We analyze differences in mode of transportation to work by sexual orientation, using the American Community Survey 2008-2019. Working individuals in same-sex couples are significantly less likely to drive to work than working men and women in different-sex couples. This gap is particularly stark among men: on average, almost 12 percentage point (or 13%) lower likelihood of driving to work for men in same-sex couples. Working individuals in same-sex couples are also more likely to use public transport, walk, or bike to work. Men and women are 7 and 3 percentage points more likely, respectively, to take public transportation to work than those in different-sex couples. Working men are also more likely to work from home-while working women are less likely-than those in different-sex couples. These differences persist after controlling for demographic characteristics, partner's characteristics, location, fertility, marital status, occupation or industry, and family income. Additional evidence from the General Social Survey 2008-2018 suggests that these disparities by sexual orientation may be due to lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals valuing the environment more than straight individuals.

in the first month of the UK first lockdown, we studied the demand and willingness to pay (WTP) for hand sanitizer gel, disposable face masks and disposable gloves, and how information on tested people and coronavirus deaths explains the demand and WTP for these products. The specific hypotheses to test and concrete questions to study were pre-registered in AsPredicted (#38962) on 10 April 2020, and an online survey was launched in Prolific on a sample of the UK general population representative by age, sex and ethnicity on 11 April 2020. We find that there is a demand for these products, estimate the average WTP for them, and show that the provision of information affected the demand (and WTP) for disposable face masks. Providing information on the numbers of coronavirus cumulative tested people and coronavirus cumulative deaths increases the stated demand for disposable face masks by about 8 percentage points [95% CI: 0.8, 15.1] and 11 percentage points [95% CI: 3.7, 18.2], respectively. JEL Classifications: C99, D12, I12, I18

AbstractA large body of evidence documents the educational and labour market returns to birth weight, which are reflected in investments in large social safety net programmes targeting birth weight and early life health. However, there is no direct evidence on the private valuation of birth weight. In this paper, we estimate the willingness to pay for birth weight in the United States, using a series of discrete choice experiments. Within the normal birth weight range (2,500–4,000 g), we find that individuals are, on average, willing to pay $1.47 (95% CI: [$1.24, $1.70]) for each additional gram of birth weight when the value of birth weight is estimated linearly, or $2.40 (95% CI: [$2.03, $2.77]) when the value of birth weight is estimated non‐parametrically.

We investigate the causal effect of education on spousal education using a sample of couples from the Health and Retirement Study. We estimate reduced-form linear matching functions derived from a parsimonious matching model which links spouses’ education. Using OLS we find that an additional year in husband's (resp. wife's) education is associated with an average increase in wife's (resp. husband's) education of 0.41 years —95% CI: 0.37, 0.45 (resp. 0.63 years —95% CI: 0.57, 0.68). To deal with endogeneity issues due to measurement error and omitted variables, we use a measure of genetic propensity (polygenic score) for educational attainment as an instrumental variable. Assuming that our instrument is valid, our 2SLS estimate suggests that an additional year in husband's (resp. wife's) education increases wife's (resp. husband's) education by about 0.49 years —95% CI: 0.35, 0.62 (resp. 0.76 —95% CI: 0.56, 0.96). Since greater genetic propensity for educational attainment has been linked to a range of personality and cognitive skills, we allow for the possibility that the exclusion restriction is violated using the plausible exogenous approach by Conley et al. (2012). A positive causal effect of education on spousal education cannot be ruled out, as long as one standard deviation increase in husband's (wife's) genetic propensity for education directly increases wife's (husband's) education by less than 0.2 (0.3) years.

Alfred Galichon pointed out to us an error in our paper “Fatter Attraction: Anthropometric and Socioeconomic Matching on the Marriage Market” (Chiappori, Oreffice, and Quintana-Domeque 2012). The properties derived in the theory section (sec. III) are not sufficient to validate the empirical strategy developed in the following section; the latter requires more specific assumptions. The issue can easily be described in the TU (transferable-utility) case (sec. III.B).We use the same notation as in the initial paper. In particular, women (men) are characterized by a vector ðX, εÞ RL RK (ðY , hÞ RK RL), where X (Y) is a vector of observable female (male) characteristics and ε (h) is a random vector reflecting female (male) unobservable attributes. Proposition 2 actually implies that, for any stable matching, the conditional distribution of the female index I(X), given the male characteristics Y, depends only on the male index J(Y ), and conversely. This property can be used to empirically estimate these indexes even in the most general framework, a possibility explored in forthcoming work.

We analyze how attractiveness rated at the start of the interview in the German General Social Survey is related to weight, height, and body mass index (BMI), separately by gender and accounting for interviewers' characteristics or fixed effects. We show that height, weight, and BMI all strongly contribute to male and female attractiveness when attractiveness is rated by opposite-sex interviewers, and that anthropometric characteristics are irrelevant to male interviewers when assessing male attractiveness. We also estimate whether, controlling for beauty, body size measures are related to hourly wages. We find that anthropometric attributes play a significant role in wage regressions in addition to attractiveness, showing that body size cannot be dismissed as a simple component of beauty. Our findings are robust to controlling for health status and accounting for selection into working.

Abstract: We explore the relationship between relative physical attractiveness in the household and the hours worked by married men and women. Using PSID data, we find that husbands who are thinner relative to their wives work fewer hours, while wives who are heavier relative to their husbands work more hours. These results are robust to controlling for individual, spousal characteristics, and conventional distribution factors, suggesting that high body weight leads to low Pareto weight in the household: fatter spouses may compensate with more hours of work. Our household bargaining interpretation is supported by the fact that we cannot statistically reject the collective proportionality restriction when including measures of the distribution of relative physical attractiveness in the population. JEL codes: D1, J1, J22

We analyze the marriage-market aspects of weight and height in the United States using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics on anthropometric characteristics of both spouses. We find evidence of positive sorting in spouses' body mass index (BMI), weight, and height. Within couples, gender-asymmetric trade-offs arise not only between physical and socioeconomic attributes, but also between anthropometric attributes, with significant penalties for fatter women and shorter men. A wife's obesity (BMI or weight) measures are negatively correlated with her husband's income, education, and height, controlling for his weight and her height, along with spouses' demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. Conversely, heavier husbands are not penalized by matching with poorer or less educated wives, but only with shorter ones. Height is valued mainly for men, with shorter men matched with heavier and less educated wives.

I estimate the impact of abortion legalization on spouses' labor supplies to test whether legalization increased women's household bargaining power, in a collective household behavior framework. Based on CPS data, I find that wives' labor supply decreased and their husbands' increased, which is consistent with the bargaining hypothesis. This contrasts with most studies of abortion and birth control technologies, which predict a labor supply effect only for women, and of opposite sign. Also consistent with the bargaining interpretation, I estimate no significant impact on anti-abortion religious couples or on those who regularly used contraceptives. PSID data yield supportive evidence. © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007.