Preschool Attendance, Schooling, and Cognitive Skills in East Africa

Economics of Education Review, 2019 (with Jan Bietenbeck and Fredrick M. Wamalwa)

Related material: publisher's version, online appendix

Abstract: We study the effects of preschool attendance on children’s schooling and cognitive skills in Kenya and Tanzania. We use a within-household estima- tor and data from nationally representative surveys of school-age children’s literacy and numeracy skills, which include retrospective information on preschool attendance. In both countries, school entry rules are not strictly enforced, and children who attend preschool often start primary school late. At ages 7-9, these children have thus attended fewer school grades than their same-aged peers without pre-primary education. However, they catch up over time: at ages 13-16, children who went to preschool have attended about the same number of school grades and score about 0.10 standard deviations higher on standardized tests in both countries. They are also 3 (5) percentage points more likely to achieve basic literacy and numeracy in Kenya (Tanzania).

Kvinnors ekonomiska förutsättningar och våld i nära relationer

SNS Analys nr. 66, 2020

Lanseringswebinarium: Webbinarium

Media: Dagens Arena

Våldsamt ojämlika: kvinnlig egenmakt och våld i nära relationer

Ekonomisk Debatt, 2019

Backlash: Female Economic Empowerment and Domestic Violence (Submitted)

Lund University, Department of Economics, Working Papers No. 2019:12

Selected media: Aftonbladet, Svenska Dagbladet, Sydsvenskan, Dagens Juridik, ETC, Svenska YLE, Dagens Nyheter, Feministiskt Perspektiv, Forskning.se, P4 Malmöhus

Abstract: This paper estimates the effect of female economic empowerment on domestic violence. I measure domestic violence using information on women's hospital visits for injuries caused by assault, derived from high-quality Swedish administrative registers. I proxy female economic empowerment with a measure of women's potential earnings, caused by local changes in female-specific labour demand. I show that increasing a woman's potential earnings increases the probability that she visits a hospital for assault-related injuries. In addition, I show that women's potential earnings increase the probability that their husbands visits a hospital for reasons related to depression, stress, anxiety, and assault. Taken together, these results indicate that improving women's financial independence triggers a male backlash response, even in a gender-equal country like Sweden.

Cultural Norms and Neighbourhood Exposure: Impacts on the Gender Gap in Math (R&R at Journal of Human Resources)

Lund University, Department of Economics, Working Papers No. 2020:6

Abstract: This paper investigates the interaction between cultural norms and neighbourhood characteristics. I estimate the effect of cultural gender norms on the gender gap in math, and explore whether this effect is mitigated by local labour market gender equality. I use high-quality Swedish administrative data on the results of national standardised math tests. To separate the effect of cultural gender norms from formal institutions, I estimate the effect of mothers' source-country gender norms on the gender gap in math for second-generation immigrants. By contrasting the outcomes of opposite-sex siblings, I show that the sibling gender gap in math increases with maternal culture of traditional gender norms; such that girls with more gender-traditional mothers perform worse relative to their brothers. To investigate whether the cultural gender norm effect can be mitigated by neighbourhood gender equality, I exploit a refugee placement policy to obtain random variation in location characteristics. I show that local labour market gender equality can completely mitigate the negative cultural norm effect. Taken together, my results imply that while cultural gender norms play an important role for the gender gap in math, they are not immune to the effects of neighbourhood exposure.

Educational choice, social preferences, and the gender wage gap (joint with Pol Campos-Mercade, Eva Ranehill, Florian Schneider, and Erik Wengström)

Mental Health Among PhD Students (joint with Clara Fernström, Eva Ranehill and Anna Sandberg Trolle-Lindgren)