Sara Cools

Child poverty has been steadily rising across high-income countries, including Scandinavia, raising concerns about its spatial concentration and potential impact on inequality. This study uses administrative data to investigate the development of geographic concentration of child poverty in Norway from 2004 to 2022, with a focus on variations across immigrant and native-born children. We analyze neighborhood poverty trends and measure overexposure to capture shifts in spatial inequality. Our key findings are that segregation, as measured by overexposure, has not increased over time despite a rise in child poverty. However, substantial differences persist, where overexposure to low-income neighbors is particularly pronounced among low-income immigrant children. Additionally, while aggregate levels of overexposure have remained stable, we observe local spatial shifts, particularly in the capital, Oslo, with some areas exhibiting increasing overexposure. Together, these patterns highlight persistent disparities among children, with potential consequences for child development and social integration.

Numerous studies have shown that fertility behavior is spatially clustered. In addition to pure contextual effects, two causal mechanisms could drive this pattern. First, neighbors may influence each other's fertility and second, family size may influence decisions about where to live. In this study we examine these two potential causal mechanisms empirically, using the sex composition of the two eldest children and twin births as instrumental variables (IVs) for having a third child. We estimate how having a third child affects three separate outcomes: the fertility of neighbors; the propensity to move houses; and the likelihood of living in a family-friendly neighborhood with many children. We draw residential and childbearing histories (2000–2018) from Norwegian administrative registers (N ~ 167,000 women). Individuals' neighborhoods are defined using time-varying geocoordinates for place of residence. We identify selective moves as one plausible causal driver of residential clustering of large families. This study contributes to the understanding of fertility and relocation, and to the literature on the social interaction effects of fertility, by testing the relevance of yet another network: that of neighbors.

Does the share of immigrants in a community influence whether people vote for anti‐immigration parties? We conduct a systematic review of the causal inference literature studying this question. We collect estimates from 20 studies and develop a new Bayesian meta‐analysis framework to account for both between‐study heterogeneity in effect sizes and the possibility of reporting bias. Although meta‐analysis methods that do not adjust for reporting bias suggest a moderate effect of local immigration, our Bayesian model finds that the effect of local immigration on far‐right voting is on average negligible once we account for reporting bias. However, the analysis also reveals a large heterogeneity in effects across contexts, suggesting that local immigration may be important for anti‐immigration vote shares in certain settings.

Regelen i norsk skole er at barn begynner på skolen det kalenderåret de fyller 6 år. Vi ser på mønsteret i utsatt og fremskutt skolestart etter kjønn og foreldrenes utdanning. Gutter født i siste kvartal av året har 2,3 prosentpoeng høyere sannsynlighet for utsatt skolestart enn jenter, mens gutter født i første kvartal av året har 2,2 prosentpoeng lavere sannsynlighet for fremskutt skolestart enn jenter. Barn av foreldre med høyere utdanning har lavere sannsynlighet for utsatt og høyere sannsynlighet for fremskutt skolestart. Utsatt (fremskutt) skolestart er negativt (positivt) korrelert med antall grunnskolepoeng og fullføring av videregående skole.

We estimate the effect of family size on various measures of labor market outcomes over the whole career until retirement, using instrumental variables estimation in data from Norwegian administrative registers. Parents’ number of children is instrumented with the sex mix of their first two children. We find that having additional children causes sizable reductions in labor supply for women, which fade as children mature and even turn positive for women without a college degree. Among women with a college degree, there is evidence of persistent and even increasing career penalties of family size. Having additional children reduces these women’s probability of being employed by higher-paying firms, their earnings rank within the employing firm, and their probability of being the top earner at the workplace. Some of the career effects persist long after labor supply is restored. We find no effect of family size on any of men’s labor market outcomes in either the short or long run.