We are among the first to use American time-use data to investigate non-market behavior in gay and lesbian households. We contribute to a literature that has documented a gay disadvantage and lesbian advantage in the labor market. Many have proposed that this pattern reflects, relative to their heterosexual counterparts, higher levels of household labor among gay men and lower levels of household labor among lesbian women. Results show that gay men, parents in particular, spend more time in household production than heterosexual men. We find evidence of different time-use patterns for lesbians, but they are driven by characteristics not sexual orientation. These results also contribute to the economics of the household showing that time use in same-sex households with weaker gender constructs does not conform to the predictions of models that highlight comparative advantage as a source of specialization.

We analyze the interaction of black–white race with physical and socioeconomic characteristics in the US marriage market, using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. We estimate who inter-racially marries whom along anthropometric and socioeconomic characteristics dimensions. The black women who inter-marry are the thinner and more educated in their group; instead, white women are the fatter and less educated; black or white men who inter-marry are poorer and thinner. While women in “mixed” couples find a spouse who is poorer but thinner than if they intra-married, black men match with a white woman who is more educated than if they intra-married, and a white man finds a thinner spouse in a black woman. Our general findings are consistent with the “social status exchange” hypothesis, but the finding that black men who marry white women tend to be poorer than black men who marry black women is not.

The process of structural transformation from the farm to a nonfarm sector is accompanied by technological change in both sectors and massive population growth. We investigate the effects of increasing population size (the population effect) and sector-specific productivity (the push and pull effects), both factor-neutral and factor-biased, in a parsimonious general equilibrium model under general forms of utility and production functions. All three effects may co-exist and interact in important ways. Generalizing the agricultural sector production function to CES is crucial for the population growth effect. Our analysis highlights how the relative importance of the three effects changes as the country develops and production and consumption conditions become more flexible.

This paper discusses the use of Chinese genealogies for research on economicdemography. I focus both on what is known about the genealogy as a data source,and what are the open questions for future research. Chinese genealogies containrecords at the individual level. With the publication of new catalogs andefforts to collect genealogies, the number of genealogies is even larger thanpreviously thought, with most dating to the late Ming (1368–1644) andQing (1644–1911) Dynasties. These records contain a rich source ofinformation about the Chinese population history, over a period for which thereis no alternative source of information. Yet, the source still remains largelyunexploited. Although the work of transcribing the data is significant, andselection biases need to be carefully considered, preliminary analysis of thedata for a sample of married men for Tongcheng County in Anhui Province suggeststhese data are a rich source of information for demographic and economicsresearch.