrictions on policy type, the...

This paper describes the results of a systematic review of the literature of policy effects on fertility after 1970 in Europe, USA, Canada and Australia. Empirical studies were selected through extensive systematic searches, with subsequent literature list screening. Inclusion was conditional on...

We study the impact of work loss on mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Combining data on work loss and health care consultations from comprehensive individual-level register data, we define groups of employees delineated by industry, region, age, and gender. With these groups, we use a...

While fertility is positively correlated across generations, the causal effect of children's experience with larger sibships on their own fertility in adulthood is poorly understood. Using the sex composition of the two first-born children as an instrumental variable, we estimate the effect of...

This study describes the association between having children and the risk of union disruption, and whether this association has changed over time. We expand upon previous research by including data on cohabiting as well as married couples, and by studying change over four decades. We use data...

This study investigates how the association between union dissolution and childlessness depends on life course context. Data on union histories and fertility are taken from the Norwegian GGS. To observe union histories up to age 45, I include men and women born 1927-1962, giving a study sample...

The relationship between income, cost of childrearing and fertility is of considerable political and theoretical interest. We utilize exogenous variation in family income and the direct cost of children to estimate causal effects on fertility. The variation comes from a regional child benefit...

Fertility contagion through social networks increasingly attracts the interest of demographers. While these theories propose a causal mechanism, they are rarely put to test in a plausibly causal statistical design. This study applies quasi-experimental techniques to distinguish network effects...

Geographical variations in fertility and the diffusion of fertility across space and social networks are central topics in demographic research. Less is known, however, about the role of neighborhoods and neighbors with regard to geographical variations in fertility. This paper investigates...

In the current paper, we investigate within-couple inequality in earnings using Norwegian register data on married and cohabiting couples. We are particularly interested in assessing whether the negative relation between children and women’s relative earnings changed during the study period...