Gary Becker's contributions to health economics started somewhat indirectly. The early development in human capital theory, to which Becker was one of the main contributors, had obvious implications to the analysis of expenditures on health, but were almost exclusively focused on schooling and training (Schultz 1960; Becker 1962, 1964). Human capital theory advanced the idea that actions that imply present costs but enhanced individual productivity in the future could be seen as investments in a form of capital. Expenditures in health had many dimensions where such trade-offs were present. A good diet or exercising might not be very much fun, but potentially delivered long-term benefits in the form of a longer and healthier life. Preventive medical care demanded time and money, but might also improve future health prospects. This was recognized early on (Mushkin, 1962), but the first explorations of health as human capital were conceptually timid and did not give the field a push that remotely resembled that received by the economic research on education. For the years that followed, health economics persisted mostly as a field dealing with the analysis of health systems and delivery of health technologies.

In the context of interwar Poland, we find that Jews tended to be more literate than non-Jews, but show that this finding is driven by a composition effect. In particular, most Jews lived in cities and most non-Jews lived in rural areas, and people in cities were more educated than people in villages regardless of their religion. The case of interwar Poland illustrates that the Jewish relative education advantage depends on the historical and institutional contexts.

Using detailed data from the third round of the District Level Household Survey of India, this paper examines in detail the effect of child marriage of women on contraceptive usage and access to skilled care during pregnancy and delivery. This paper particularly focuses on sixteen different outcome variables categorized under four broad sub-groups; namely, family planning and contraceptive usage, birth history, utilization of antenatal care; and finally, natal and postnatal care. The overall results presented in the paper suggest that women who marry early, i.e. before they reach the legal age of marriage are more likely to have experienced miscarriage, give birth before they turn 18 and lose children. They also lack current contraception usage and are less likely to access public health facilities during both pregnancy and childbirth. These results, however, vary widely based on the state of residence and age of the women in question.

This paper estimates the effects of teenage childbearing on education, working, physical and mental health, and physical activity of young girls in Mexico using two waves of the nationally representative Mexican Family Life Survey. We employ a propensity score matching model that accounts for a rich set of baseline covariates that predict teenage childbearing to attempt to reduce the bias due to confounding variables associated with teenage childbearing. The results demonstrate that teenage childbearing is associated with an increase in the probability of being overweight, and reductions in physical activity and the probability of high school completion. Moreover, the results are consistent when we employ sibling fixed effects to account for unobservable family background.

We investigate how changes in the sex ratio induced by World War II affected the bargaining patterns of Italian men in the marriage market. Marriage data from the first wave of the Italian Household Longitudinal Survey (1997) are matched with newly digitized information on war casualties coming from the Italian National Bureau of Statistics. We find that men in post-war marriages were better off in terms of their spouse's education, this gain amounting to about half a year of schooling. By considering heterogeneity across provinces, we find that the effects were more pronounced in rural provinces, mountainous provinces, and provinces with a higher share of population employed in agriculture. This result suggests that in these provinces the war caused a more fundamental change in marriage patterns compared to urban, lower-lying, and less agricultural provinces where marriage markets might have been more flexible to begin with.

This paper investigates the association between religion and female labor market outcomes using new micro-level data on two distinct Muslim denominations in Turkey: Sunni and Alevi Muslims. We find a positive and significant association between being an Alevi Muslim and female labor force participation and employment, whereas there are no significant differences in male labor market outcomes between the two denominations. We provide evidence that Alevi Muslims have more gender-equal views regarding the role of women in the labor market and consider themselves as more modern. Both Sunnis and Alevis consider themselves as believers in religion (Islam). However, Sunnis are more likely to abide by the rules of religion. We argue that differences in views on gender roles and self-identity regarding modernity between the two denominations drive the results on female labor market outcomes.

This paper proposes a multi-country model of international migration in which college-educated workers choose destination countries, preferred types of visas, and the optimal durations of stay. In this framework, I investigate the global implications of further development of the European Union (EU) program of preferential temporary visas for the highly skilled immigrants and compare them to the effects of income tax allowances for medium-term, college-educated, foreign workers. The two counterfactuals indicate a significant rise in the yearly inflows and total stocks of college-educated immigrants into the EU. The outcomes of the former policy are driven by a “visa-substitution” effect within the group of current migrants, while the latter scenario results in an increase in the pool of international migrants. Both policies induce a “destination–substitution” effect: losses of skilled migrants by non-EU states, which is reinforced by multilateral resistance to migration that is micro-founded in the model.

The purpose of this study is to estimate whether fathers involved in the criminal justice system contribute toward determining their children’s criminal activities. We use a unique dataset for Italy, which follows the antisocial behavior of a representative cohort of young criminals aged 14 to 24. Our correlation estimates indicate that fathers involved in criminal activities predict significant recidivism rates by their children. When the transmission mechanisms of fathers were proxied to include a set of observable individual and family variables, our regression estimates showed that almost half the father–child correlation is not explained by the controls. More importantly, estimating the father–child association restricting to fathers in prison, we find that this correlation is significantly large for “theft and drugs,” which suggests that this forced absence acts as a potential determinant of children’s criminal careers.

The United States saw a rapid transformation of its labor market when the female employment to population ratio nearly doubled from 1950 to 2000. As women shift their hours from the home sector to the market sector, goods that were previously produced in the home may be replaced by market services. This paper uses the Panel Study for Income Dynamics, Consumer Expenditure Survey, and the American Time Use Survey to analyze the extent to which households replace home production with purchased market services, and how the relationship between men’s and women’s labor supplies affects these decisions. We show that women who are employed spend less time on home production activities that have close market alternatives than women who are not employed. Additionally, expenditures on market services that can replace home production are higher for married households in which the woman is employed compared to those with nonworking women.

Bailey and Collins (2011) argue that Greenwood, Seshadri, and Vandenbroucke’s (2005) hypothesis that the baby boom was partly due to a burst of productivity in the household sector is not supported by evidence. This conclusion is based on regression results showing that appliance ownership is negatively correlated with fertility. They also argue that the Amish, who limit the use of modern technology, had a baby boom. First, it is demonstrated that a negative correlation between appliance ownership and fertility can arise naturally in Greenwood, Seshadri, and Vandenbroucke’s model. Second, evidence is presented casting doubt on the presumed technology phobia of the Amish.

Under dynamic efficiency, a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) pension scheme helps the current generation of retirees but hurts future generations because they are forced to save via a return-dominated scheme. Abandoning it is deemed welfare-improving but typically not for all generations. But what if agents are present-biased (hence, undersave for retirement) and the “paternalistically motivated forced savings” component of a PAYG scheme motivated its existence in the first place? This paper shows it is possible to transition from such a PAYG scheme on to a higher return, mandated fully-funded scheme; yet, no generation is hurt in the process. The results inform the debate on policy design of pension systems as more and more policy makers push for the transition to take place but are forced to recognize that current retirees may get hurt along the way.

Stochastic dominance (SD) is commonly used to rank income distributions and assess social policies. The literature argues that SD is a robust criterion for policy evaluation because it requires minimal knowledge of the social welfare function. We argue that, on the contrary, SD is not a robust criterion. We do this by carefully introducing microfoundations into a model by Chu and Koo (1990) who use SD to provide support to family-planning programs aiming at reducing the fertility of the poor. We show that fertility restrictions are generally detrimental for both individual and social welfare in spite of the fact that SD holds. Our findings are an application of the Lucas’ Critique.

Although contraception allows women to delay childbirth, stop unwanted childbearing, and postpone childbirth, not all contraception is equally effective, equally easy to access, or equally easy to use. Due to heterogeneity in women’s contraception opportunities and choices, in the effectiveness of the contraception used and even in luck, women differ in both their birth intervals and their age at first childbirth. We explore this heterogeneity, theoretically, incorporating contraception effectiveness and uncertainty (along with potential earnings, contraception costs, and net child benefits) into a potential mother’s childbearing decisions. Empirically, these factors are incorporated into a first hit time duration model, focusing on time to first birth, estimated with data from the Democratic Republic of Congo. The results provide nuanced insights into the income-fertility puzzle. Our evidence suggests that educated women start childbearing later, and are better able to use contraception, even less effective contraception. Thus, there are education-related heterogeneities in contraceptive effectiveness. Further, we find that women using more effective contraception start childbearing at a later age, as do women with better access to contraception. Both improved female education and improved access to modern contraception have the potential to hasten the fertility transition in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Most research on financial inter vivos transfers from older parents to their family members is focused on the giver–receiver dyad, usually between an older parent and an adult child. This study aimed to investigate older adults' financial support beyond this level of intergenerational dyads using an egocentric network perspective (i.e., the configurational approach). Data were from a sample of 2,991 older adults (aged 65 and older) from the Vivre/Leben/Vivere study, a large survey addressing family life and health conditions of older people in Switzerland. We used Wald tests and regression analyses to identify how financial transfers are related to family network properties in later life. Findings showed that older parents' propensity to provide financial support is associated with the density of practical help exchanges within the family (mainly for men) and with the position (mainly for women) and the role they play within their family configuration.

Some studies suggest that resource-rich countries tend to allocate talent and investment toward the resource sector and away from manufacturing or agriculture reducing the competitiveness of these other sectors. Because mining overwhelmingly employs men, when other sectors shrink so do employment opportunities for women (Ross, 2008). This could significantly affect core social structures. Using plausibly exogenous variation in natural resource wealth due to giant oil discoveries and an event study design, this paper finds that giant oil discoveries are associated with relatively worse female outcomes as measured by higher male/female population ratios, higher teen birth rates, and lower educational attendance of tertiary education among women relative to men. However, the impact on health outcomes tapers off within 8 years. Additionally, during periods of increasing oil prices, there is no significant evidence of such effects possibly due to an income effect.

In this paper, I address the U-shaped dynamics (a decrease followed by an increase) in the age at first marriage during the twentieth century. First, I show that the U-shaped dynamics have been steeper in Western that in other countries. Second, I find that these dynamics in the West are strongly related to the post-World War II (WWII) economic growth. By contrast, in the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries age of marriage was much less correlated across Western countries. I propose a simple model where age of marriage is a function of search frictions and married women's labor force participation. Both factors put together generate U-shaped dynamics as a result of an industrial boom that mimics the post-WWII Western economic development.

As exchanges of instrumental support between kin and non-kin remain essential to buffer the impact of critical life events, we consider the characteristics of personal configurations that may enhance or hinder them. Personal configurations vary in terms of their composition and two aspects of their structure: density and centrality. These dimensions are investigated to uncover whether they influence the type of instrumental support being exchanged (financial, material, and care) and the likelihood of their being reciprocal. Drawing on a representative sample of individuals living in Switzerland, results show that overall instrumental support is present in all personal configurations irrespective of their composition, but financial support is more prevalent in configurations based on parent–adult child relationships. Furthermore, configuration structures characterized by density of emotional support are positively associated with giving care support and with reciprocity, while those characterized by density of conflict are associated with giving less instrumental support overall.

The paper investigates the relation between overeducation and self-employment, in a comparative analysis between immigrants and natives. Using the EU Labour Force Survey for the year 2012 and controlling for a list of demographic characteristics and general characteristics of 30 destination countries, it finds that the likelihood of being overeducated decreases for self-employed immigrants, with inconclusive results for self-employed natives. The results shed light on the extent to which immigrants adjust to labor market imperfections and barriers to employment and might help explain the higher incidence of self-employment that immigrants exhibit, when compared to natives. This is the first study to systematically study the nexus between overeducation and self-employment in a comparative framework. Moreover, the paper tests the robustness of the results by employing two different measures of overeducation, contributing to the literature of the measurement of overeducation.

In his seminal, 1973 paper, published in the Journal of Political Economy, Gary Becker emphasizes marriage as a crucial, yet understudied issue to which economic analysis could, therefore should, be applied. In his words:

This paper analyzes the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the within-household gender gap in relation to paid work hours in full-time employed heterosexual couples in Spain. Using the Spanish Labor Force Survey (2019–2020) and a difference-in-differences method, we analyze three stages of the pandemic: strict lockdown, de-escalation, and partial closures to study the short-term effects and potential medium-term effects on gender inequality in terms of paid work hours. Our results suggest that during the strict lockdown period there was a tendency to fall back on traditional family gendered patterns to manage the work–life balance, especially when young children are present in male-headed households. However, this phenomenon seems to be a short-term consequence of the pandemic. The sector of activity (essential or non-essential) has also played a key role, the gender gap increased in male-headed households with female partners employed in non-essential sectors.