Elien Dalman

Together indicating that the rising cost of living is felt especially by families with young children, across the income distribution.

In ongoing research, I together with coauthors see how families with young children reduced spending on outsourcing domestic work since 2020. Other household types (without children) did not, and the overall SES gradient in outsourcing decreased somewhat.

While a governmental investigation on the topic is ongoing, inflation-adjusting the child allowance to its earlier real value would be a reasonable first step (1600 SEK instead of 1250 SEK per child and month).

Such investment could also help minimize other costly consequences of decreased fertility, such as (pre)school closures and retraining of teachers.

The cost of living of families with children is more sensitive to costs for housing (and food), which have increased faster than overall inflation.
Given decreased fertility, larger investments per child (child allowance,school,daycare) are possible without increasing overall expenditure on children

Today, Dagens Nyheter publishes my debate article. I highlight the contrast between governmental concern on decreasing fertility on the one hand, and decreasing family benefits (due to inflation) in a context of rising costs of living on the other hand.

DN Debatt. ”Ni undrar varför vi inte skaffar barn? Här är ett skäl” DN Debatt. Ekonomhistorikern Elien Dalman förklarar varför dagens barnbidrag inte räcker för unga familjer och hur det påverkar Sveriges födelsetal.

När barnafödandet minskar och bostadskostnader äter upp en allt större del av barnfamiljers inkomster, finns det alla skäl att värna Sveriges familjepolitik - i stället för att låta inflationen urholka den.

www.dn.se/debatt/ni-un...

The housing theory of everything - Works in Progress Magazine Western housing shortages drive inequality, climate change, low productivity growth, obesity, and even falling fertility rates.

Link for your reading pleasure.
worksinprogress.co/issue/the-ho...

A study just out in ESR also suggests that women do not benefit professionally from keeping their own surname (in the German context): doi.org/10.1093/esr/...

Between "making a name" for oneselve, or taking one, this study suggests taking one is more beneficial for women in academia

Claudia Goldin previously showed that US women who made a name for theirselves before marriage were less likely to adopt their partner's: www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

"Women who have changed their surname received more favourable [academic] evaluations compared to those who did not.[...academic] female participants favoured female academics who have changed [surname...] and this was mediated by higher perceived competence and commitment"

doi.org/10.3390/socs...

"Nobody like a Swede to respond to a yes or no question with: eh, kind of" (meaning: no!)

Double Dutch - Teater Giljotin

Hahaha, 45! Amazing! I just spent a feverish day watching a slightly bad Dutch rip-off to House of Cards ("BuZa"), time less well invested.

A thread of directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) that look like record covers... because that's EXACTLY what the world needs

1. Huey Lewis and the News: link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...

Who Can Have a Baby? Social Norms and the Right to Reproduce - Letícia J. Marteleto, Sneha Kumar, Luiz Gustavo Fernandes Sereno, Alexandre Gori Maia, 2025 Childbearing norms and discourse influence social interactions and policy priorities, reflecting and reinforcing social stratification. We propose a theoretical...

And an interesting companion article: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

"...race and SES lines, define childbearing norms. Black women receive less approval if in low- versus high-SES positions, whereas White women receive similar levels of approval regardless of SES."

Austerity as reproductive injustice: did local government spending cuts unequally impact births? Abstract. Large local government spending cuts in England, spanning over a decade of austerity policies, have severely restricted the universal services an

Social policy and the SES gradient in fertility: "We find that local government spending cuts were associated with a 9.1 percent reduction in the probability of having a(nother) birth for women in the poorest households, but not for women in the middle or richest households"

doi.org/10.1093/sf/s...

About to kick off a peer review workshop with our brilliant @sriucl.bsky.social PhD students right now. Thanks to my colleague Alina Pelikh for hosting and I wish something like this was available when I started out.

Stone centre online dialogue screenshot

The Stone Centre Inequality Dialogue recap & full replay are now live. Huge thanks to @brankomilan.bsky.social, @laywilliams.bsky.social, @johncassidysays.bsky.social, @undercoverhist.bsky.social & @annastansbury.bsky.social for your contributions & to all who joined us. Recap: bit.ly/Dialogue-recap

The missing heritability question is now (mostly) answered Not with a bang but with a whimper

I wrote a little bit about the "missing heritability" question and several recent studies that have brought it to a close. A short 🧵

Stockholm, as cold as ice

Remember, remember, an icy November

Ice is ice, nanaa naanana

For Women in Economics, the Hostility Is Out in the Open (Published 2021)

1/ Egalitarianism should begin at home. I link to this article by @bencasselman.bsky.social in light of the communications between Larry Summers and Jeffrey Epstein that have just been released. The released emails and the fact of friendship are vile.

www.nytimes.com/2021/02/23/b...

Latest installment in an extraordinarily interesting research program on inequality in Imperial China, one replete with insights on meritocracy, elite reproduction, and other topics with great current salience.

All over the rich world, fewer people are hooking up and shacking up Social media, dating apps and political polarisation all play a part

Singlehood is accelerating across continents and different age cohorts. But not all those who remain single have chosen to do so

Allemaal stemmen, jongons! En vergeet niet: stem vooral op basis van wereld- en mensbeelden, ideologische grondslagen en partijprogramma's. Dan komt het goed.

Our paper on fertility timing and women's earnings is now out in the Journal of Family Research (with replication file!) 👇

Short summary in the thread below: 1/8

Congratulations! 😃

Stem!

"We construct sleep and wake-up times from hourly app usage [...] For each student on each day, sleep onset is defined as the first hour within a three-hour
window after 9 p.m. during which total app usage falls below 10% of the student’s average daily usage over the prior month."

/Sleep well