Inequality aversion predicts support for public and private redistribution.

Rising inequality has brought redistribution back on the political agenda. In theory, inequality aversion drives people's support for redistribution. People can dislike both advantageous inequality (comparison relative to those worse off) and disadvantageous inequality (comparison relative to those better off).

Preferences predict who commits crime among young men.

Understanding who commits crime and why is a key topic in social science and important for the design of crime prevention policy. In theory, people who commit crime face different social and economic incentives for criminal activity than other people, or they evaluate the costs and benefits of crime differently because they have different preferences. Empirical evidence on the role of preferences is scarce.

Neonatal health of parents and cognitive development of children.

It is well-established that neonatal health is a strong predictor of socioeconomic outcomes later in life, but does neonatal health also predict key outcomes of the next generation? This paper documents a surprisingly strong relationship between birth weight of parents and school test scores of their children. The association between maternal birth weight and child test scores corresponds to 50-80 percent of the association between the child's own birth weight and test scores across various empirical specifications, for example including grandmother fixed effects that isolate within-family differences between mothers. Paternal and maternal birth weights are equally important in predicting child test scores.

Role of income mobility for the measurement of inequality in life expectancy.

This work proposes a method to compute the income gradient in period life expectancy that accounts for income mobility. Using income and mortality records of the Danish population over the period 1980-2013, we validate the method and provide estimates of the income gradient. The period life expectancy of individuals at a certain age, and belonging to a certain income class, is normally computed by using the mortality of older cohorts in the same income class.