Department of Economics
University of California, Berkeley
January 15, 2008
Field Exam for Economic Demography
Please answer all parts of all questions. The four numbered questions count equally in the
grade. Cite the literature where appropriate. You have three hours. You should allocate
roughly 45 minutes to each question. You may use a calculator for Question 4.
1) The economic theories of family behavior, specifically fertility, marriage and divorce,
were primarily developed for the context of developed nations like the US or Europe.
a. Without going into mathematical detail, describe the key assumptions made in
these theories. You can choose some specific version of the theories, such as
Becker’s (with or without co-authors), or you can answer the question more
generally.
b. What problems are encountered in using these theories to interpret family
behavior in the context of Third World countries? You can choose some
particular region of the Third World as a context for your discussion, such as
East or South Asia, Latin America or Sub-Saharan Africa.
c. Assess the overall usefulness of these theories for understanding family
behavior in the context you chose, given any difficulties you may have
identified in b above. What useful insights for this context, if any, are
provided by these theories? How might they guide empirical research?
2) Health and socioeconomic status interact in complex ways over the life cycle.
a. Describe the key elements of this interaction, citing relevant studies.
b. One consequence is that the inference of causal relationships between the two
is difficult. Discuss these difficulties.
c. What strategies have been employed, or would you suggest, for identifying
these relationships?
3) In empirical studies, it is often found that local labor markets with higher proportions
of foreign born also have higher wages. Think of our discussions of causal analysis,
and the article by Moffitt on this subject.
a. (3) What should we take to be the treatment here, of which we are trying to assess
the effect? What is the counterfactual? (Math expressions are not needed here, but
