Research
Working Papers
I study the life-cycle behavior of two cohorts of American women: those born in the 1960s and those born in the 1980s. Millennial women are more likely to work full time, work in professional, health, and education-related jobs, and be childless in their mid-thirties than women born in the 1960s. I build a life-cycle model that incorporates labor supply, occupation, and fertility choices, and estimate the model for the older cohort. I analyze the role of two forces in explaining the data patterns: (i) labor market factors, including changes in the wage structure and in the initial joint distribution of workers' skills and occupations' skills requirements, and (ii) family factors, including changes in marital status across cohorts. I find that both mechanisms are important and together are able to (i) explain the changes in occupational sorting across cohorts; (ii) predict 74% of the changes in the share of women in full-time work; (iii) explain 85% of the decrease in the share of women with two children and (iv) explain 81% of the increase in the share of childless women in their mid-thirties.
Work in Progress
Women, Fertility and Informality - joint with Lucas Finamor and Boryana Ilieva
We study women and men’s labor market and insurance decisions around childbirth in a market with widespread informality. We perform a series of event studies based on a rich longitudinal survey from Chile. We identify three distinct sectors of employment: formal, informal and self-employment. An informal worker is one that works in a private firm without a labor contract and a self-employed person is an independent worker. We study changes in formal, informal and self-employment around the time of childbirth and changes in place and hours of work. In addition, we explore occupational sorting and insurance decisions. In a final exercise, we explore the effects of the 2008 Pension System Reform in Chile, which aimed to decrease the gender gap in pensions, on formal work decisions.
Parental Mental Health and Children Outcomes - joint with Paula Calvo and Zhengren Zhu
In this project we explore the role that parental mental health has on children’s human capital development. Using data from NLSY79, linking mothers and their children, we document that 1) there is a positive relation between poor maternal mental health and her child’s mental health problems, 2) poor maternal mental health is negatively associated with her child’s cognitive outcomes and 3) inputs such as emotional support and material investments are negatively associated with problems in maternal mental health. With this empirical evidence as motivation, we develop a model of child human capital development where maternal mental health enters as an additional input in the production function of a child’s human capital. By looking at the impact of child’s human capital on long-term outcomes, we aim to understand how mental health contributes to the intergenerational transmission of poverty and inequality.