Research

The work from home (WFH) technology, which has become a lasting feature of the post-pandemic economy, remains disproportionately available to high-income, college-educated workers. This paper studies how this unequal access affects intergenerational mobility through two novel mechanisms: a parental time channel and a residential sorting channel. Using U.S. microdata, I document that WFH parents devote about 23% more time, equivalent to roughly 0.15 additional hours per week, to their children's educational activities than comparable non-WFH parents. I also show that WFH families are 3.3 percentage points more likely to move to neighborhoods with higher-quality public schools, as measured by standardized test scores. To quantify the implications of these mechanisms, I develop and calibrate a spatial overlapping-generations model with endogenous neighborhood spillovers and parental time allocation between market work, home-based work, and child education. Calibrating the model to U.S. data reveals a persistent intergenerational advantage: even among adults who do not themselves work from home, those with a WFH parent are 1.05 percentage points more likely to reach the top income decile, corresponding to a 12% relative increase compared to their peers. Counterfactual experiments show that more than 95% of this intergenerational advantage arises from the parental time channel rather than residential sorting. These findings suggest that WFH transmits advantage primarily through how parents use their time at home rather than through where they live.

 Fertility rates in developed economies remain below replacement levels despite widespread intentions to have more children. We study how biased beliefs about biological fecundity affect women’s career and childbearing decisions. We build and calibrate a quantitative life-cycle model of college-educated, married women that features endogenous fertility and labor supply choices under heterogeneous biological fecundity and subjective beliefs. The model reproduces key fertility and employment moments in U.S. data and allows us to quantify the impact of correcting fertility misperceptions. Counterfactual experiments show that providing women with accurate information about either average or individual fecundity increases the total fertility rate by 12–14% and shifts births to earlier ages, with little effect on labor supply. Our findings highlight the potential of information-based fertility policies to complement traditional family policies such as childcare subsidies or parental leave. 

This paper investigates whether systematic misperceptions about fertility contribute to the delay of motherhood. We hypothesize that systematic misperceptions about natural fecundity and the efficacy of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) are significant, yet under-explored, drivers of this delay. Using a novel survey, this research will first measure the extent of these fertility belief biases and analyze how they correlate with childbearing intentions. A key innovation is a randomized controlled trial (RCT) embedded within the study: respondents will be randomly assigned to receive accurate, population-level fertility statistics. This design allows us to rigorously test whether correcting general misperceptions acts as an "information shock" that causally influences intended childbearing timelines. Furthermore, we will examine how this information effect interacts with the role of partners and the more personalized "diagnostic shock" of medical testing. The findings aim to establish a causal link between fertility beliefs and life-course decisions, with critical implications for our understanding of human capital investment, demographic trends, and public health communication.

The rapid diffusion of work-from-home (WFH) is fundamentally reshaping the integration of paid and unpaid work. This paper investigates how WFH alters the intra-household division of labor and its implications for gender inequality. Analyzing data from the American Time Use Survey, I find that the effects are critically heterogeneous. In single-earner households, WFH fails to rebalance domestic duties and can even intensify the existing specialization, leaving the non-working partner with a disproportionate share of chores. Conversely, in dual-earner households, WFH significantly reduces the gender gap in domestic work.

To explain this stark divergence, I develop a Collective Household Model that incorporates two key mechanisms: the reclamation of time previously lost to commuting, and the introduction of a "joint production" technology that allows for childcare during work hours. The model not only rationalizes the observed behavioral changes within household types but also reveals how WFH availability can endogenously shift households toward a dual-earner structure. This framework serves as a laboratory for conducting counterfactual simulations to pin down the evolution of labor supply and the gender wage gap, offering critical insights for policies aimed at leveraging remote work to foster greater gender equity in the home.