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Author: Moretti, Enrico
Resulting in 6 citations.
1. Dahl, Gordon B.
Moretti, Enrico
The Demand for Sons: Evidence from Divorce, Fertility, and Shotgun Marriage
Working Paper 01/2004, Centre for Household Income, Labour, and Demographics, Torino Italy, January 2004.
Also: http://www.child-centre.it/papers/child01_2004.pdf
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Centre for Household Income, Labour, and Demographic Economics
Keyword(s): Childbearing, Premarital/Nonmarital; Divorce; Family Structure; Fertility; Gender; Marital Status

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

In this paper, we show how parental preferences for sons versus daughters affect marital status, family structure, and fertility behavior. Specifically, we document that having girls has significant effects on divorce, child custody, marriage, shotgun marriage when the sex of the child is known before birth, and fertility stopping rules. Using a simple model, we show that taken individually, each piece of evidence is not sufficient to establish the existence of parental gender bias. But taken together, our empirical evidence indicates that parents in the U.S. favor boys over girls. We begin by documenting that parents with girls are significantly more likely to be divorced than parents with boys. The effect is quantitatively substantial, with a 1 to 7 percent higher probability of divorce for parents with daughters. Moreover, divorced fathers are more likely to have their sons versus daughters living with them. We also show that women with only girls are substantially more likely to have never been married than women with only boys. Perhaps the most striking evidence comes from the analysis of shotgun marriages using Vital Statistics birth record data. Mothers who find out their child will be a boy are more likely to marry their partner before delivery. Specifically, among those who have an ultrasound test during their pregnancy, we find that mothers carrying a boy are more likely to be married at delivery. When we turn to fertility stopping rules, we find that in families with at least two children, the probability of having another child is higher for all-girl families than all-boy families. This preference for sons seems to be largely driven by fathers. Survey evidence reveals that while women on average have only a slight preference for daughters, men report that they would rather have a boy by more than a two to one margin. In the final part of the paper, we compare the divorce, custody, and fertility effects for the U.S. to the effects in five developing c ountries.
Bibliography Citation
Dahl, Gordon B. and Enrico Moretti. "The Demand for Sons: Evidence from Divorce, Fertility, and Shotgun Marriage." Working Paper 01/2004, Centre for Household Income, Labour, and Demographics, Torino Italy, January 2004.
2. Lochner, Lance John
Moretti, Enrico
The Effect of Education on Crime: Evidence from Prison Inmates, Arrests, and Self-Reports
American Economic Review 94,1 (March 2004): 155-189.
Also: http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/000282804322970751
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: American Economic Association
Keyword(s): Arrests; Behavior; Census of Population; Crime; Education; Educational Attainment; Endogeneity; High School Completion/Graduates; Incarceration/Jail; Schooling; Self-Reporting

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

We estimate the effect of education on participation in criminal activity using changes in state compulsory schooling laws over time to account for the endogeneity of schooling decisions. Using Census and FBI data, we find that schooling significantly reduces the probability of incarceration and arrest. NLSY data indicate that our results are caused by changes in criminal behavior and not differences in the probability of arrest or incarceration conditional on crime. We estimate that the social savings from crime reduction associated with high school graduation (for men) is about 14-26 percent of the private return.
Bibliography Citation
Lochner, Lance John and Enrico Moretti. "The Effect of Education on Crime: Evidence from Prison Inmates, Arrests, and Self-Reports." American Economic Review 94,1 (March 2004): 155-189.
3. Lochner, Lance John
Moretti, Enrico
The Effect of Education on Crime: Evidence from Prison Inmates, Arrests, and Self-Reports
NBER Working Paper No. 8605, National Bureau of Economic Research, November 2001.
Also: http://www.nber.org/papers/w8605.pdf
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Keyword(s): Arrests; Census of Population; Crime; Endogeneity; High School Completion/Graduates; Incarceration/Jail; Racial Differences; Schooling; Self-Reporting

We estimate the effect of high school graduation on participation in criminal activity accounting for endogeneity of schooling. We begin by analyzing the effect of high school graduation on incarceration using Census data. Instrumental variable estimates using changes in state compulsory attendance laws as an instrument for high school graduation uncover a significant reduction in incarceration for both blacks and whites. When estimating the impact of high school graduation only, OLS and IV estimators estimate different weighted sums of the impact of each schooling progression on the probability of incarceration. We clarify the relationship between OLS and IV estimates and show that the 'weights' placed on the impact of each schooling progression can explain differences in the estimates. Overall, the estimates suggest that completing high school reduces the probability of incarceration by about .76 percentage points for whites and 3.4 percentage points for blacks. We corroborate these findings using FBI data on arrests that distinguish among different types of crimes. The biggest impacts of graduation are associated with murder, assault, and motor vehicle theft. We also examine the effect of drop out on self-reported crime in the NLSY and find that our estimates for imprisonment and arrest are caused by changes in criminal behavior and not educational differences in the probability of arrest or incarceration conditional on crime. We estimate that the externality of education is about 14-26% of the private return to schooling, suggesting that a significant part of the social return to education comes in the form of externalities from crime reduction.
Bibliography Citation
Lochner, Lance John and Enrico Moretti. "The Effect of Education on Crime: Evidence from Prison Inmates, Arrests, and Self-Reports." NBER Working Paper No. 8605, National Bureau of Economic Research, November 2001.
4. Moretti, Enrico
Estimating the Social Return to Higher Education: Evidence From Longitudinal and Repeated Cross-Sectional Data
NBER Working Paper No. 9108, National Bureau of Economic Research, University of California - Los Angeles, August 2002.
Also: http://www.nber.org/papers/w8605.pdf
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Keyword(s): Census of Population; College Graduates; Education; Modeling; Wage Rates

Economists have speculated for at least a century that the social return to education may exceed the private return. In this paper, I estimate spillovers from college education by comparing wages for otherwise similar individuals who work in cities with different shares of college graduates in the labor force. OLS estimates show a large positive relationship between the share of college graduates in a city and individual wages, over and above the private return to education. A key issue in this comparison is the presence of unobservable individual characteristics, such as ability, that may raise wages and be correlated with college share. I use a confidential version of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) to estimate a model of non-random selection of workers among cities. By observing the same individual over time, I can control for differences in unobserved ability across individuals and differences in the return to skills across cities. I then investigate the hypothesis that the correlation between college share and wages is due to unobservable city-specific shocks that may raise wages and attract more highly educated workers to different cities. To control for this source of potential bias, I turn to Census data and use two instrumental variables: the lagged city demographic structure and the presence of a land-grant college. The results from Census data are remarkably consistent with those based on the NLSY sample. A percentage point increase in the supply of college graduates raises high school drop-outs' wages by 1.9%, high school graduates' wages by 1.6%, and college graduates wages by 0.4%. The effect is larger for less educated groups, as predicted by a conventional demand and supply model. But even for college graduates, an increase in the supply of college graduates increases wages, as predicted by a model that includes conventional demand and supply factors as well as spillovers.
Bibliography Citation
Moretti, Enrico. "Estimating the Social Return to Higher Education: Evidence From Longitudinal and Repeated Cross-Sectional Data." NBER Working Paper No. 9108, National Bureau of Economic Research, University of California - Los Angeles, August 2002.
5. Moretti, Enrico
Estimating the Social Return to Higher Education: Evidence from Longitudinal and Repeated Cross-sectional Data
Journal of Econometrics 121,1-2 (July-August 2004): 175-212.
Also: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304407603002653
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Elsevier
Keyword(s): Census of Population; College Graduates; Data Linkage (also see Record Linkage); Education; Geocoded Data; Modeling, Instrumental Variables; Wage Rates

Economists have speculated for at least a century that the social return to education may exceed the private return. In this paper, I estimate spillovers from college education by comparing wages for otherwise similar individuals who work in cities with different shares of college graduates in the labor force. A key issue in this comparison is the presence of unobservable characteristics of individuals and cities that may raise wages and be correlated with college share. I use longitudinal data to estimate a model of non-random selection of workers among cities. I account for unobservable city-specific demand shocks by using two instrumental variables: the (lagged) city demographic structure and the presence of a land-grant college. I find that a percentage point increase in the supply of college graduates raises high school drop-outs’ wages by 1.9%, high school graduates’ wages by 1.6%, and college graduates wages by 0.4%. The effect is larger for less educated groups, as predicted by a conventional demand and supply model. But even for college graduates, an increase in the supply of college graduates increases wages, as predicted by a model that includes conventional demand and supply factors as well as spillovers.
Bibliography Citation
Moretti, Enrico. "Estimating the Social Return to Higher Education: Evidence from Longitudinal and Repeated Cross-sectional Data." Journal of Econometrics 121,1-2 (July-August 2004): 175-212.
6. Moretti, Enrico
Social Return to Education
Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California - Berkeley, 2000. DAI, 62, no. 01A (2000): p. 274
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: UMI - University Microfilms, Bell and Howell Information and Learning
Keyword(s): Census of Population; College Graduates; Educational Returns; Endogeneity; High School Dropouts; Technology/Technological Changes; Wage Equations

The main goal of this dissertation is to estimate the social return to education. Understanding the magnitude of this return is key to assessing the efficiency of public investment in education. In the first part, I estimate externalities from education by comparing wages for otherwise similar individuals who work in cities with different shares of college graduates in the labor force. A key issue in this comparison is the presence of unobservable factors that may raise wages and be correlated with the share of educated workers. To control for the potential endogeneity of education across cities, I use a combination of longitudinal data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) and repeated cross-sectional data from the Census. The results from the NLSY sample are remarkably consistent with those based on Census data. A percentage point increase in the supply of college graduates raises high-school drop-outs' wages by 1.9%, high-school graduates' wages by 1.6%, the wages of college graduates by 0.4%. The effect is larger for less educated groups, as predicted by a conventional demand and supply model. But even for college graduates, an increase in the supply of college graduates increases wages, as predicted by a model that includes both conventional demand and supply factors and externalities.

In the second part of the dissertation, I create and employ a unique worker-firm matched dataset to investigate the effect of human capital externalities on productivity and technological change in manufacturing firms. The dataset is obtained by combining the Census of Manufacturers and the Census of Population. I start by documenting a positive correlation between the productivity of manufacturing establishments in a given city and the average level of education outside the establishment in the same city. I find little evidence that omitted variables play a major role. I investigate whether in cities with a better-educated labor force plants tend to be equi pped with better technology. I find that in plants that are situated in cities with higher average education, both investment in computers and the fraction of new machinery to the total stock of machinery are larger, after controlling for a plant's characteristics. Furthermore, within a given city, investment in computers in a particular plant is positively associated with the number of workers who use computers outside the plant.

Bibliography Citation
Moretti, Enrico. Social Return to Education. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California - Berkeley, 2000. DAI, 62, no. 01A (2000): p. 274.