Kevin J. Mumford

Do Family Wealth Shocks Affect Fertility Choices? Evidence from the Housing Market

This paper uses wealth changes driven by housing market variation to estimate the effect of family resources on fertility decisions. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we show that a

China, the US, and Sustainability: Perspectives Based on Comprehensive Wealth

100,000 increase in housing wealth among home owners causes a 16% to 18% increase in the probability of having a child. There is no evidence of an effect of MSA-level housing price growth on the fertility of renters, however. We also present evidence that housing wealth growth increases total fertility and that the responsiveness of fertility to housing wealth has increased over time, commensurate with the recent housing boom.

Sustainability and the measurement of wealth: further reflections

Policy analysts and policy makers are keenly interested in whether the performance of national economies is consistent with some notion of “sustainability.” This reflects growing concerns about environmental quality and about the depletion of oil reserves and other natural resource stocks. Economists and natural scientists have offered several notions of sustainability. An especially important notion—and the one on which this chapter focuses—is defined with reference to human wellbeing. This notion of sustainability is achieved if the current generation leaves the next one with the capacity to enjoy the same or higher quality of life. Standard measures in the national income accounts—such as changes in per-capita GDP—may offer hints of whether a nation meets this sustainability criterion, but as is well known these measures do not fully capture many important contributors to well-being, such as the changes in the stocks of natural capital or in environmental quality.

How Costly is Welfare Stigma? Separating Psychological Costs from Time Costs

The June 2012 issue of Environment and Development Economics published a symposium with considerable focus on our paper, ‘Sustainability and the measurement of wealth’. The Symposium also contained five articles in which other researchers offered valuable comments on our paper. The present note replies to those comments. It clarifies important issues and reveals how important questions relating to sustainability analysis can be fruitfully addressed within our framework. These include questions about the treatment of time, the use of shadow prices and the treatment of transnational externalities. This note also offers new theoretical results that help substantiate our earlier empirical finding that the value of human health is something very different from the value of the consumption permitted by health and survival.

Women and the Choice to Study Economics

This paper empirically decomposes the costs of welfare participation using a model of labor supply and participation in multiple welfare programs. Prior estimates of the cost of welfare participation have not differentiated psychological costs, or stigma, from the effort required to become eligible and maintain eligibility (time costs). The relative size of these two costs has implications for policy. We find that psychological costs are at least as large as the time costs associated with participation in food assistance programs. In addition, we find that the incidence of psychological costs is inconsistent with these costs acting as an effective screening mechanism.

Do Family Wealth Shocks Affect Fertility Choices? Evidence from the Housing Market Boom and Bust

Underrepresentation of women in economics is documented in many studies. Investigation of its sources at the undergraduate level is examined through students’ decisions to persist in economics, either beyond an introductory course or in their major choices. The authors add to the literature by analyzing students’ decisions to take their first introductory economics course, an intermediate theory course, and ultimately major in economics, using the Multiple-Institution Database for Investigating Engineering Longitudinal Development. Results indicate that a smaller percentage of women take economics at all levels—introductory courses, theory courses, and majoring in economics. Even after controlling for aptitude, demographic characteristics, prior interest, course performance, environment, and course timing, persistent gender differences in the likelihood of partaking in economic education beyond the introductory course decision endure.

Student Performance in Undergraduate Economics Courses

While there is a great deal of literature focusing on the relationship between income and fertility, little is known about how wealth affects fertility decisions of the household. This paper fills this gap in the literature by investigating how changes in housing wealth affect fertility. In particular, we use the wealth variation supplied by the recent housing boom and bust to generate exogenous variation in household wealth. We first conduct a state-level aggregate analysis to investigate how the birth rate is related to housing prices using differences in the timing and size of the housing market boom and bust across different states over time. We then conduct an analysis using restricted-use data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics that allows us to track how women’s fertility behavior is related to individual-level housing price growth. The demographic and geographic controls in the PSID allow us to control extensively for any confounding effects driven by household selection across different cities or neighborhoods, and we find that for homeowners, a

The Efficiency Cost of Child Tax Benefits

10,000 increase in real housing wealth causes a 0.07 percent increase in fertility. We find little effects of MSA-level housing price growth on the fertility of renters, which supports our identification strategy. That increases in housing wealth are strongly associated with increases in fertility is consistent with some recent work showing a positive income effect on births, and our estimates are suggestive that the large recent variation in the housing market could have sizeable demographic effects that are driven by the positive effect of housing wealth on fertility.

Influence of Job Market Conditions on Engineering Cooperative Education Participation

Using undergraduate student records from six large public universities from 1990 to 2003, the authors analyze the characteristics and performance of students by major in two economics courses: Principles of Microeconomics and Intermediate Microeconomics. This article documents important differences across students by major in the principles course and compares these students to those who graduate with a major in economics. The data indicate that about two thirds of students who graduate with a major in economics declared their major sometime after completing the Principles of Microeconomics course. The article documents differences in characteristics and performance for economics graduates who started as engineering, math, or physics majors as compared to business or economics majors. The authors also examine whether starting in one of the more math-intensive majors of engineering, math, or physics improves student performance in intermediate microeconomics if performance in the principles course was good.

Child Benefits in the U.S. Federal Income Tax

Families with children receive preferential treatment in the U.S. federal income tax. Over the past 15 years, the real value of child tax benefits approximately doubled reaching nearly