Low, Corinne
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Publication Negotiating a Better Future: How Interpersonal Skills Facilitate Inter-generational Investment(2018-04-28) Ashraf, Nava; Bau, Natalie; Low, Corinne; McGinn, KathleenUsing a randomized control trial, we examine whether offering adolescent girls non-material resources -- specifically, negotiation skills -- can improve educational outcomes in a low-income country. In so doing, we provide the first evidence on the effects of an intervention that increased non-cognitive, interpersonal skills during adolescence. Long-run administrative data shows that negotiation training significantly improved educational outcomes over the next three years. The training had greater effects than two alternative treatments (offering girls a safe physical space with female mentors and offering girls information about the returns to education), suggesting that negotiation skills themselves drive the effect. Further evidence from a lab-in-the-field experiment, which simulates parents' educational investment decisions, and a midline survey suggests that negotiation skills improved girls' outcomes by moving households' human capital investments closer to the efficient frontier. This is consistent with an incomplete contracting model, where negotiation allows daughters to strategically cooperate with parents.Publication Betting the House: How Assets Influence Marriage Selection, Marital Stability, and Child Investments(2017-11-27) Lafortune, Jeanne; Low, CorinneMarriage used to be practically universal, but now persists as an institution for only some groups, while others choose non-marital fertility. This paper posits that if one role of marriage is to insure one partner's investment in children, then home-ownership can be seen as providing the necessary "collateral" for this contract. As easier divorce and paternity enforcement outside of marriage have reduced the relative strength of the marital contract, the division of assets, particularly the family home, post-separation has remained unique to marriage. We provide a model where husbands can "ante up" the marital home to elicit more optimal child investments, whose costs are born mostly by the mother, by reducing the chance of divorce while providing consumption insurance to their partner. This, in turn, increases the value of marriage for those able to access this collateralized version of the contract. The model predicts that individuals able to buy a home at the time of marriage will invest more in children and have greater labor specialization, while policy changes that eroded marriage's relative commitment value would have heterogenous effects by asset-holding, both of which appear to hold in US data.Publication The Impact of Extended Reproductive Time Horizons: Evidence from Israel's Expansion of Access to IVF(2017-12-04) Gershoni, Naomi; Low, CorinneWomen’s time-limited fertility window, compared to men’s longer period of fecundity, could be a key constraint shaping the gender gap in career choices and hence outcomes. Israel’s 1994 policy change to make in vitro fertilization free provides a natural experiment for how fertility time horizons impact women’s investment choices. We find that following the policy change women marry later, complete more college education, achieve more post-college education, and have better labor market outcomes. Additionally, we find the “penalty” in spousal quality for women who get married after thirty substantially dissipates. This suggests that persistent labor market inequality may be partly rooted in biological asymmetries, and policies that protect against age-related infertility or relieve the career-family tradeoff could have far-reaching impacts.