All OECD governments want to give parents more choice in their work and family decisions. This book looks at the different ways in which governments support families. It seeks to provide answers to questions like: Is spending on family benefits going up, and how does it vary by the age of the child? Has the crisis affected public support for…

In this article life history data from the U.S. National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), and the Dutch survey on Older Adults' Living Arrangements and Social Networks (NESTOR-LSN) are used to shed light on the various pathways leading to and associated with childlessness, and the proportions of men and women who have followed a…

This meta-analysis of 68 studies (770 effect sizes) used random effects models to examine whether children's achievement differed depending on whether their mothers were employed. Four achievement outcomes were emphasized: formal tests of achievement and intellectual functioning, grades, and teacher ratings of cognitive competence. When all…

We analyze the female-male gap in starting-salary offers for new college graduates using data from the annual surveys of the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), unique (and proprietary) data that have not previously been used for this purpose. A major advantage of working with a data set on salaries for new college graduates is…

This report presents earnings data from the Current Population Survey (CPS). The CPS is a national monthly survey of approximately 60,000 households conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Information on earnings is collected from one-fourth of the CPS sample each month. Users should note that the comparisons of…

Obesity prevalence has doubled among adults and overweight has tripled among children since 1980. This article discusses behavioral approaches to the obesity epidemic, focusing on recent environmental changes, the resulting behaviors, and possible solutions. Over the last 4 decades, time spent in sedentary activities, the consumption of fast food,…

More than 400 women have been murdered in and around Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, over the past decade. As the murders continue unabated and unsolved, and with the likely complicity of state authorities, they have triggered a dynamic cultural response from writers, filmmakers, singers, and others who deplore the murders while suggesting the underlying…

The authors investigate the direction of the relationship between marital happiness and wives' full-time employment using the 1987 to 1988 and 1992 to 1994 waves of the National Survey of Families and Households. First, the authors predict change in wives' employment between the two waves using marital happiness and other Time 1 characteristics.…

Drawing on data from a panel study of White women spanning 31 years, the analyses examine the influence of women's employment on the gendered division of household labor. Multiple dimensions of women's employment are investigated, including accumulated employment histories, current employment status, current employment hours, and relative income.…

We use a difference-in-difference-in-difference estimator to compare changes in labor force participation, weeks, and hours of work associated with no-fault divorce laws, allowing for differential responses for married women with and without children. Although other research has found that the labor supply of women in general does not respond to…

Participatory literacy programmes in developing countries are often seen as an important tool for women's empowerment and equality. This article problematises the way in which evaluation of progress towards these goals is couched in a linear trajectory, and often fails to uncover the messy reality of women's negotiations to achieve their own aims.…

This article outlines the main features of the present pension insurance scheme in the Federal Republic of Germany, the proposals of the Commission of Experts to Study the Social Security Status of Women and Survivors, the prospects for their implementation, and the essential aspects of the reform. (CT)

Examines the literature from the last six years on retirement preparation in private industry. Research in four areas is reviewed: need for retirement preparation; extent of current industry programs; evaluation of these efforts; and alternatives to existing corporate programs. (CT)

This article reviews early education and care policies in the United Kingdom since 1997, when a Labour Government came to power, and sets them in the wider context of international changes. It argues that the Labour Government has, by intention and by default, supported the development of private sector, and especially corporate sector childcare.…

This paper tests a central implication of the theory of equalizing differences, that workers sort into jobs with different attributes based on their preferences. We present evidence from four new time-use data sets for the United States and France suggesting that workers who are more gregarious, as revealed by their behavior when they are not…