By regulating when divorce can occur and how resources are divided when it does, divorce laws can affect people’s behavior and their wellbeing both during marriage and at divorce. Household survey data from the United States shows that the introduction of unilateral divorce in states that imposed an equal division of property is associated with higher household savings and lower female employment rates among couples that are already married. This paper develops a model of household behavior to account for these effects and study how current laws can affect the wellbeing of different household members.
Labour Markets
We report on research that concerns the education and training people receive, the amount that they work, what they do, and what they earn. Topics of interest include:
• Unemployment
• The wage and employment response to unemployment insurance, disability insurance, and income taxes and transfers
• School quality, educational attainment, and economic outcomes
• Regulations governing minimum wages, overtime pay, hiring and firing, and collective bargaining
• Discrimination in employment and pay
• The labour market effects of immigration
• The decision to retire
• Inequality and intergenerational mobility
• Marriage, fertility, and labour market behavior
Latest articles
Family welfare cultures: evidence from Norway’s system of disability insurance
Over the past 50 years, many countries have seen a dramatic rise in the share of their adult population receiving disability benefits – and some argue that the explanation lies in a culture where dependency on welfare is passed from parents to children. By analysing a natural experiment provided by Norway’s system of disability insurance, this research presents some of the first causal evidence for the intergenerational transmission of ‘family welfare cultures’.
