Mothers' caregiving during COVID: The impact of marital property laws on women's labor force status.

If mothers take care of children more than fathers, then after the onset of COVID-19 mothers' employment is expected to drop more than that of fathers. This gender gap is likely to be larger where women are less concerned about the financial repercussions of opting out of the labor force, and therefore the gender gap in employment is likely to grow more where community property or homemaking provisions give more protection to homemakers in case of union dissolution. Difference-in-differences and dynamic study estimations applied to CPS data for 2019-2020 show that after the onset of COVID-19 the labor force participation of mothers of school-age children-but not of fathers--dropped more in states with marital property laws more generous to parental caregivers. These results stand in contrast to how these groups' labor force participation changed after the Great Recession, compared to pre-recession levels.

Spouses' earnings association and inequality: A non-linear perspective.

We analyze the association between spouses' earnings taking account of non-linearities along both spouses' distribution of earnings. We also document the non-linearity of the relationships between earnings and labor force participation, earnings and couple formation, and earnings and number of children. Using simulations, we then analyze how changes in spouses' rank-dependence structure, labor force participation and couple formation contribute to the upsurge in inequality in the U.S between 1967 and 2018. We find that an increased tendency towards positive sorting contributed substantially to the rise in inequality only among dual-earner couples, while it contributed little to overall inequality across households. Temporal and distributional heterogeneity are important, as earnings association had a more substantial role in the bottom of the earnings distribution and in recent years. The decline in couple formation contributed substantially to the rise in inequality, while the increase in female labor force participation and the fertility decline had equalizing effects. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10888-022-09539-5.

Women pay the price of COVID-19 more than men.

The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented event with wide-ranging implications. Given that households are at the center of major changes affecting the entire world, the Review of Economics of the Household is publishing a series of issues on COVID-19 and the economics of the household. Here we review eight articles documenting the enormous costs of the COVID containment policies, in particular the school closures that ensued. Individuals paid a heavy cost in terms of disruption in their attachment to the labor force. Children could not go to school and parents were forced to provide extra childcare and spend significant amounts of time helping children continue to learn, while possibly working from home. Domestic violence became more common. These changes have often been traumatic, to the detriment of the well-being and mental health of large numbers of people. Women have paid a higher price than men, as many of the studies demonstrate. Our conclusion calls for policy-makers to prepare for the post-traumatic period: many households will need help.

Are COVID fatalities in the US higher than in the EU, and if so, why?

The COVID crisis has severely hit both the United States and Europe. We construct comparable measures of the death toll of the COVID crisis suffered by US states and 35 European countries: cumulative fatalities attributed to COVID at 100 days since the pandemic's onset in a particular nation/state. When taking account of demographic, economic, and political factors (but not health-policy related factors) we find that, controlling for population size, cumulative deaths are between 100 and 130% higher in a US state than in a European country. We no longer find a US/EUROPE gap in fatalities from COVID after taking account of how each nation/state implemented social distance measures. This suggests that various types of social distance measures such as school closings and lockdowns, and how soon they were implemented, help explain the US/EUROPE gap in cumulative deaths measured 100 days after the pandemic's onset in a state or country.

Later onset, fewer deaths from COVID.

We test whether European countries or US states who experienced their first death from COVID-19 at a later date have fewer deaths from COVID  60 and 100 days after the start of the pandemic in their borders. Our sample consists of 29 European countries associated with the European Union and 50 U.S. states and we control for a number of demographic, economic and health-policy related factors that are likely to influence mortality. We find that late starting countries or states registered fewer deaths from COVID-19. Countries/states’ differential reliance on partial or complete lockdown policies helps explain an areas' advantage of being a late starter.

Intergenerational residence patterns and Covid-19 fatalities in the EU and the US.

We study how patterns of intergenerational residence possibly influence fatalities from Covid-19. We use aggregate data on Covid-19 deaths, the share of young adults living with their parents, and a number of other statistics, for 29 European countries associated with the European Union and all US states. Controlling for population size, we find that more people died from Covid in countries or states with higher rates of intergenerational co-residence. This positive correlation persists even when controlling for date of first death, presence of lockdown, Covid tests per capita, hospital beds per capita, proportion of elderly, GDP per capita, government's political orientation, percentage urban, and rental prices. The positive association between co-residence and fatalities is led by the US.