Raising Some Issues
Parenting with Patience: Parental Incentives and Child Development
Daniela Del Boca et al.
Journal of Political Economy, forthcoming
Abstract:
We construct a dynamic model of child development where forward-looking parents and children jointly take actions to increase the child's cognitive and non-cognitive skills within a Markov Perfect Equilibrium framework. In addition to time and money investments in their child, parents also choose whether to use explicit incentives to increase the child's self-investment, which may reduce the child's future intrinsic motivation to invest by reducing the child's discount factor. We use the estimated model parameters to show that the use of extrinsic motivation has large costs in terms of the child's future incentives to invest in themselves.
Whose Parents Matter? Intergenerational Transmission of Earnings Arrangements in Different-Sex Couples: A Research Note
Wen Fan & Yue Qian
Demography, August 2025, Pages 1203-1216
Abstract:
Over the past few decades, the United States has witnessed a gender revolution and transformation in family economic arrangements. However, little research has investigated the intergenerational transmission of earnings arrangements within different-sex couples, even though such knowledge illuminates the mechanisms underlying changes and continuities in the economic organization and gender relations within U.S. families. We use a life course perspective to examine whether and how different-sex couples' earnings arrangements two years after the birth of their first child are shaped by their parents' earnings arrangements across four periods (same life stage, contemporaneous, sensitive period, and cumulative). Two-generational panel data on different-sex couples and their parents are drawn from the nationally representative Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1968-2021). Regression models indicate that women tend to contribute more earnings if their male partner's mother contributed a larger share to the family income either during the same life stage (two years after her first birth) or over the life course of the male partner. No similar patterns emerge for the earnings arrangements of the female partner's parents. This two-generational life course study underscores the importance of couples' social origins and reveals the social (re)production of family economic arrangements and its gendered nature.
Love, lust, and physical intimacy: Oxytocin and the contraction of involuntary muscles
David Haig
Evolution and Human Behavior, September 2025
Abstract:
Among other things, love can refer to care for a child or to sexual desire. This curious linguistic association probably reflects the evolutionary repurposing of machinery that established and maintained the ancient bond between mothers and offspring for the establishment and maintenance of romantic bonds between sexual partners. Oxytocin has been implicated in both kinds of bond. I propose that oxytocin possessed an ancestral function in gamete release and that the earliest form of attachment to offspring was a suppression of appetite after spawning to prevent parents from eating their progeny. Maternal care has been greatly elaborated since this simple beginning. Human infants elicit feelings of care because of their helplessness which has been ascribed to their neural immaturity at birth which has, in turn, been ascribed to problems associated with the delivery of a large-brained infant through a narrow birth-canal. I propose instead that the helplessness and hairlessness of human infants were adaptations of ancestral infants to obtain better care by being held close to warm maternal bodies.
The Effects of Parental Income and Family Structure on Intergenerational Mobility: A Trajectories-Based Approach
Yoosoon Chang et al.
NBER Working Paper, August 2025
Abstract:
We examine how parental income and family structure during childhood and adolescence affect adult income, emphasizing the timing of these effects. Using an ordered multinomial probability model with functional covariates, we find that these familial influences are strongest in middle childhood and adolescence. We also uncover a complementary relationship in the effects of income and family structure trajectories during key developmental periods. By flexibly controlling for personal and family characteristics using nonparametric methods, our approach effectively handles high-dimensional covariates. The results advance the understanding of intergenerational income mobility and highlight the long-term importance of familial conditions for adult economic success.
Economic Factors That Influence Geographic Differentials in the Percentage of Families Who Own Dogs: An Exploratory Empirical Study for the United States
Richard Cebula, Gigi Alexander & Richard Hollingsworth
American Journal of Economics and Sociology, September 2025, Pages 621-625
Abstract:
This exploratory empirical study seeks to identify factors that influence interstate differentials in the percentage of families that provide a home for one or more dogs. Using PLS estimation for the contiguous 48 states over the period 2008-2016, several conclusions are obtained. These include the following: the percentage of family units with one or more dogs is found to be an increasing function of the percentage of the population that owns its own home, warmer climate, and the percent of the population without a high school diploma. In addition, there are three other findings. Namely, the percentage of family units consisting of one or more dogs is a decreasing function of the overall cost of living, the unemployment rate, and population density.
Abortion Access and Child Protective Services Involvement
Christine Durrance, Yang Wang & Barbara Wolfe
Journal of Health Economics, September 2025
Abstract:
Existing evidence has found that abortion restrictions result in fewer and delayed abortions. Such restrictions may indirectly affect child wellbeing both through changes in births and for existing children in the home through mechanisms including substantial financial strains, negative health consequences, and intra-household power dynamics. Following the Dobbs decision, state-level abortion decisions have led to significantly greater abortion restrictions. We investigate the effects of abortion access on child welfare involvement using data from the National Child Abuse & Neglect Detection System (NCANDS). We utilize pre- and post-Dobbs data from 2017-2023, continuous and staggered difference-in-differences and event study methods. We find that increased distance to nearest abortion care is associated with higher rates of CPS referrals. Our findings provide critical insights into the broader social and health implications of abortion restrictions in post-Dobbs.
Abortion, Economic Hardship, and Crime
Erkmen Aslim et al.
NBER Working Paper, September 2025
Abstract:
We study how abortion access affects economic hardship and crime. Using a database of abortion provider locations and operations in Texas from 2009-2019, we exploit variation in travel distance to the nearest facility created by clinic closures following the enforcement of Texas HB-2 in 2013. We confirm previous evidence that increased distance to the nearest abortion facility reduces abortions and increases births. We provide novel evidence that reduced access to abortion also leads to significant economic hardship, reflected in lower labor force participation, rising debt, widening income inequality, and heightened housing insecurity. This financial strain translates into higher rates of financially motivated crime, such as theft and burglary, with no significant effect on violent crime. These effects extend beyond directly affected individuals, reflecting intrahousehold spillovers. These findings suggest far-reaching consequences of restricted access to reproductive healthcare.