National Bureau of Economic Research
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Economic Growth, Cultural Traditions, and Declining Fertility
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When nations experience rapid economic modernization, traditional family values can clash with new social realities and result in sharply declining birth rates. This insight helps to explain why some developed countries have much lower current fertility rates than others, despite having had higher rates in the recent past.
In Babies and the Macroeconomy (NBER Working Paper 33311), Claudia Goldin examines fertility patterns across 12 developed nations. She divides the countries into two groups: one, comprising Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden, the UK, and the US, that experienced relatively steady economic growth throughout the twentieth century, and the other, Greece, Italy, Japan, Korea,…
Environmental and Energy Policy and the Economy, volume 6
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Matthew J. Kotchen, Tatyana Deryugina, and Catherine D. Wolfram, editors.
This volume presents six new papers on environmental and energy economics and policy.
From the NBER Reporter: Research, program, and conference summaries
Gender, Work, and Family: Progress and Ongoing Challenges
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How do societal norms, public policies, and economic forces shape outcomes for men and women? My recent work, with several collaborators, addresses how gender disparities in labor markets influence individual opportunities, household decisions, and overall economic productivity. It brings together insights from long-term historical trends and the extensive gender literature to examine both progress and persistent challenges to gender equality...
From the NBER Bulletin on Health
Additional Educational Attainment Reduces Alzheimer’s Risk
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Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias (ADRD) represent a growing global health crisis, with cases projected to reach 131.5 million by 2050. The economic burden is substantial: In 2020, ADRD cost the United States $305 billion, with forecasts suggesting a threefold increase over the next 35 years in the absence of effective interventions. While previous research has associated lower educational attainment with increased ADRD risk, establishing causality has proved challenging due to potential confounding factors including childhood circumstances, socioeconomic background, and genetic predisposition.
In Education and Dementia Risk (NBER Working Paper 33430), researchers Silvia H. Barcellos, Leandro Carvalho, Kenneth Langa, Sneha Nimmagadda, and Patrick Turley leverage a natural experiment to investigate...
From the NBER Bulletin on Retirement and Disability
Disability Benefits, Aggregate Economic Conditions, and Earnings
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In How Do Economic Conditions Affect Earnings and Return to Disability Programs for Beneficiaries Whose Benefits Were Terminated? (NBER RDRC Paper NB22-03), Jeffrey Hemmeter, Kathleen Mullen, and Stephanie Rennane find that individuals whose benefits end due to medical improvement during an economic downturn earn less in the short run and are more likely to reapply for benefits within five years than those...
From the NBER Bulletin on Entrepreneurship
Immigrant Entrepreneurship in the US
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Immigrants to the US are more entrepreneurial than the native population and overrepresented among high-growth startups and venture-backed tech firms. In Immigrant Entrepreneurship: New Estimates and a Research Agenda (NBER Working Paper 32400), Saheel Chodavadia, Sari Pekkala Kerr, William Kerr, and Louis Maiden use business surveys and administrative employment records to provide new evidence on the prevalence and predictors of immigrant...
Featured Working Papers
Brazil's post-1983 campaign to eliminate the transmission of Chagas disease is associated with an average increase in Brazilian municipalities’ GDP per capita of 11.1 percent and reduction in their Gini coefficients of 1.1 percent, Jon Denton-Schneider and Eduardo Montero find.
Although emergency department data in the US indicate that reported suicidal behavior in children rose 233 percent from 2006 to 2021, Han Choi, Adriana Corredor-Waldron, Janet Currie, and Chris Felton note that these data have been affected by changing conventions about screening, defining, and coding of mental illness. They estimate that the rise in mental health disorders is between 30 and 50 percent.
A 10 μg/m3 increase in daily PM2.5 pollution exposure is associated with a 5.7 percent increase in full-day student absences and a 28 percent increase in discipline-related referrals to school officials at a large urban school district in California, with effects primarily driven by low-income, Black, Hispanic, and younger students, according to Sarah Chung, Claudia Persico, and Jing Liu.
During the Age of Mass Migration in the late 1800s and early 1900s, persistently high fertility rates across Europe created surplus labor that could find better opportunities in the New World. Guillaume Blanc and Romain Wacziarg argue that these migrations, by relieving demographic pressures, accelerated the transition to modern growth.
Gillian Brunet, Eric Hilt, and Matthew S. Jaremski find that households residing in counties that had high World War I Liberty Bond participation had greater stock and bond ownership rates in later decades, and held more favorable opinions towards retirement saving and stock investment.
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