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Title: Essays in Inequality and Family Economics
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Daruich, Diego
Essays in Inequality and Family Economics
Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Economics, New York University, 2018
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT)
Keyword(s): Family Income; Family Size; Fertility; Intergenerational Patterns/Transmission; Mobility; Parental Investments; Transfers, Family

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

This dissertation consists of two chapters, each of them containing an essay that is related to the effects of parental choices on aggregate inequality and intergenerational mobility.

The first chapter, "Explaining Income Inequality and Intergenerational Mobility: The Role of Fertility and Family Transfers," studies the effect of fertility differences across income groups on inequality and mobility. Poor families have more children and transfer less resources to them. This suggests that family decisions about fertility and transfers increase income inequality and dampen intergenerational mobility. To evaluate the quantitative importance of this mechanism, we extend the standard heterogeneous-agent life-cycle model with earnings risk and credit constraints to allow for endogenous fertility, family transfers, and education. The model, estimated to the US in the 2000s, implies that a counterfactual flat income-fertility profile would---through the equalization of initial conditions---reduce intergenerational persistence by 13% and income inequality by about 4%. The impact of a counterfactual constant transfer per child is twice as large.

Bibliography Citation
Daruich, Diego. Essays in Inequality and Family Economics. Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Economics, New York University, 2018.