During World War II, U.S. women entered the workforce in record numbers -- factories full of "Rosie the Riveters " producing planes and munitions for the war effort. In response, Congress passe...
https://freakonomics.com/2014/01/the-coolest-child-care-program-youve-never-heard-of/
Earlier this year, PRESIDENT OBAMA announced a plan to provide public pre-K education to low- and middle-income children, a proposal that has provoked debate about the actual demonstrated bene...
A new working paper (abstract ; PDF ) by JAMES HECKMAN and TIM KAUTZ looks at the relationship between "character" and student achievement as measured by test scores. Long story short: achieveme...
https://freakonomics.com/2013/11/where-does-character-come-from/
Most adults have vivid memories of the cars of their childhoods -- the wood-paneled station wagons (with backwards-facing rear seats, no less) or the boxy minivans in which they were driven to sc...
https://freakonomics.com/2013/10/if-your-parents-drove-a-ford-do-you/
From the Guardian : > Japan's under-40s appear to be losing interest in conventional > relationships. Millions aren't even dating, and increasing numbers > can't be bothered...
https://freakonomics.com/2013/10/why-are-the-japanese-no-longer-interested-in-sex/
A new working paper (abstract ; PDF ) by ERIC V. EDMONDS and MAHESHWOR SHRESTHA analyzes whether schooling incentives (in the form of conditional cash transfers) effectively reduce child labor...
https://freakonomics.com/2013/08/paying-kids-to-go-to-school-instead-of-working/
We've blogged before about America's rising obesity rate and how to fight it , but the battle may have just gotten a little easier. A new report from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) shows o...
https://freakonomics.com/2013/08/good-news-for-child-obesity/
A new working paper (gated ) by ANGUS DEATON and ARTHUR A. STONE is called "Grandpa and the Snapper: the Wellbeing of the Elderly who Live with Children": > Elderly Americans who live wi...
https://freakonomics.com/2013/06/does-living-with-children-make-the-elderly-miserable/
A new paper in JAMA Pediatrics finds that a small number of children are showing up in Colorado emergency rooms having unintentionally ingested marijuana. It seems they are gobbling up their gran...
https://freakonomics.com/2013/05/kids-attracted-to-medical-marijuana-candy/
How do economic conditions affect the incidence of child abuse? While researchers have found that poverty and child abuse are linked, there's been no evidence that downturns increase abuse. A...
https://freakonomics.com/2013/05/does-child-abuse-rise-during-a-recession/
HANS ROSLING , whose fantastic animated-data talks have been featured here before, has a new one about child-mortality trends. The video was timed to coincide with the release of BILL GATES's...
https://freakonomics.com/2013/02/taking-on-the-myths-of-child-mortality/
A working paper (PDF ; abstract ) from economists RESUL CESUR , ERDAL TEKIN , and AYDOGAN ULKER explores the effects of increased natural gas use on infant mortality: > In this paper, we ...
https://freakonomics.com/2013/01/a-health-upside-of-natural-gas/
JASON FLETCHER , who teaches public health at Yale, has written earlier on the connection between ADHD and crime . (The gist: "children who experience ADHD symptoms face a substantially increased...
https://freakonomics.com/2013/01/how-is-early-childhood-intervention-like-compound-interest/
One of the first Freakonomics Radio podcasts we made was an episode about the (surprisingly tenuous) link between obesity and health problems. A new study in The Journal of the American Medic...
https://freakonomics.com/2013/01/surprising-new-findings-on-obesity/
Time reports on a new study on why Asians have a higher rate of nearsightedness: > It has long been thought that nearsightedness is mostly a hereditary > problem, but researche...
https://freakonomics.com/2012/05/evidence-that-myopia-has-a-strong-environmental-cause/
I watched a Law and Order SVU re-run last night, remarkably one that I hadn’t seen before. In the episode, an infant dies of measles contracted from another child whose parents refuse to vacc...
https://freakonomics.com/2012/04/an-economics-lesson-from-law-and-order-svu/
I stumbled on this nifty business idea, Nanny in the Clouds , to create a market in the air for nannies. Think match.com, but for wanna-be-nannies and parents on airplanes. A clear market failu...
There's a new iPad app for parents to incentivize children to do chores. HighScore Hou se! sets up a market for parents and children to assign points to chores and exchange those points for ...
https://freakonomics.com/2012/02/how-to-get-your-kid-to-do-chores/
I don’t particularly like math. I’ve never been a fan of magic either. For some reason, however, when I heard about a new book entitled Magical Mathematics written by two first-rate mat...
Our latest Freakonomics Radio on Marketplace podcast is called “What's Wrong With Cash for Grades?” (You can download/subscribe at iTunes , get the RSS feed , listen via the media play...
https://freakonomics.com/2012/01/whats-wrong-with-cash-for-grades-a-new-marketplace-podcast/