Research
Precautionary Fertility: Conceptions, Births, and Abortions around Employment Shocks
Joint work with Anna Adamecz, Márta Bisztray, Ágnes Szabó-Morvai and Andrea Weber
We study fertility responses to employment shocks. Using unique Hungarian administrative data that allow linking firm-level mass layoff and closure events to individual-level records on births and abortions, we show that the main response happens in anticipation of the shock. Responses differ by the availability of dismissal protection. While pregnancies increase in anticipation of all events, births only rise in case of mass layoffs when pregnant women are protected from layoffs. If the firm closes protection is lost and we find an increase in abortions. We interpret these results as evidence for precautionary fertility behavior. Women threatened by job displacement bring births forward to exploit dismissal protection, a strategy that breaks down if the firm closes permanently.
The Gains from Family Foster Care: Evidence from Hungary
Joint work with Gábor Kertesi
We analyze how the type of home environment -- family foster care or residential care -- affects the adult outcomes of individuals who were raised in state care during adolescence. While it is established in the literature that living in institutional care is detrimental for babies, the effect of living in different types of care as an older child is underexplored. We use Hungarian individual-level administrative panel data and follow the children from age 13 until age 19. We show that the adult outcomes of children growing up in family foster care are substantially better even after controlling for a rich set of variables, including indicators of cognitive and non-cognitive skills, and psychological problems observed at age 13. Young adults who grew up in family foster care are more likely to finish secondary education, they spend less time without either working or studying, and they are less likely to use tranquilizers than comparable youth raised in residential care. For girls, teenage pregnancy is less likely. IV estimations using local foster mother capacity as an instrument also point to a beneficial effect of foster care.
The Effect of Physical Education Time on Student's Body Composition
I analyze the effect of physical education (PE) time on the body composition of students. Previous literature has established that spending more time at PE classes is largely ineffective in reducing children's body mass index (BMI). However, BMI can increase or stay unchanged even when body composition becomes healthier, as physical activity can reduce fat mass and build muscle mass at the same time. Therefore, relying solely on BMI as an outcome can be misleading in assessing the true potential of PE time on students' health. In my analysis I utilize a new outcome, body fat percentage, to overcome this problem. To identify the effect of PE time, I use the introduction of daily PE classes in Hungarian primary and secondary schools in 2012. The staggered implementation of the policy created a large variation in time ever spent with PE between multiple subsequent age cohorts, making it possible to compare cohorts with different past PE time, while controlling for year fixed effects. Using data on the whole population of Hungarian 5th to 12th grade students I estimate OLS models on the following outcomes: mean BMI, mean body fat percentage, and obesity defined by a BMI threshold and by a body fat percentage threshold. The estimated effects of past PE time are statistically insignificant and close to zero for all outcomes. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that increased PE time left the outcomes unchanged in specific subgroups of students (by age, income, gender, and school infrastructure) as well. The findings support the idea that increasing PE time alone is not sufficient to tackle childhood obesity.