Thread by @whyvert

Remarkable and high-quality Swedish study:

If men win the lottery, they marry and have children.

If women win the lottery, their fertility does not rise. (Indeed, low-income women get divorced.)

You might think more resources means more kids. Yes with men, not with women.

Maybe we need a society, as was the case in the baby boom, where men have sufficient resources to marry and reproduce.

This may help explain why some child subsidies (like cheap daycare or child benefits paid to the mother) do little or nothing to boost a country's fertility.

The authors have a brief column summarizing the study.

(Note that the effect on men's fertility is not huge.)

cepr.org/voxeu/columns/…