Does Paid Family Leave Increase Fertility? Evidence from California” (Journal of Labor Research, 2022)

Literature on the labor market and health effects of paid family leave largely overlooks the impacts on fertility, particularly in the United States. Increased childbearing following the introduction of a modest paid family leave policy in the U.S. could explain the contrasting short–term gains and long–term losses in women’s labor market outcomes found in recent work. We exploit the nation’s first paid family leave program, implemented in California in 2004. Using the universe of U.S. births and a difference-in-differences strategy, we find that access to leave increases fertility by 2.8 percent, driven by higher order births to mothers in their 30s, as well as Hispanic mothers and those with a high school degree. Our results are robust to corrective methods of inference, including synthetic controls. Our findings may inform the discussion of a national paid family leave policy.

“Does College Access Increase High School Effort? Evaluating the impact of the Texas Top 10% Rule on Disadvantaged Students” (Revise and Resubmit at Journal of Public Economics)

I study how the Texas Top 10% rule, which guaranteed state college admission to all Texas high school students in the top decile of their graduating classes, affected student effort and achievement in high school. The new admissions regime not only increased access to Texas flagships for top students at disadvantaged schools, but potentially made college seem more attainable for all students at these schools by providing increased information about the college admissions process and increasing the incidence of college-going among peers. Using administrative data from Texas and a difference-in-differences framework, I show that the admissions regime change significantly impacted high school student effort. As a result of the policy, students at disadvantaged high schools increase their attendance and are more likely to graduate. These students also perform better on high school exit exams, fail fewer courses in high school, and become more likely to enroll in a state higher education institution. Notably, positive effects are not concentrated only among students likely to qualify for automatic admission but throughout most of the achievement distribution.