Research
Research
with Ricarda Milstein, Jinkook Lee & Ana Llena-Nozal
When a person becomes care-dependent, family members often provide informal care. This paper examines the economic impact of informal caregiving, with a particular focus on women who care for their ageing parents. Using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), covering 24 countries, we estimate the effect of caregiving on labour supply and quantify its associated costs in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Our findings confirm that women typically respond to worsening parental health by increasing their provision of informal care. Women with parents in poor health have a 5% to 13% higher probability of providing informal care, depending on the region of Europe. Furthermore, our results show that women who take on caregiving responsibilities experience significant reductions in labour supply, especially in Southern, Western, and Central/Eastern European countries, with reductions ranging from 30% to 70%. We also show that the economic cost of these reductions in labour supply is considerable, with a GDP reduction ranging from 0.37% in Western Europe to approximately 0.45% in Southern and Central/Eastern Europe. These results highlight the significant economic consequences of informal caregiving and stress the need for policy measures that support reconciling caregiving with labour market participation. Expanding formal long-term care systems, providing caregiver support, and investing in healthy ageing policies could help address these economic pressures.
with Katherina Thomas
How does parenting style influence children’s cognitive and non-cognitive skill de velopment? This paper examines the impact of key dimensions of parenting style warmth, reasoning, hostility, and consistency- using longitudinal data from Australia that tracks children from middle childhood to adolescence. Estimating the effect of parenting style on skill development presents challenges related to omitted variable, simultaneity, and reporting bias. To address these, we employ fixed effects, control for baseline skills, and use past parenting style levels as instruments. Our findings show that a one standard deviation (SD) increase in parental hostility reduces children’s non cognitive skills by 0.12–0.23 SD, depending on age. Inconsistency in rule enforcement negatively affects skills in middle childhood (by 0.08–0.10 SD) but has no significant impact during adolescence. We find little evidence that parenting style significantly in f luences cognitive skill development. However, hostility also negatively impacts school performance, mirroring its impact on non-cognitive skills and suggesting an indirect influence through non-cognitive development. These results highlight the potential effectiveness of parenting training interventions aimed at reducing parental hostility and promoting consistent discipline to support children’s non-cognitive skill development and long-term human capital formation.
with Sophie Brochet and Prasanthi Ramakrishnan
Approximately two-thirds of Indian women migrate for marriage, with roughly one-fifth relocating across district boundaries. This paper investigates the consequences of marriage migration across districts and its impact on intra-household inequality. We first document new empirical facts on the relationship between sex ratios and marriage migration, showing that male-skewed sex ratios increase migration in rural areas but have no significant effect in ur ban areas. We then estimate a collective household marriage market model to understand the impact of marriage migration on women’s bargaining power. We find that migration to rural ar eas lowers bargaining power, while migration to urban areas increases it. Counterfactuals show these patterns are not driven by selection but by destination-specific treatment. While dowry strongly reduces bargaining power, we find limited evidence of a dowry–migration trade-off.
Labor market integration programs affect not only immigrants’ economic outcomes but also their social integration. In this paper, I analyze how measures of social integration, like the share of marriages with natives and immigrants’ spatial concentration, change under different policy scenarios. I first show correlations between immigrants’ labor market outcomes, marital patterns, and spatial distribution. Then, using German data, I estimate a structural model with location, marriage, and labor supply decisions. The model reflects two trade-offs immigrants face: a) partner choice: ”marry your like” vs. economic gains from marriage with a native, and b) location choice: a region with higher wages vs. a region with better marriage opportunities. Model simulations reveal that: 1) reducing the immigrant-native income gap by 25% decreases immigrants’ spatial concentration (by 2.9%), but lowers the share of immigrant women married to natives (by 2 pp); 2) declining the regional wage gap by 50% significantly reduces immigrants’ spatial concentration (by 15%), increases the share of immigrant men married to native (by 1.1 pp), but decreases the share of immigrant women married to natives (by 0.6 pp). I also find that ignoring adjustments in location and marriage choices under both policies overstates the decrease in immigrant-native income inequality and underpredicts the welfare gains. The reason for that is when immigrants’ labor market position improves, they give up part of their income gains and marry natives less often to satisfy their taste for similarity in partners’ origin, increasing their welfare.