Emily Oster

Talking to women about birth can be polarizing. ”

Every time you have a carrot instead of a cookie, every time you go to the gym instead of going to the movies, that's a costly investment in your health. But how much you want to invest is going to depend on how much longer you expect to live in the future, even if you don't make those investments. ”

Even if you are planning a birth with an epidural, the evidence suggests that a doula can help make things go much more smoothly. ”

I've always loved doing research. I remember doing a research project on the Babylonian numeral system in the eighth grade and thinking, 'This is pretty awesome - is this really a job you can have?' This led me toward a career as an academic, although it took me until college to realise that economics was the right field. ”

The main concern with a very large baby is difficulty in delivery. ”

I think women - relative to men - tend to feel that they have to do the household chores on top of everything else. This becomes even worse once you have kids. It's enough to have a full time job; a full time job plus a family is even more. ”

If everyone is good at something different, assigning chores is easy. If your partner is great at grocery shopping and you are great at the laundry, you're set. But this isn't always - or even usually - the case. ”

One of the big take-aways from a lot of economic theory is that people should engage in consumption smoothing. ”

Economists actually disagree about whether there are significant economic returns from attending an elite college versus a less-selective one. ”

The biggest food-related risk in pregnancy is listeria. It's a dangerous bacteria, to which pregnant women are especially susceptible, that can lead to miscarriage or stillbirth. ”