Economic well-being and the family

This thesis examines the well-being of families under changing labor market conditions, changes in the legal environment and changes in public policy. The first chapter asks how women's fertility decisions are affected by changing labor market conditions. Chapter two examines whether divorce shocks persist into old age, and the final chapter studies how the elderly alter their living arrangements in response to changes in Social Security benefit payments. Chapter one exploits exogenous variation in labor demand for women to measure how total fertility responds to changes in female earnings. The principal finding is that women who are likely to face lower wage offers - those who have completed high school or are high school dropouts - reduce their total fertility when labor market conditions are better. In contrast, women who are likely to face higher wage offers - those who have completed at least some college - increase their total fertility when labor market conditions improve. Chapter two exploits variation in property division laws to examine whether there is a persistent effect of such laws on the well-being of ever-divorced women in retirement. The results suggest that a woman who divorces in a state and year where all pension assets are recognized as marital property has higher per capita household income in retirement than a woman who divorced in a state where pensions were not considered marital property.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Economics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2004

Author dc:creator

• Perry, Cynthia D

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Jonathan Gruber, Daron Acemoglu and David Autor.

• Economics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/29427

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/29427