Using an instrumental variables strategy, we estimate the causal effect of income on children's math and reading achievement. Our identification derives from the large, nonlinear changes in the ...Earned Income Tax Credit. The largest of these changes increased family income by as much as 20 percent, or approximately $2,100, between 1993 and 1997. Our baseline estimates imply that a $1,000 increase in income raises combined math and reading test scores by 6 percent of a standard deviation in the short run. Test gains are larger for children from disadvantaged families and robust to a variety of alternative specifications.
The effect of schooling on cognitive skills Carlsson, Magnus; Dahl, Gordon Boyack; Öckert, Björn ...
The review of economics and statistics,
07/2015, Letnik:
97, Številka:
3
Journal Article
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To identify the causal effect of schooling on cognitive skills, we exploit conditionally random variation in the date Swedish males take a battery of cognitive tests in preparation for military ...service. We find an extra ten days of school instruction raises scores on crystallized intelligence tests (synonyms and technical comprehension tests) by approximately 1% of a standard deviation, whereas extra nonschool days have almost no effect. In contrast, test scores on fluid intelligence tests (spatial and logic tests) do not increase with additional days of schooling but do increase modestly with age.
Incarceration, Recidivism, and Employment Bhuller, Manudeep; Dahl, Gordon B.; Løken, Katrine V. ...
The Journal of political economy,
04/2020, Letnik:
128, Številka:
4
Journal Article
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Using a random judge design and panel data from Norway, we estimate that imprisonment discourages further criminal behavior, with reoffense probabilities falling by 29 percentage points and criminal ...charges dropping by 11 over a 5-year period. Ordinary least squares mistakenly reaches the opposite conclusion. The decline is driven by individuals not working prior to incarceration; these individuals increase participation in employment programs and raise their future employment and earnings. Previously employed individuals experience lasting negative employment effects. These findings demonstrate that time spent in prison with a focus on rehabilitation can be preventive for a large segment of the criminal population.
Peer Effects in Program Participation Dahl, Gordon B.; Løken, Katrine V.; Mogstad, Magne
The American economic review,
07/2014, Letnik:
104, Številka:
7
Journal Article
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We estimate peer effects in paid paternity leave in Norway using a regression discontinuity design. Coworkers and brothers are 11 and 15 percentage points, respectively, more likely to take paternity ...leave if their peer was exogenously induced to take up leave. The most likely mechanism is information transmission, including increased knowledge of how an employer will react. The estimated peer effect snowballs over time, as the first peer interacts with a second peer, the second peer with a third, and so on. This leads to long-run participation rates which are substantially higher than would otherwise be expected.
We study the link between family violence and the emotional cues associated with wins and losses by professional football teams. We hypothesize that the risk of violence is affected by the ..."gain-loss" utility of game outcomes around a rationally expected reference point. Our empirical analysis uses police reports of violent incidents on Sundays during the professional football season. Controlling for the pregame point spread and the size of the local viewing audience, we find that upset losses (defeats when the home team was predicted to win by four or more points) lead to a 10% increase in the rate of at-home violence by men against their wives and girlfriends. In contrast, losses when the game was expected to be close have small and insignificant effects. Upset wins (victories when the home team was predicted to lose) also have little impact on violence, consistent with asymmetry in the gain-loss utility function. The rise in violence after an upset loss is concentrated in a narrow time window near the end of the game and is larger for more important games. We find no evidence for reference point updating based on the halftime score.
Abstract
We examine whether integrating men and women in a traditionally male-dominated environment can change men's attitudes about mixed-gender productivity, gender roles, and gender identity. Our ...context is the military in Norway, where we randomly assigned female recruits to some squads but not others during boot camp. We find that living and working with women for eight weeks causes men to have more egalitarian attitudes. There is a 14 percentage point higher fraction of men who think mixed-gender teams perform as well or better than same-gender teams, an 8 percentage point increase in men who think household work should be shared equally, and a 14 percentage point increase in men who do not completely disavow feminine traits. Moreover, men in mixed-gender teams are more likely to choose military occupations immediately after boot camp that have a higher fraction of women in them. But these effects do not persist once treatment stops. Treated men’s attitudes converge to those of the controls in a six-month follow-up survey, and there is no long-term effect on choosing fields of study, occupations, or workplaces with a higher fraction of women after military service ends. Contrary to the predictions of many policy makers, we do not find that integrating women into squads hurt male recruits’ performance or satisfaction with service, either during boot camp or their subsequent military assignment. These findings provide evidence that even in a highly gender-skewed environment, gender stereotypes are malleable and can be altered by integrating members of the opposite sex. But they also suggest that without continuing intensive exposure, effects are unlikely to persist.
Family Welfare Cultures Dahl, Gordon B.; Kostøl, Andreas Ravndal; Mogstad, Magne
The Quarterly journal of economics,
11/2014, Letnik:
129, Številka:
4
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Abstract
We investigate the existence and importance of family welfare cultures, where the receipt of a welfare program by one generation causes increased participation in the next generation. Our ...context is Norway’s disability insurance (DI) system. To overcome the challenge of correlated unobservables across generations, we take advantage of random assignment of judges to DI applicants whose cases are initially denied. Some appeal judges are systematically more lenient, which leads to random variation in the probability a parent will be allowed DI. Using this exogenous variation, we find strong evidence for a causal link across generations: when a parent is allowed DI at the appeal stage, their adult child’s participation over the next five years increases by 6 percentage points. This effect grows over time, rising to 12 percentage points after 10 years. Although these findings are specific to our setting, they highlight that welfare reforms can have long-lasting effects on program participation, since any original effect on the current generation could be reinforced by changing the participation behavior of their children as well. The detailed nature of our data allows us to compare the intergenerational transmission with spillover effects in other networks and to explore mechanisms.
Dahl and Lochner (2012) provides some of the first causal evidence of the effects of family income on child achievement using changes in the Earned Income Tax Credit. Unfortunately, a coding error in ...the creation of total family income affects the first stage estimates and inflates the instrumental variable (IV) estimates. Importantly, it does not affect the reduced-form estimates or alter statistical significance of the IV estimates. This response shows that correcting this error does not alter the core findings or main message of the paper.
WHAT IS THE CASE FOR PAID MATERNITY LEAVE? Dahl, Gordon B.; Løken, Katrine V.; Mogstad, Magne ...
The review of economics and statistics,
10/2016, Letnik:
98, Številka:
4
Journal Article
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We assess the case for generous government-funded maternity leave, focusing on a series of policy reforms in Norway that expanded paid leave from 18 to 35 weeks. We find the reforms do not crowd out ...unpaid leave and that mothers spend more time at home without a reduction in family income. The increased maternity leave has little effect on children's schooling, parental earnings and labor force participation, completed fertility, marriage, or divorce. The expansions, whose net costs amounted to 0.25% of GDP, have negative redistribution properties and imply a considerable increases in taxes at a cost to economic efficiency.
Demand for Sons DAHL, GORDON B; MORETTI, ENRICO
The Review of economic studies,
10/2008, Letnik:
75, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Do parents have preferences over the gender of their children, and if so, does this have negative consequences for daughters versus sons? In this paper, we show that child gender affects the marital ...status, family structure, and fertility of a significant number of American families. Overall, a first-born daughter is significantly less likely to be living with her father compared to a first-born son. Three factors are important in explaining this gap. First, women with first-born daughters are less likely to marry. Strikingly, we also find evidence that the gender of a child in utero affects shotgun marriages. Among women who have taken an ultrasound test during pregnancy, mothers who have a girl are less likely to be married at delivery than those who have a boy. Second, parents who have first-born girls are significantly more likely to be divorced. Third, after a divorce, fathers are much more likely to obtain custody of sons compared to daughters. These three factors have serious negative income and educational consequences for affected children. What explains these findings? In the last part of the paper, we turn to the relationship between child gender and fertility to help sort out parental gender bias from competing explanations for our findings. We show that the number of children is significantly higher in families with a first-born girl. Our estimates indicate that first-born daughters caused approximately 5500 more births per year, for a total of 220,000 more births over the past 40 years. Taken individually, each piece of empirical evidence is not sufficient to establish the existence of parental gender bias. But taken together, the weight of the evidence supports the notion that parents in the U.S. favour boys over girls.
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