The perfect headline doesn’t exi…
05.03.2026 20:24
👍 7446
🔁 2159
💬 29
📌 65
Parents' life satisfaction after having a son versus a daughter sheds light on gender preferences, showing that in matrilineal parts of Malawi, mothers prefer daughters, from Anna Barbeta-Margarit, @seema.bsky.social, and Suanna Oh www.nber.org/papers/w34830
Not sure!
Using Life Satisfaction Data to Measure Parents' Child Gender Preferences by Anna Barbeta-Margarit, Seema Jayachandran & Suanna Oh. Abstract: Can questions about life satisfaction be used to measure parental preferences for daughters versus sons? Daughter preference has rarely been documented in the literature, even in matrilineal settings. One possible reason is that the commonly used measures of parental gender preference, such as fertility-stopping rules and sex ratio at birth, are ill-suited to high-fertility settings. We instead assess maternal preferences in Malawi by examining the life satisfaction of women who currently have one child, comparing those with a daughter to those with a son. We find that in matrilineal (but not patrilineal) households, having a daughter increases mothers' life satisfaction, relative to having a son.
The usual measures of parents' son or daughter preference (stopping rules, sex selection) don't do well at high fertility . As an alternative, we use life satisfaction and document daughter preference among matrilineal women in Malawi.
Our new NBER paper: seemajayachandran.com/life_satisfa...
I am excited to be hiring two post-doctoral positions at UCLA--please share with your networks. www.aeaweb.org/joe/listing.....
Seems like we should hear more of an outcry from Congress, the media, and the public over this
Read about Abdou Cisse's path to economics and what he thinks makes a great econ paper.
(We're lucky to have Abdou visiting @princetondevo.bsky.social this year.)
It’s not too late to apply for CeMENT 2026! Join us in then warm Chicago on July 29–31 ☀️ Hard to believe now, but we promise: no parkas, just great feedback and good company. Deadline extended until Feb 15, 2026. Details: www.aeaweb.org/about-aea/co...
doctor's office, car mechanic
Having a mobile phone area code that's not from where you live is great. Most calls from my current area code are legit. Those are the only unrecognized numbers I pick up!
Another civilian gunned down by federal agents in Minneapolis, the day after several Democrats, including moderate media darlings, voted to give ICE another $10 billion.
Comparing registrations to published papers is essential to research integrity - and almost no one does it routinely because it's slow, messy, and time-demanding.
RegCheck was built to help make this process easier.
Today, we launch RegCheck V2.
🧵
regcheck.app
Forthcoming in the JEL: "Women's Power in the Household" by Seema Jayachandran and Alessandra Voena. www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...
This is incredible.
(More legible version here www.npr.org/sections/the...)
The Weiss Fund has a great new initiative for development economists on the PhD job market to support those taking up research positions in LMICs, offering supplementary income + research funds. Please share!
This man was convicted and sentenced to 22 years in prison for attacking the federal government before Trump pardoned him. Now he works for the federal government.
What a remarkable, courageous, historic statement. It will surely be remembered as a pivotal moment in the history of US institutions, and we don’t know yet which way it will go…
The video also allegedly shows the CBP agent saying “Do something, bitch” before shots were fired. In private Signal chats, the CBP agent boasted to other officers: “I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys.” If he felt comfortable enough communicating that to fellow employees, it speaks to an irredeemable organizational culture.
This is the second time in three months a DHS agent called a US citizen a "bitch" as he shot her. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/whos-threa...
This ad appeared this week on our West Philly block. Read all the way down.
He gave them an interview and this what they gave him in exchange. This is access journalism. This is the New York Times.
Forensic analysis of objective video evidence. This is how you serve readers searching for clarity.
For econ RCTs: Make your pre-analysis plan public in the AEA registry before submitting to a journal. Most people set them as private initially and never update that. If you're lucky, referees ask the editor to nag you. More often, no one knows what's prespecified, increasing chance of rejection.
The Kinsley gaffe to end all Kinsley gaffes
If the DEA had killed 80 innocent Americans in the course of apprehending one drug dealer, there would be riots. But we are so ghoulishly indifferent to the lives and humanity of people abroad that it's barely even part of the conversation.
"Using the quasi-random timing of Navratri—a major Hindu festival worshipping goddesses—I find that girls born
shortly after the festival receive ~6% more birth vaccinations than girls born just before."
josuedjossou.github.io/navratri-paper.pdf
(stumbled across this, intrigued, haven't read it)
Endless Column, by Constantin Brâncuși, 1938, 📸 by @stephenmally
If you're at the ASSA mtgs and are interested in gender gaps in the labor market, please join this session Monday 8 am. To draw out the links between the papers, there will be one discussant, a nice idea suggested by @profnoto.bsky.social; Camille Landais is generously playing this role.
You draft the tweet when you submit an NBER paper, but I swear I didn't write this ungrammatical tweet.
Reviewing how much power do women have in their households in developing countries and why household power matters, from @seema.bsky.social and Alessandra Voena www.nber.org/papers/w34605