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Men like child care at least as much as women do

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In March of 2012, The New York Times (NYT) website ran the headline, “Do Women Like Child Care More than Men?” The article answered this question in the affirmative, basing its conclusions on an academic paper by Rhoads and Rhoads (2012), published in the Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology. Yet, this study only focused on university professors, thus a highly selective group.

In a new IZA discussion paper, Rachel Connelly and Jean Kimmel test the hypothesis that women “like” child care more than men in the United States using newly available experienced emotions data coupled with time use data. Their research shows that while both men and women “like” child care giving in the sense that they report higher levels of happiness while engaged in child care giving as compared to other daily activities. In fact, men report even higher happiness scores than women, and this difference remains after the authors control for time spent in the activity and the timing of the activity in day, week and year. Connelly and Kimmel also find that women report being more tired and stressed than men in most child care giving activities.

The authors interpret their results as substantial evidence against the popular notion that women perform more unpaid work in the home – particularly activities related to caring for their own children – because they enjoy these activities more than men. In their view, mistaken information about gendered preferences serves to ameliorate concerns about persistent gender wage and achievement gaps: if mothers earn lower wages because they enjoy their time with children more than fathers, why worry about the resulting wage gap? In addition, to the extent that men also enjoy time spent with their young children, men would also benefit from institutional and policy changes that allow both parents to take active roles in parenting, while maintaining their strong continuous labor force commitment.

New evidence from soccer tournaments: three days of rest are enough

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Professional European soccer players have to play about 50 games each year. In 90 minutes they run up to 14 kilometers. Given these numbers, it seems logical that fitness and fatigue are crucial factors that determine the success of a team. In a new IZA Discussion Paper, Vincenzo Scoppa tests the importance of fatigue for team performance empirically. Scoppa uses data on all the matches played by national teams in all the tournaments of the FIFA World Cup from 1930 to 2010 and the UEFA Euro Cup from 1960 to 2012. Using points gained as well as goals scored and conceded as measures of performance, the study shows that an additional day of rest is important for the team success if the total rest time between games is three days or less. Beyond this threshold, an additional day of rest does not seem to affect fatigue. This insight has important implications for soccer clubs. As some teams play in the UEFA Champions or Europa League during the week, they might have a disadvantage when playing in the national leagues during the weekend. On the other hand, the author shows that under the current structure of major international tournaments such as the World or Euro Cup, there are no relevant effects of enjoying different days of rest on team performance as the periods between the games are quite similar.

How the Great Recession affected domestic violence

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During each global recession of the past decades there have been recurrent suggestions in the media that domestic violence increases with unemployment. All these accounts are based on the same underlying logic that high unemployment could provide the “trigger point” for violent situations in the home. However, from a research perspective, it is far from clear whether unemployment is an overwhelming determinant of domestic violence that many commentators expect it to be, and if so, how unemployment might be associated with domestic violence. A new IZA Discussion Paper by Dan Anderberg, Helmut Rainer, Jonathan Wadsworth and Tanya Wilson develops a simple model that explores how changes in unemployment affect the incidence of domestic violence. In a second step the authors test the predictions of their model using individual level data on domestic violence and unemployment from the UK.

The key theoretical result, confirmed by the empirical estimates, is that an increased risk of male unemployment decreases the incidence of intimate partner violence, while a rising risk of female unemployment increases domestic abuse. The authors explain the intuition for why the effects of male and female unemployment are of opposite signs as follows: When a male with a violent predisposition faces a high unemployment risk, he has an incentive to conceal his true nature since his spouse, given his low expected future earnings, would have a strong incentive to leave him if she were to learn his violent nature. As a consequence, higher male unemployment is associated with a lower risk of male violence. Conversely, when a female faces a high unemployment risk, her low expected future earnings would make her less inclined to leave her partner even if she were to learn that he has a violent nature. Anticipating this, a male with a violent predisposition has no incentive to conceal his true nature. Thus, high female unemployment leads to an elevated risk of intimate partner violence.

The effect of sorority membership on eating disorders

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Eating disorders affect 12-25% of college women. While previous research has established a positive correlation between sorority membership and eating disorders, causality has not yet been proven. A new IZA Discussion Paper by Susan Averett, Sabrina Terrizzi and Yang Wang makes an attempt using data from the American College Health Association. Using various econometric methods, the authors demonstrate that sorority membership leads to insufficient food intake of their members. The authors also show that females who tend to be more resilient to eating disorders are more likely to become a sorority member in the first place. This implies that if sororities were less selective, one would expect to see even more adverse weight-related outcomes.

How the French social assistance increased unemployment

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In the context of very high unemployment in many European countries, an old economic question receives new attention: Do social assistance programs increase unemployment rates by providing disincentives to take up a job? A recent IZA Discussion Paper by Olivier Bargain and Karina Doorley sheds new light on this question by studying the effect of the pre-2009 French social assistance program, the RMI (Revenue Minimum d’Insertion), on labor supply. The authors find that eligibility for this program, which began at age 25 for single people, led to a drop of between 5 and 9 percent in the employment rate of young high school dropouts. In 2009 the RMI was replaced by a new program, the RSA (Revenue de Solidarité Active), which introduced an additional benefit component for the working poor. This in-work benefit is found to restore financial incentives to work and alleviate the inactivity trap for high school dropouts. With this new system, which combines transfers to both jobless and working poor, extending the program to under 25-year-olds does not seem to create any significant disincentive effects to work. This is an important policy finding, given that the European youth is particularly prone to unemployment.

How globalization prevents wage increases

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It is widely believed that certain types of workers suffer from globalization since firms’ international engagement might lead to lower job security and lower bargaining power in wage negotiations. In particular, low-skilled workers are seen as the losers of globalization in this respect. In a new IZA discussion paper, Andreas Lichter, Andreas Peichl and Sebastian Siegloch test this belief empirically by looking at the effects of firms’ exporting behavior on the workers’ potential to claim higher wages in Germany. In line with common belief, the authors show that the higher the exports of a firm, the higher the competition in the product market and the lower the scope for wage increases of the workforce. Yet, they do not find evidence that low-skilled workers are particularly negatively affected. The findings of the paper could also explain the stylized fact that workers employed in exporting firms generally receive higher wages than employees in non-exporting firms: Besides reflecting differences in firm productivity, the wage premium could also serve as a compensation for higher job insecurity of the workforce and lower upward mobility of wages.

“Sex in Marriage is a Divine Gift” – but for whom?

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High fertility rates are often seen as a major cause of persistent poverty, especially in developing countries. The reason: a rise in family size is expected to reduce the money and time that parents can invest per child. A new IZA discussion paper by Christelle Dumas and Arnaud Lefranc explores this hypothesis by estimating the effect of family size on child education in urban Philippines. In the late 1990s, the mayor of Manila enacted a municipal ban on modern contraceptives in the capital. At the same time other comparable cities in the Manila metropolitan area were not affected by the ban. This policy change allows the authors to implement a research design similar to a laboratory experiment using a treatment (Manila) and a control group (the other cities). First, the authors find that the contraceptive ban led to a significant increase in family size. Second and in line with the hypothesis, the results show that increased family size leads to a substantive decrease in the children’s school performance.

Men vote for Mars, women vote for Venus

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A new IZA discussion paper by Vincenzo Galasso and Tommaso Nannicini investigates whether the degree of aggressiveness of political campaigns has a different impact on female and male voters. During the 2011 municipal elections in Milan, a sample of voters was randomly divided into three groups. While all voters were exposed to the same incumbent’s campaign, they faced different campaigns of the opponent: voters in group 1 were exposed to a positive campaign; the campaign for group 2 made use of negative advertising. Voter group 3 served as a control group and received no electoral information on the opponent. The field experiment revealed stark gender differences: negative advertising increases men’s turnout, but has no effect on women. Females, however, vote more for the opponent and less for the incumbent when they are exposed to the opponent’s positive campaign. Exactly the opposite is true for males. Thus, the authors conclude that effective strategies of political advertising should take gender into account.

Low fast-food prices make teenagers fat

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How do food prices affect body fatness of teenagers aged 12 to 18? This is the research question raised by Michael Grossman, Erdal Tekin and Roy Wada in a new IZA discussion paper. The authors use regional differences in prices for certain types of food in the United States to examine whether there is an effect on clinical measures of obesity, such as the body mass index or the percentage body fat. The findings are as follows: higher prices of fast-food restaurants decrease body fatness among youths. Moreover, teenagers lose weight if the price per calorie for food consumed at home goes up. In contrast, an increase in the price of fruits and vegetables increases obesity. The results have important implications for policy makers willing to prevent or reduce childhood obesity: a tax on meals purchased in fast-food restaurants or a subsidy to the consumption of fruits and vegetables would lead to better obesity outcomes among teenagers.

Munich discriminates against lesbians, Berlin does not

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2bridesAre lesbians subject to labor market discrimination? And can they avoid discrimination by adopting a more conventional lifestyle such as marriage? A new IZA discussion paper by Doris Weichselbaumer examines these questions for Germany. In an experiment she sent out more than 1,200 job applications in Munich and Berlin. The applications were identical except for family status (married vs. single) and sexual orientation (heterosexual vs. lesbian), as indicated through volunteer engagement in a gay and lesbian organization. The results show that discrimination based on sexual orientation is evident in Munich, but not in Berlin. Family status does not seem to matter: Lesbians who are in a “registered partnership” (same-sex marriage) are not treated more favorably than single lesbians.