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Chetty et al. (2022) say county density of cross-class friendships (referred to here as "adult-bridging capital") has causal impacts on social mobility within the United States. We instead find that social mobility rates are a function of county density of family capital (higher marriage rates and two-person households), community capital (community organizations, religious congregations, and volunteering), and mean student achievement in grades 3-8. Our models use similar multiple regression equations and the same variables employed by Chetty et al. but also include state fixed effects, student achievement, and family, community, schoolbridging (cross-class high school friendships), and political (participation and institutional trust) capital. School-bridging capital is weakly correlated with mobility if adult-bridging is excluded from the model. R-squared barely changes when adult-bridging is incorporated into the model. When it is included, mobility continues to be significantly correlated with the achievement, family, and community variables but not with school-bridging and political ones. We infer that county mobility rates are largely shaped by parental presence, community life, and student achievement. To enhance mobility, public policy needs to enhance the lives of disadvantaged people at home, in school, and in communities, not just the social class of their friendships.

This working paper will share the experience of Ashta No Kai (ANK), a grassroots nonprofit the author founded in 1998 in 10 villages in Shirur County, Maharashtra state, India, to promote the empowerment and education of women and girls in rural areas. The paper will, at first, examine the state of education in India including the Indian government's policies and programs that are attempting to address the gender gap in girls' education. Next, the barriers that girls in rural areas face to access their right to an education will be discussed followed by an introduction of various holistic, need-based, and low-cost educational interventions that ANK has initiated to address some of these impediments. Findings will then be reported from quantitative and qualitative surveys conducted, as well as case studies to gauge the impact of these interventions. Finally, the paper will propose evidence-based recommendations of integrated and sustainable strategies and approaches as guidance to policy practitioners to help promote educational outcomes and enhanced agency for adolescent girls to better navigate their world.

Much of the discussion surrounding marriage promotion policies have little basis in the reality of life in low-income communities. Research suggests that much of the income differential between low-income and middle class women is the result of differences in educational attainment, labor market experience, and access to labor supply rather than to marital status. Many low-income mothers indicate that marriage can actually reduce their well-being if their potential spouse cannot add to the economic viability of the household. The following policies would significantly improve the economic well-being of single-parent families: (1) eliminate the cap on the number of families that could receive education and training activities counted as work; (2) remove the 12-month time limit on vocational training; (3) give states the flexibility to provide assistance to those participating in education and training programs; (4) increase the earned income tax credit and earned income disregards; and (5) provide full funding for child care subsidies. Several studies have questioned the role of marriage in the different outcomes and life chances of children. The literature emphasizes the importance of providing adequate job opportunities for single mothers so that their economic stability and, ultimately, the well-being of their children can be improved. (Contains 24 references.) (MN)

We evaluate the long-term effects of a "girl-friendly" primary school program in Burkina Faso, using a regression discontinuity design. Ten years later, primary school-age children in villages selected for the program attend school more often and score significantly higher on standardized tests. We also find long-term effects on academic and social outcomes for children exposed earlier in the program. Secondary-school-age youths and young adults (those old enough to have finished secondary school) complete primary and secondary school at higher rates and perform significantly better on standardized tests. Women old enough to have completed secondary school delay both marriage and childbearing.

This study explores the effect of school reopenings during the COVID-19 pandemic on married women's labor supply. We proxy for in-person attendance at US K-12 schools using smartphone data from Safegraph and measure female employment, hours, and remote work using the Current Population Survey. Difference-in-differences estimates show that K-12 reopenings are associated with significant increases in employment and hours among married women with school-aged children, with no measurable effects on labor supply in comparison groups. Employment effects of school reopenings are concentrated among mothers of older school-aged children, while remote work may mitigate effects for mothers of younger children.

During the late 1990s, the convergence of women's labor force participation rates to men's rates came to a halt. This paper explores the degree to which the role of education and marriage in women's labor supply decisions also changed over this time period. Specifically, this paper investigates women's decisions to exit the labor market upon the birth of a child. The results indicate that changing exit behavior among married, educated women at this period in their lives was not likely the driving force behind the aggregate changes seen in labor force participation. Rather, changes in exit rates among single women, particularly those less educated, are much more consistent with the changing pattern of aggregate female labor force participation. Complete Estimation Results is appended. (Contains 6 footnotes, 5 figures and 1 table.)

A decade ago we published a book reporting an extensive analysis of nationwide panel data from the Monitoring the Future (MTF) project showing impacts of post-high school experiences on substance use (Bachman, Wadsworth, O'Malley, Johnston, & Schulenberg, 1997). One of the most important findings was that various categories of marital status, including engagement and divorce/separation, showed substantial impacts on young adults' use of cigarettes, alcohol, and illicit drugs. MTF now has data extending to modal age 45. Using these new data, we revisit the effects of marriage on substance use, which we have termed "marriage effects," and consider two questions: (1) Have marriage effects changed in recent years? and (2) Are substance use effects of marital status transitions different when those transitions occur during ages 30-45, versus ages 19-30? (Contains 2 footnotes, 9 figures, and 3 tables.) [For "Monitoring the Future Occasional Paper Paper 67," see ED508290.]

Within the last 50 years, the work-family-household arrangements upon which social policy systems in industrial nations were formulated have disappeared. This briefing paper examines how social policies of the United States, Japan, Germany, Italy, and France have responded. The paper is presented in two major sections. The first section describes family policies in each country concerning parental leave, child benefits/family allowances, child care, marriage/cohabitation, and divorce. The second section discusses the mixed effects of maternity leave on womens employment, the lack of a relationship between fertility and maternity leave and fertility and cash benefits, and factors that complicate the relationship between countries' social spending and child poverty. Job-protected maternity leave is described as the most basic entitlement reflecting public acknowledgment of the economic necessity of working motherhood. Analyses suggest that fertility rates do not seem responsive to cash benefits or other policies, such as extended maternity leave, that function as wages for motherhood. In countries where child care provisions are not widely available, lengthy paid leaves have the effect of bringing women into the home for long periods of time. The most important role of cash benefits is to reduce child poverty, as illustrated by patterns in the U.S., France, and Germany. The paper concludes by asserting that Western European nations family policy can be divided into two types, one in which the social welfare system provides a comprehensive array of universal family benefits and services, and the other in which benefits are nonuniversal and accompanied by higher child poverty rates. The United States fits neither of the European patterns and is characterized by several contradictions contributing to the lack of political support for families. (Contains 98 references.) (KB)

This paper is part of a research paper series that the Applied Research Branch of Human Resources Development Canada commissioned in 2001 to contribute to the development of a research strategy for young Canadians completing their education and starting their careers. The series focuses on various elements of the school-work transitions of Canadian youth. The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of the literature on the transitional experiences of young women. Research has documented that gender differences exist in educational and occupational choices, experiences, and attainments and that these differences have special characteristics. The additional dimensions of marriage and family can also generate differences in transition pathways between women and men. Two key impressions emerge from this review: how much we know and how little has changed. Female inequality, whether in reference to participation in mathematics and science, different fields of study at post-secondary institutions, employment status, family responsibilities in relation to work, or the income earnings gap, has been remarkably stable over time in the research literature. However, the accounts of persistent stability mask the educational and occupational, and earnings outcomes for certain groups. The least advantaged continue to be female lone parents and low income families. Several recommendations for further research emerge from the studies reviewed in this paper. Further research is needed, especially using longitudinal research designs, to document changes in attitudes, course selection, post-secondary field chosen and eventual occupational attainment. In addition, policies for access to and participation in education and labour market require monitoring. (Contains 17 figures and 5 footnotes.)

This paper summarizes changes in key elements of welfare policy and in closely related policies on child support enforcement and sex education and family planning programs. Drawing on a conceptual framework that highlights how incentives created by public policy can affect demographic behaviors, the paper concludes that, as Congress intended, reform has shifted welfare's incentives in directions that encourage marriage and discourage nonmarital pregnancy and childbearing, childbearing while on welfare, divorce, living independently from relatives, and avoiding child support responsibilities. The paper reviews the empirical evidence about welfare's effects on demographic behavior, including nonmarital childbearing, abortion, sexual activity, contraceptive use and pregnancy among teenagers, marriage and divorce, single parenthood, living arrangements, and nonresident parenting behavior. The general tenor of this evidence is that behavioral effects consistent with theoretical expectations and policymakers' intentions do exist. Their magnitudes are small or uncertain. A tentative but reasonable "bottom line" is that one should not expect welfare reform to dramatically alter low-income Americans' demographic behavior, but one can expect it to have modest effects in the directions desired by policymakers. There is little or no evidence about how several important aspects of recent reform are likely to affect demographic behavior. (Contains 81 references.) (Author/SM)

Recent descriptive work suggests the type of college education (field or institution) is an important but neglected pathway through which individuals sort into homogeneous marriages. These descriptive studies raise the question of why college graduates are so likely to marry someone within their own institution or field of study. One possible explanation is that individuals match on traits correlated with the choice of education, such as innate ability, tastes or family environment. Another possible explanation is that the choice of college education causally impacts whether and whom one marries, either because of search frictions or preferences for spousal education. The goal of this paper is to sort out these explanations and, by doing so, examine the role of colleges as marriage markets. Using data from Norway to address key identification and measurement challenges, we find that colleges are local marriage markets, mattering greatly for whom one marries, not because of the pre-determined traits of the admitted students but as a direct result of attending a particular institution at a given time. [This report was supported by the Norwegian Research Council.]

In recent years, the belief that marriage bestows large economic gains has generated enthusiasm for policy proposals that encourage the formation and continuation of two-parent families. This study examined the effects of family structure on economic resources, controlling for unobservable family background characteristics. Data were drawn from the 1968 through 1993 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a longitudinal survey conducted by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. The present analysis was based on a sample of children born into two-parent families, used to estimate the effects of divorce, and a second sample of children born into single-parent families, used estimate losses associated with being born out-of-wedlock. Findings indicated that family structure has a significant impact on the economic status of families with children. In the long run, family income of children who parents divorce and remain divorced for at least 6 years falls by 45 percent, and food consumption is reduced by 16 percent. Among the less-studied population of children born to single parents, there is no evidence of an increase in food consumption, but those whose parents marry and remain married for at least 6 years experience income gains of around 70 percent. The more modest effects of living with a single parent on food consumption suggest that children's access to essentials may be somewhat better protected than income estimates indicate. While these estimated effects are large, it is important to note that: because estimates are based on variation within the same families over time, they are substantially smaller than estimates based on cross-national comparisons of different types of families; the estimated changes do not apply to the typical child who experiences a parental divorce at a point in time, but rather to those whose parents are currently divorced; and while the estimate that single-parent families have substantially lower incomes than they would if a second parent were in the household, these income losses do not necessarily translate into a decline in children's resources. (Contains 38 references.) (HTH)

Data from the 1811 and 1851 census in England and Wales as well as other data from those countries in 1891 and 1921 were analyzed to investigate individuals' timing and extent of departure from the parental home. The authors found the following: (1) there was a gradual increase in the ages at which children left the parental home; (2) the pace of departure became more rapid over the entire period studied for males, although for females, the pace was increased in the twentieth century; (3) there was a decline in non-familial residence; and (4) there was a rise, especially in the twentieth century, in post-marriage co-residence with parents. The trends were attributed to a general decline in farm employment and domestic service (where employees had traditionally been given room and board) and the subsequent rise in urbanization and industrialization. The period from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century increasingly witnessed a divergence between the experience of leaving the parental home and entry into the labor market. The author suggested further research on the changing patterns of the timing of entry into the workplace. (Contains 17 tables and 73 references.) (AJ)

This paper presents information from the ongoing research program, Monitoring the Future. The program is designed to: (1) monitor drug use and potential explanatory factors among American secondary school students, and other young adults; (2) distinguish which of three different kinds of change--maturational, historical, and/or cohort are occurring for various types of drug use; and (3) study causes, consequences, and maturational patterns associated with these different types of changes in drug use. Some 50,000 secondary school students in 435 schools are surveyed annually for the program. A follow-up survey of graduated classes yields a young adult sample of about 11,000 respondents in the age range of 19 to 32. The paper is divided into two parts. Part 1 contains the theoretical background and conceptual framework, and Part 2 elaborates on the ten objectives, their rationale, and presents a synopsis of progress to date. Some objectives include monitoring drug use and potential explanations in grades 8, 10, 12, among young adults and with ages 34 and 40; distinguishing period, age, and cohort effects; explaining secular trends and cohort differences; assessing the consequences of drug use; studying frequent or heavy-users; studying various under-represented groups; and the methodological, policy and other contributions to the field. (Contains 527 references.) (JDM)

This occasional paper is intended to disseminate information from the project, Monitoring the Future. Each year since 1975, about 17,000 seniors have participated in the survey, which is conducted in some 130 high schools nationwide. In addition, subsamples of seniors from previously participating classes receive follow-up questionnaires by mail each year. Information from the follow-up studies is examined in this monograph. The information concerns changes in drug use during the first 10 years after high school, and specifically focuses on the ways in which social roles and experiences in post-high school years relate to the use of cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine. Chapter one is an introduction, and chapter two provides a description of the sample in terms of roles and experiences of each group at intervals post- high school. Chapters three, four, five, and six are devoted to types of drug use. Chapter seven summarizes the impacts of post-high school roles and experiences on drug use. Some general conclusions from the analyses include: (1) among full-time college students there is a larger than average increase in alcohol use; (2) being married is associated with reduction in use of alcohol; and (3) military service is associated with increased use of cigarettes and alcohol. (Contains 81 references and 26 tables) (JDM)

Policies governing divorce and parenting, such as child support orders and enforcement, child custody regulations, and marital dissolution requirements, can have a large impact on the welfare of parents and children. Recent research has produced evidence on the responses of divorce rates to unilateral divorce laws and child support enforcement. In this paper the authors argue that in order to assess the child welfare impact of family policies, one must consider their influence on parents' investments in their children as well as the stability of the marginal marriage. Further, the authors expect that changes in the regulatory environment induce changes in the distribution of resources within both intact and divided families. The authors develop a continuous time model of parents' marital status choices and investments in children, with the main goal being the determination of how policies toward divorce influence outcomes for children. Estimates are derived for model parameters of interest using the method of simulated moments, and simulations based on the model explore the effects of changes in custody allocations and child support standards on outcomes for children of married and divorced parents. We find that, while small changes in children's academic attainment are induced by significant shifts in custody and support, the major effects of these policies in both intact and divided households are on the distribution of welfare between parents. In addition, children's attainments are not necessarily best served by the divorce-minimizing policy. [This research is supported in part by a grant from the C. V. Starr Center for Applied Economics at NYU.]

The modern economic role of women emerged in four phases. The first three were evolutionary; the last was revolutionary. Phase I occurred from the late nineteenth century to the 1920s; Phase II was from 1930 to 1950; Phase III extended from 1950 to the late 1970s; and Phase IV, the "quiet revolution," began in the late 1970s and is still ongoing. Three aspects of women's choices distinguish the evolutionary from the revolutionary phases: horizon, identity, and decision-making. The evolutionary phases are apparent in time-series data on labor force participation. The revolutionary phase is discernible using time-series evidence on women's more predictable attachment to the workplace, greater identity with career, and better ability to make joint decisions with their spouses. Each of these series has a sharp break or inflection point signifying social and economic change. These changes, moreover, coincide by birth cohort or period. The relationship between the development of modern labor economics and the reality of women's changing economic role is explored. The paper concludes by assessing whether the revolution has stalled or is being reversed. Women who graduated college in the early 1980s did not "opt-out,"but recent cohorts are too young to evaluate.

This paper takes advantage of a massive school construction program that took place in Indonesia between 1973 and 1978 to estimate the effect of education on fertility and child mortality. Time and region varying exposure to the school construction program generates instrumental variables for the average education in the household, and the difference in education between husband and wife. We show that female education is a stronger determinant of age at marriage and early fertility than male education. However, female and male education seem equally important factors in reducing child mortality. We suggest that the OLS estimate of the differential effect of women's and men's education may be biased by failure to take in to account assortative matching. (A bibliography is included. Contains 8 footnotes, 2 figures and 7 tables.)

Previous research on the relationship between workplace stressors and physical health symptoms in men has generated such important insights as the importance of job demand or overload to physical health. However, research on women, work and health raises several necessary additions to the paradigm: (1) a focus on the positive aspects of the workplace; (2) possible gender differences in the model; and (3) attention to the impact of family roles. This paper addresses these considerations using data from a disproportionate random sample of 403 employed women ages 25 to 55. Subjects were interviewed in their homes or offices about their major social roles, psychological distress, well being, and physical health. The results indicate that work rewards as well as work concerns are related to physical health symptoms; helping others at work is an important work reward for this sample which has not been identified in men; for employed mothers, satisfaction with salary is directly related to physical symptoms; and for women in troubled marriages or relationships, deriving reward from helping others at work reduces the impact of relationship problems on physical health. It is important to recognize that men and women operate in the worlds of work and home and that these two worlds affect each other. (Author/ABL)

The present practice of surnaming, by which the wife takes on the name of her husband and the children take on the name of the father, favors one of the sexes over the other. In this paper, the egalitarian surnaming system (ESS) is proposed. This system deals equally with the sexes and also serves important social functions, such as providing a basis of family identity for the nuclear group (same surnames for mother, father, and children) and for identifying a line over generations (same surnames for grandparents and grandchildren, for example). According to ESS, both the wife and the husband retain their before-marriage surnames but add the surname of the spouse just prior to it. Female children are given the dual surname of the mother, and the male children the dual surname of the father. When the children marry, they replace the first of their two surnames with the final surnames of their spouses. (Author/CLK)

Periodically, fears are voiced that the intelligence level of the United States population is falling. Historically, this fear has been linked to the belief that fertility is inversely related to intelligence. Evidence for that belief is sparse and may be an artifact of the failure of researchers to consider completed families. An inverse correlation between measures of intelligence and number of children in young samples may simply reflect differentials in timing and spacing of births, and not in ultimate family size. Drawing on data from only ever-married and relatively older men in the NBER-Thorndike and Kalamazoo Brothers samples, the authors of this paper find no inverse relationship between test scores and number of children. Since ever-marrieds are expected to show the greatest negative relationship, these results are all the more telling. (Author/GC)

Research into the experiential determinants of stress-related health measures has progressed dramatically in the last 10 years. Examination of the relationship between life events and psychological distress has been redirected from an early emphasis on major life events to a focus on minor events, i.e., the positive and negative happenings in day-to-day living. This study examined the relationships between rewards and concerns in the employee role and three health measures: psychological distress; psychological well-being; and self-reports of physical symptoms. Subjects (N=403) were a probability sample of health-care providers, i.e., licensed practical nurses and social workers, who varied in partnership and parental status. Subjects were interviewed in their homes or offices about their major social roles, psychological distress, well being, and physical health. The results indicated that the rewarding aspects of day-to-day life in the employee role have an important effect on health measures and that the relationship of work rewards and work concerns differ both for different health measures and for women in different family-role statuses. Work rewards and work concerns have main effects on psychological distress and physical symptoms, i.e., high work rewards buffered the negative effects of high work concerns on these two measures. For each health measure, the relationship between work rewards and concerns was conditioned by family role status. The effect of work rewards and concerns was conditioned by partnership status; the effect on psychological distress was conditioned by parental stress. (Author/ABL)

In spite of general concern about the impact on women's mental health of multiple roles, most studies have examined only the impact of individual roles. This study examined the relationship between multiple-role occupancy and quality and psychological distress in a disproportionate random sample of employed female health care workers (N=403). Subjects were interviewed in their homes or offices about their major social roles, psychological distress, well being, and physical health. The results indicated that there were no negative spillover effects from work to parenting or from parenting to work. Most importantly, there was evidence of positve spillover effects from work to parenting. Women with rewarding jobs were protected from the negative mental health effects of troubled relationships with their children. Moreover, this protection accrued to employed women regardless of their partnership status or whether they had preschool-age children. These findings suggest mechanisms by which women reap a mental-health advantage from multiple roles, even when some of those roles are stressful. Future research is needed to determine if the findings apply to women employed in non-health care occupations. (Author/ABL)

This study examined work and non-workplace sources of stress in the lives of women (N=403) currently employed as health-care providers. Female licensed practical nurses and social workers were sampled because they met the three criteria determined upon for the study; that is, they were all in high-stress occupations; women predominate in those professions; and these professions had readily identifiable populations which permitted drawing random samples. The aim of this longitudinal study was to assess the relationships between work-role quality, family-role occupancy, and family role quality on one hand and mental and physical health outcomes on the other hand. The results indicated that: (1) among female health-care providers, work-role quality was an important predictor of mental and physical health measures, particularly subjective well-being, physical health symptoms, and cardiovascular disease; (2) family role occupancy had few direct effects on psychological distress, well-being, or physical symptoms; (3) parent role and partner role quality had direct, but not interactive effects, with subjective well-being; (4) family role quality had both direct and interactive effects with psychological distress and physical health; (5) the subjects showed stability with respect to role occupancy, role quality, and health measures. Eight tables, and 16 figures are included. (ABL)

This paper studies the effect of mothers' education on their fertility and their children's schooling. We base our evidence on a natural experiment that sharply reduced the cost of attending school and, as a consequence, significantly increased the education of affected cohorts. This natural experiment was the result of the de facto revocation in October 1963 of the military rule that had been imposed on Arabs in Israel, immediately creating free access to institutions of schooling. Military rule, in effect from 1948 to 1966, imposed severe restrictions on movement and travel and therefore disrupted access to schools for residents of localities that had no schools. The change in access to schools affected mainly girls, increasing schooling by 1.02 years for women who were aged 4-8 in 1964 and by 0.58 year for those who were aged 9-13 at the time. These very large effects triggered a sharp decline in completed fertility, measured at 0.61 child for the younger affected cohorts and 0.47 for the older cohorts. Implied 2SLS estimates show that a one-year increase in maternal schooling caused a decline in fertility of 0.5-0.6 child in the younger cohorts. Additional evidence that we present suggests that labor-force participation, age upon marriage, marriage and divorce rates, and spousal labor-force participation and earnings played no role in this fertility decline. However, since spousal education increased sharply through assortative matching, it did play a role in the decline in fertility. These results are robust to checks against various threats to our identification strategy. We also estimate that the increase in mother's schooling led to an increase in the education of children, amounting to about one-third of the increase in their mothers' schooling.

This paper examines how marital and fertility patterns have changed along racial and educational lines for men and women. Historically, women with more education have been the least likely to marry and have children, but this marriage gap has eroded as the returns to marriage have changed. Marriage and remarriage rates have risen for women with a college degree relative to women with fewer years of education. However, the patterns of, and reasons for, marriage have changed. College educated women marry later, have fewer children, are less likely to view marriage as "financial security", are happier in their marriages and with their family life, and are not only the least likely to divorce, but have had the biggest decrease in divorce since the 1970s compared to women without a college degree. In contrast, there have been fewer changes in marital patterns by education for men.