Working Papers
Prep School for Poor Kids: The Long-Run Impacts of Head Start on Human Capital and Economic Self-Sufficiency [pdf]
(with Martha Bailey and Brenden Timpe)
forthcoming, American Economic Review
Abstract: This paper evaluates the long-run effects of Head Start using large-scale, restricted 2000-2018 Census-ACS data linked to the SSA’s Numident file, which contains exact date and county of birth. Using the county rollout of Head Start between 1965 and 1980 and age-eligibility cutoffs for school entry, we find that Head Start generated large increases in adult human capital and economic self-sufficiency, including a 0.65-year increase in schooling, a 2.7-percent increase in high-school completion, an 8.5-percent increase in college enrollment, and a 39-percent increase in college completion. These estimates imply sizable, long-term returns to public investments in large-scale preschool programs.
Less is More: How Family Size in Childhood Affects Long-Run Human Capital and Economic Opportunity [pdf]
Abstract: This paper examines the impact of family size on children’s long-term wellbeing. The number of siblings is a prominent aspect of childhood family environments that affects parental time and resource investments. Leveraging temporal and county-level variation in access to abortion in the United States during the 1970s, my research design contrasts adult outcomes of children born just before an abortion clinic opened with adult outcomes in counties in which abortion remained difficult to obtain. The results suggest that access to abortion decreases the completed number of younger siblings. As their parents avoided unplanned children and achieved smaller family sizes, the children experienced significant improvements in their long-run outcomes, including increased educational attainment, greater labor-force participation, and higher neighborhood quality. The effects are larger in areas with greater exposure to safety net programs. These findings imply large, persistent returns to reproductive health policies that promote smaller families.
Publication
Birth Order and Unwanted Fertility [pdf]
(with Wanchuan Lin and Juan Pantano)
Journal of Population Economics, 33(2), 413–440, 2020.
Abstract: An extensive literature documents the effects of birth order on various individual outcomes, with later-born children faring worse than their siblings. However, the potential mechanisms behind these effects remain poorly understood. This paper leverages U.S. data on pregnancy intention to study the role of unwanted fertility in the observed birth order patterns. We document that children higher in the birth order are much more likely to be unwanted, in the sense that they were conceived at a time when the family was not planning to have additional children. Being an unwanted child is associated with negative life-cycle outcomes as it implies a disruption in parental plans for optimal human capital investment. We show that the increasing prevalence of unwantedness across birth order explains a substantial part of the documented birth order effects in education and employment. Consistent with this mechanism, we document no birth order effects in families who have more control over their own fertility.
Work in Progress
Identification of Quantity-Quality Trade-Off with Imperfect Fertility Control
(with Wanchuan Lin, Juan Pantano and Rodrigo Pinto)
Family Planning, Fertility and Gender Equality: Evidence from the One-Child Policy and Education in China