Publications

Child Socio-emotional Skills: The role of parental inputs

(with Nicoletti C. and Tominey E.) IZA Working Paper HCEO Working Paper  , accepted Journal of Human Capital

Media Coverage: RES Media Briefings, voxeu.org

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Turning back the clock: Beliefs about gender roles during lockdown 

(with Boring A.) LIEPP Working paper, Labour Economics, 84, 102363.

Media Coverage: The Economist

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Exposure to Intimate Partner Violence and Children’s Dynamic Skill Accumulation: Evidence from a UK Longitudinal Study

(with Anderberg D.) TI Discussion Paper CESifo WP Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Volume 36, Issue 4, Winter 2020, Pages 783–815 

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The Degree of Poverty Persistence and the Role of Regional Disparities in Italy in Comparison with France, Spain and the UK (with E. Giarda) Social Indicators Research, 136(1), 163-202.

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Research Papers

Divorce, parental conflicts and child skills: A story of selection (with Vickery A.)

previously circulated as "Explaining divorce gaps in cognitive and noncognitive skills of children" DERS Working paper

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This paper uses the UK Millennium Cohort Study to quantify and characterize parental selection into divorce and the relationship with child cognitive and socio-emotional skills during childhood. Combining a decomposition method with a counterfactual analysis based on a model of endogenous selection into divorce, this paper shows that the skill disadvantages among children of divorce stem almost entirely from the effects of selection. Here, skill gaps materialise due to disadvantages in household characteristics that also increase divorce risk. Inter-parental conflicts, parental education, and family financial resources emerge as key pre-divorce characteristics that explain divorce gaps in children's cognitive and socio-emotional skills from age 3, through age 11. Inter-parental conflicts are often unobserved and overlooked in the literature, but our results demonstrate that they indeed play a major role, particularly for gaps in socio-emotional skills. Moreover, such gaps are found to be more pronounced for more vulnerable children, i.e. those with lower levels of socio-emotional skills. Overall, our results suggest that targeting pre-divorce characteristics like inter-parental conflicts may be an effective approach for mitigating skill deficits among children of disrupted families as these would be less likely to select into divorce.

 

Media Coverage: RES Media Briefings, The Times,  The Telegraph, iNews 

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Culture as a Barrier: Gender Inequality among Migrants (with Gielen A., Webbink D. )

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This paper studies the importance of culture on the persistence of gender inequality. We exploit the mass migration from Suriname to the Netherlands that took place between the unexpected announcement of the Surinamese independence from the Netherlands (February 1974) and actual independence (November 1975). Two distinct ethnic groups with opposing gender roles and family structures arrived in the Netherlands: Creole female-headed families and Hindustani male-headed families. Using Dutch administrative data we find that exposure to the Dutch socio-economic environment improved schooling outcomes of girls relative to boys in both ethnic groups. However, we find remarkable differences between the two ethnic groups on gender inequality in the labor market. Creole women convert their relative gains in schooling into better labor market outcomes, by closing the within group gender wage gap. The gender wage gap remains unchanged and large within Hindustani migrants. This result suggests that labor market returns to schooling depend on gender roles and family norms, and that improving schooling opportunities for girls might not be sufficient to reduce gender inequality in the labor market.

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​​Prolonged worklife among grandfathers: Spillover effects on grandchildren's educational outcomes 

(with Been J., Gielen A., Knoef M.)  Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper 2022-033V, submitted 

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Recent policies aiming to prolong worklives have increased older males’ labor supply. Yet, little is known about their intergenerational effects. Using unique Dutch administrative data covering three consecutive generations, this paper studies the impact of increased grandfathers’ labor supply following a reform in unemployment insurance for persons aged 57.5+ on grandchildren’s educational performance. We find that increased grandfathers’ labor supply increases grandchildren’s test scores in 6th grade. The effect is driven by substitution of grandparents’ informal care by formal childcare.

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Research in progress

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Cohabiting, Childbirth and Child Human Capital (with Nicoletti C., Salvanes K.G. , Tominey E.) Draft coming soon

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Intimate Partner Violence and Children's Human Capital  (with Anderberg D., Vickery A. ) Draft coming soon

 

How many girl (boy) classmates outperform me? Ordinal rank, peer gender and gender role attitudes (with Vickery A. ) 

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Supply of Tertiary Education and Workers’ Long-run Outcomes (with Brilli Y., Cottini E., Ghinetti P., Parodi F.)

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Understanding the risk of work related accidents at older ages: Insights from administrative data  (with Ardito C., Cottini E., Serrano-Alarcon M.)

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