Research

Publications


Is Parental Leave Costly for Firms and Coworkers?, Journal of Labor Economics (forthcoming) 

with Serena Canaan, Nikolaj Harmon, and Heather Royer

We estimate the effect of a female employee giving birth and taking parental leave on small firms and coworkers in Denmark using a dynamic difference-in-differences design. We find little evidence that parental leave take-up has negative effects on firms and coworkers overall. This is because most firms are very effective in compensating for the worker on leave by hiring temporary workers and by increasing other employees’ hours. In contrast, we do find evidence that parental leave has negative effects on a small subsample of firms which are less able to use their existing employees to compensate for absent workers.

Press Coverage: Market Watch, FNTalk, Berlingske  

UBS Center Policy Brief


Parenting Values and the Intergenerational Transmission of Time Preferences, European Economic Review (2022)

with Thomas Epper

Previous research has documented a correlation in contemporaneously measured time preferences between parents and children. However, this evidence is vulnerable to concerns of reverse causality and the transmission mechanisms remain largely unknown. Based on high-quality administrative and survey data, we address these issues and document a substantial transmission of patience from parents to children that persists as children age. In addition, we study two theoretically important but distinct channels of socialization through which parents can influence children’s traits: parenting values and parental involvement. Our results show that, while parental involvement is not an important channel of the transmission, parenting values are key. Authoritative parents—who are characterized by exhibiting high control and warmth—do not transmit patience to their children, in contrast to authoritarian and permissive parents. Thus, the authoritative parenting style can be seen as an effective tool to counteract the transmission of impatience. The results are robust to comprehensive sets of controls and replicate in an independent sample with richer measures of parental involvement.


No Evidence that Siblings’ Gender Affects Personality Across Nine Countries, Psychological Science (2022) 

with Jan Feld, Thomas Dudek, and Julia Rohrer

Does growing up with a sister rather than a brother affect personality? In this paper, we provide a comprehensive analysis of the effects of siblings’ gender on adults’ personality, using data from 85,887 people from 12 large representative surveys covering 9 countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, Mexico, China, and Indonesia). We investigated the personality traits risk tolerance, trust, patience, locus of control, and the Big Five. We found no meaningful causal effects of the gender of the next younger sibling, and no associations with the gender of the next older sibling. Based on high statistical power and consistent results in the overall sample and relevant subsamples, our results suggest that siblings’ gender does not systematically affect personality.


Continuous Gender Identity and Economics, AEA Papers and Proceedings (2022)

with Lea Heursen, Eva Ranehill, And Roberto A. Weber, 

Presented at ASSA 2022: session "Identity, Culture, and the Economics of Gender"

Economic research on gender largely focuses on biological sex, the binary classification as either a “man” or “woman.” We investigate the value of incorporating a measure of continuous gender identity (CGI) into economics by exploring whether it explains variation in economic preferences and behavior, beyond the explanatory power of binary sex. First, we validate a novel single-item CGI measure in a survey study, showing that it correlates with measures used in gender research. Second, we use our single-item CGI measure in an incentivized laboratory experiment to assess CGI’s power in explaining previously documented gender gaps in four important economic preferences.


Brothers Increase Women's Gender Conformity, Journal of Population Economics (2022) (working paper version)

I examine how one central aspect of the family environment --sibling sex composition-- affects women’s gender conformity. Using Danish administrative data, I causally estimate the effect of having a second-born brother relative to a sister for first-born women. I show that women with a brother acquire more traditional gender roles, as measured through their choice of occupation and partner. This results in a stronger response to motherhood in labor market outcomes. As a relevant mechanism, I provide evidence of increased gender-specialized parenting in families with mixed-sex children. Finally, I find persistent effects to the next generation of girls.

(This is the previous version of the paper: Origins of Gender Norms: Sibling Gender Composition and Women's Choice of Occupation and Partner, IZA DP No. 11692.)

Press Coverage: IZA Newsroom, P1 Morgen (Danish National Radio), CPH Post, Magisterbladet, University of Copenhagen News


Exposure to More Female Peers Widens the Gender Gap in STEM Participation, Journal of Labor Economics (2020)

with Ulf Zölitz

This paper investigates how high school gender composition affects students’ participation in STEM college studies. Using Danish administrative data, we exploit idiosyncratic within-school variation in gender composition. We find that having a larger proportion of female peers reduces women’s probability of enrolling in and graduating from STEM programs. Men’s STEM participation increases with more female peers present. In the long run, women exposed to more female peers earn less because they (1) are less likely to work in STEM occupations, and (2) have more children. Our findings show that the school peer environment has lasting effects on occupational sorting and the gender wage gap. 


Gender Gaps in the Effects of Childhood Family Environment:  Do They Persist into Adulthood? European Economic Review (2018)

with Shelly Lundberg

We examine the differential effects of family disadvantage on the education and adult labor market outcomes of men and women using high-quality administrative data on the entire population of Denmark born between 1966 and 1995. We link parental education and family structure during childhood to male-female and brother-sister differences in adolescent outcomes,  educational attainment, and adult earnings and employment. Our results are consistent with U.S. findings that boys benefit more from an advantageous family environment than do girls in terms of grade-school outcomes. Father's education, which has not been examined in previous studies, is particularly important for sons.  However, we find a very different pattern of parental influence on adult outcomes. Gender gaps in educational attainment, employment, and earnings are increasing in maternal education, benefiting daughters. Paternal education decreases the gender gaps in educational attainment (favoring sons) and labor market outcomes (favoring daughters). We conclude that differences in the behavior of school-aged boys and girls are poor proxies for differences in skills that drive longer-term outcomes.

 

Birth Order and Health of Newborns: What Can We Learn from Danish Registry Data?, Journal of Population Economics (2018) 

with Ramona Molitor

We study birth order differences in health from birth throughout childhood using matched administrative data for more than one million children born in Denmark between 1981 and 2010. Using family fixed effects models, we find a positive and robust effect of birth order on health at birth; firstborn children are less healthy at birth. Examining prenatal investments, we find that during earlier pregnancies women are more likely to smoke, receive more prenatal care, and are diagnosed with more medical pregnancy complications, suggesting worse maternal health. Data on hospital admissions reveal that the general health advantage of later-born children persists in the first years of life and disappears by age seven. At the same time, later-born children are at each age throughout childhood more likely to be diagnosed with an injury, a result that is in line with previous evidence of a later-born disadvantage in education.

Press Coverage: The Telegraph


Working Papers


Causal Effects of Breastfeeding Promotion on Child Health: Understanding the Role of Nutrition 

with Jenna Stearns and Richard Martin

Using data from the only large-scale randomized controlled trial promoting prolonged exclusive breastfeeding, we show that the intervention significantly and persistently increased weight-for-age. To explain this result, we provide novel evidence of changes in infant feeding patterns. The estimated increase in calories that treated infants consumed explains a major share of the weight gain in early infancy. Our results suggest that understanding the common alternatives to breast milk is key for designing optimal infant feeding policies.


Work in Progress 


Math skills, perceptions of fit, and occupational choice (baseline and follow-up 1 completed; endline ongoing. AEA RCT Registry 0010215)

with Melanie Wasserman

We study how beliefs about math skills and fit affect occupational choice among Swiss students who are about to apply to apprenticeships. Although there is no gender difference in math skills, we document a substantial gender gap in preferences and search for math-intensive apprenticeships. We conduct a field experiment that randomizes the provision of gender-specific information on math ability and fit in gender-incongruent occupations. The intervention increases both boys' and girls' perceptions of fit in gender-incongruent occupations by 0.09-0.16 standard deviations. Furthermore, it increases boys' (girls') probability of searching for information about any gender-incongruent occupation over the following two weeks by 44 (27) percent and leads to an increase in their plans to apply for trial apprenticeships and/or apprenticeships in these occupations. The effects on plans to apply for gender-incongruent occupations are driven by boys with low-math skills and girls with high-math skills. Later this year, we will link our survey data to administrative data from the largest apprenticeship application website to evaluate whether the intervention has effects on occupational choice.


(Not) thinking about the future: maternal labor force participation (baseline and follow-up 1 completed. AEA RCT Registry 0010399)

with Ana Costa-Ramon, Ursina Schaede, and Michaela Slotwinski

Large and persistent earnings gaps open up between men and women after childbirth. While studies have documented that these gaps arise from drastically reduced labor supply of mothers, it is less well understood which factors women consider when making these decisions, and whether they are aware of the resulting financial implications. In this study, we randomly provide working mothers in Switzerland with information on the long-term financial consequences of a reduced workload. We highlight the impacts on lifetime earnings, pension savings, and financial well-being after potential adverse events. We find that women who receive the information treatment adjust their financial behavior and increase their workload aspirations. We confirm the persistence of effects in a follow-up survey two months after the intervention. We will merge survey data to administrative data in Fall 2023 to measure actual labor supply choices.


Parents' perceptions of occupational fit (Intervention ongoing. AEA RCT Registry 0012937)

with Daphne Rutnam 


Encouraging hands-on job experimentation among teenagers (Intervention ongoing. AEA RCT Registry 0011973 and 0012454)

with Alexia Delfino, Claudio Schilter, and Stefan Wolter


Backlash from Gender Equality (Intervention ongoing. AEA RCT Registry 0012382)

with Michela Carlana, Stefan Wolter, and Thea Zöllner


Firm adjustments to worker absence: evidence from five family policy regimes (analysis)

with Ursa Krenk, Andreas Steinhauer, and Josef Zweimüller


Gender identity and economic decision making (write-up)

with Zeynep Eyibak, Eva Ranehill, Lea Heursen, and Roberto Weber



Early childhood investment and parental well-being (piloting)

with Victoria Baranov, Pietro Biroli, and Xiaoyue Shan