How families choose to form, dissolve, work, expand, and invest in their children are crucial questions for economic policies. Family Leave. Earned Income Tax Credits. Child Tax Credits. Medicaid. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Tax Rates. Social Security. Pensions. 401(k)s and IRAs. Each of these policies interacts with a household’s marriage, childbearing, and labor supply decisions. How do they impact individual decisions on if, when, and who to marry or divorce, on whether and when to have children, on how much schooling to pursue, how many hours to work, and how to plan for retirement? These questions are more relevant than ever in the face of the changing nature of the American household.

The Penn Wharton Budget Model, the Penn Institute for Economic Research, the University of Pennsylvania Economics Department and the Wharton School hosted leading scholars to discuss how household’s labor decisions, financial resilience, and well-being is shaped by policies, and how the microeconomic decisions of the family explain aggregate trends in American society. Breakfast and Lunch will be served during the conference. Dinner will follow.

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Marriage, Households, and Policy Conference

Breakfast and name tags will be in room B10, all conference sessions will be in room B11, and lunch will be in room 305 on the 3rd floor.

9:00 – 9:40 AM: (Room B10)

• Breakfast & Registration

9:40 – 10:30 AM: (Room B11)

• Household Labor Search, Spousal Insurance, and Health Care Reform
  • Presenter: Andrew Shephard (University of Pennsylvania)
  • Co-author(s): Hanming Fang
  • Download PDF of paper

10:30 – 11:20 AM: (Room B11)

• Trends in Work and Leisure: It's a Family Affair
  • Presenter: Matthias Doepke (Northwestern University)
  • Co-author(s): Titan Alon & Sena Coskun
  • Download PDF of paper

11:20 – 11:40 AM:

• Coffee Break

11:40 – 12:30 PM: (Room B11)

• Changes in Assortative Matching: Theory and Evidence for the US and the UK
  • Presenter: Costas Meghir (Yale)
  • Co-author(s): Pierre-Andre Chiappori, Monica Costa-Dias & Sam Crossman

12:30 – 1:20 PM: (Room 305, Third Floor)

• Lunch

1:20 – 2:10 PM: (Room B11)

• Putting the Husband Through: Role of Credit Constraints in Timing of Marriage and Spousal Education
  • Presenter: Murat Iyigun (University of Colorado at Boulder)
  • Co-author(s): Jeanne Lafortune
  • Download PDF of paper

2:10 – 3:00 PM: (Room B11)

• Collateralized Marriage
  • Presenter: Corinne Low (Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania)
  • Co-author(s): Jeanne Lafortune
  • Download PDF of paper

3:00 – 3:20 PM: 

• Coffee Break

3:20 – 4:10 PM: (Room B11)

• Simultaneous Search in the Labor and Marriage Markets with Endogenous Schooling Decisions
  • Presenter: Chris Flinn (New York University)
  • Co-author(s): Luca Flabbi & Mauricio Salazar-Saenz

4:10 – 5:00 PM: (Room B11)

• The Wage Growth and Within-Firm Mobility of Men and Women: New Evidence and Theory
  • Presenter: Mary Ann Bronson (Georgetown University)
  • Co-author(s): Peter Skogman Thoursie
  • Download PDF of paper

5:00 – 5:10 PM:

• Coffee Break

5:10 – 6:00 PM: (Room B11)

• The Impact of Post-Marital Maintenance of Dynamic Decisions and the Welfare of Couples
  • Presenter: Hanno Foerster (Boston College)
  • Download PDF of paper

6:30 PM:

• Dinner at Zahav