Claudia Olivetti

Mothers and Sons: Preference Formation and Female Labor Force Dynamics

This paper argues that the growing presence of a new type of man—one brought up in a family in which the mother worked—has been a significant factor in the increase in female labor force participation over time. We present cross-sectional evidence showing that the wives of men whose mothers worked are themselves significantly more likely to work. We use variation in the importance of World War II as a shock to womens labor force participation—as proxied by variation in the male draft rate across U. S. states—to provide evidence in support of the intergenerational consequences of our propagation mechanism.

Unequal Pay or Unequal Employment? A Cross-Country Analysis of Gender Gaps

We analyze gender wage gaps correcting for sample selection induced by nonemployment. We recover wages for the nonemployed using alternative imputation techniques, simply requiring assumptions on the position of imputed wages with respect to the median. We obtain higher median wage gaps on imputed rather than actual wage distributions for several OECD countries. However, this difference is small in the United States, the United Kingdom, and most central and northern EU countries and becomes sizable in southern EU countries, where gender employment gaps are high. Selection correction explains nearly half of the observed negative correlation between wage and employment gaps.

Predictive ability with cointegrated variables

In this paper we outline conditions under which the Diebold and Mariano (DM) (J. Bus. Econom. Statist. 13 (1995) 253) test for predictive ability can be extended to the case of two forecasting models, each of which may include cointegrating relations, when allowing for parameter estimation error. We show that in the cases where either the loss function is quadratic or the length of the prediction period, P, grows at a slower rate than the length of the regression period, R, the standard DM test can be used. On the other hand, in the case of a generic loss function, if P/R→π as T→∞, 0<π<∞, then the asymptotic normality result of West (Econometrica 64 (1996) 1067) no longer holds. We also extend the “data snooping” technique of White (Econometrica 68 (2000) 1097) for comparing the predictive ability of multiple forecasting models to the case of cointegrated variables. In a series of Monte Carlo experiments, we examine the impact of both short run and cointegrating vector parameter estimation error on DM, data snooping, and related tests. Our results suggest that size is reasonable for R and P greater than 50, and power improves with P, as expected. Furthermore, the additional cost, in terms of size distortion, due to the estimation of the cointegrating relations is not substantial. We illustrate the use of the tests in a nonnested cointegration framework by forming prediction models for industrial production which include two interest rate variables, prices, and either M1, M2, or M3.

Gender Roles and Medical Progress

Maternal mortality was the second-largest cause of death for women in childbearing years until the mid-1930s in the United States. For each death, 20 times as many mothers suffered pregnancy-related conditions, which made it hard for them to engage in market work. Between 1930 and 1960 there was a remarkable improvement in maternal health. We argue that this development, by enabling women to reconcile work and motherhood, was essential for the joint rise in women’s labor force participation and fertility over this period. We also show that the diffusion of infant formula played an important auxiliary role.

In the Name of the Son (and the Daughter): Intergenerational Mobility in the United States, 1850 -1940 †

This paper estimates historical intergenerational elasticities between fathers and children of both sexes in the United States using a novel empirical strategy. The key insight of our approach is that the information about socioeconomic status conveyed by first names can be used to create pseudo-links across generations. We find that both father-son and father-daughter elasticities were flat during the nineteenth century, increased sharply between 1900 and 1920, and declined slightly thereafter. We discuss the role of regional disparities in economic development, trends in inequality and returns to human capital, and the marriage market in explaining these patterns. (JEL D63, J12, J16, J24, J62, N31, N32)

Gender roles and medical progress

Maternal mortality was the second-largest cause of death for women in childbearing years until the mid-1930s in the United States. For each death, 20 times as many mothers suffered pregnancy-related conditions, which made it hard for them to engage in market work. Between 1930 and 1960 there was a remarkable improvement in maternal health. We argue that this development, by enabling women to reconcile work and motherhood, was essential for the joint rise in women’s labor force participation and fertility over this period. We also show that the diffusion of infant formula played an important auxiliary role.

Breaking the Net: Family Structure and Street-Connected Children in Zambia

Abstract Drawing on original fieldwork in the slums of Ndola in Northern Zambia we isolate those features of a childs nuclear and extended family that put him most at risk of ending up on the streets. We find that older, male children and particularly orphaned children are more likely to wind up on the street. Families with a male household head who is in poor health are more likely to originate street-connected children. In contrast, households with surviving maternal grandparents or with a male head who has many sisters are significantly less likely to originate street-connected children.

Social Norms, Labor Market Opportunities, and the Marriage Gap for Skilled Women

In most of the developed world, skilled women marry at a lower rate than unskilled women. We document heterogeneity across countries in how the marriage gap for skilled women has evolved over time. As labor market opportunities for women have improved, the marriage gap has been growing in some countries but shrinking in others. We discuss a theoretical model in which the (negative) social attitudes towards working women might contribute towards the lower marriage rate of skilled women, and might also induce a non-linear relationship between their labor market prospects and their marriage outcomes. The model is suited to understand the dynamics of the marriage gap for skilled women over time within a country with set social attitudes towards working women. The model also delivers predictions about how the marriage gap for skilled women should react to changes in their labor market opportunities across countries with more or less conservative attitudes towards working women. We test the key predictions of this model in a panel of 23 developed countries, as well as in a panel of US states.