Search Results
Source: NBER - National Bureau of Economic Research
Resulting in 63 citations.
1. |
Abbott, Brant Gallipoli, Giovanni Meghir, Costas Violante, Giovanni L. |
Education Policy and Intergenerational Transfers in Equilibrium NBER Working Paper No. 18782, National Bureau of Economic Research, February 2013. Also: http://www.nber.org/papers/w18782 Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79, NLSY97 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Credit/Credit Constraint; Current Population Survey (CPS) / CPS-Fertility Supplement; Educational Costs; Financial Assistance; I.Q.; Intergenerational Patterns/Transmission; Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Transfers, Family; Transfers, Financial This paper compares partial and general equilibrium effects of alternative financial aid policies intended to promote college participation. We build an overlapping generations life-cycle, heterogeneous-agent, incomplete-markets model with education, labor supply, and consumption/ saving decisions. Altruistic parents make inter vivos transfers to their children. Labor supply during college, government grants and loans, as well as private loans, complement parental transfers as sources of funding for college education. We find that the current financial aid system in the U.S. improves welfare, and removing it would reduce GDP by two percentage points in the long-run. Any further relaxation of government-sponsored loan limits would have no salient effects. The short-run partial equilibrium effects of expanding tuition grants (especially their need-based component) are sizeable. However, long-run general equilibrium effects are 3-4 times smaller. Every additional dollar of government grants crowds out 20-30 cents of parental transfers. |
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Bibliography Citation
Abbott, Brant, Giovanni Gallipoli, Costas Meghir and Giovanni L. Violante. "Education Policy and Intergenerational Transfers in Equilibrium." NBER Working Paper No. 18782, National Bureau of Economic Research, February 2013. |
2. |
Agostinelli, Francesco Wiswall, Matthew |
Estimating the Technology of Children's Skill Formation NBER Working Paper No. 22442, National Bureau of Economic Research, July 2016. Also: http://www.nber.org/papers/w22442 Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79, NLSY79 Young Adult Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB); Earnings; Educational Attainment; Family Income; Parental Investments; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT); Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) (see Self-Esteem); Rotter Scale (see Locus of Control); Skill Formation We develop a new estimator for the process of children's skill formation in which children's skills endogenously develop according to a dynamic latent factor structure. Rather than assuming skills are measured perfectly by a particular measure, we accommodate the variety of skills measures used in practice and allow latent skills to be measured with error using a system of arbitrarily located and scaled measures. For commonly estimated production technologies, which already have a known location and scale, we prove non-parametric identification of the primitive production function parameters. We treat the parameters of the measurement model as "nuisance" parameters and use transformations of moments of the measurement data to eliminate them, analogous to the data transformations used to eliminate fixed effects with panel data. We develop additional, empirically grounded, restrictions on the measurement process that allow identification of more general production technologies, including those exhibiting Hicks neutral total factor productivity (TFP) dynamics and non-constant returns to scale. We use our identification results to develop a sequential estimation algorithm for the joint dynamic process of investment and skill development, correcting for the biases due to measurement error in skills and investment. Using data for the United States, we estimate the technology of skill formation, the process of parental investments in children, and the adult distribution of completed schooling and earnings, allowing the production technology and investment process to freely vary as the child ages. Our estimates of high TFP and increasing returns to scale at early ages indicate that investments are particularly productive at these ages. We find that the marginal productivity of early investments is substantially higher for children with lower existing skills, suggesting the optimal targeting of interventions to disadvantaged children. Our estimates of the dynamic process of investment and skill development allow us to estimate heterogeneous treatment effects of policy interventions. We show that even a modest transfer of family income to families at ages 5-6 would substantially increase children's skills, completed schooling, and adult earnings, with the effects largest for low income families. |
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Bibliography Citation
Agostinelli, Francesco and Matthew Wiswall. "Estimating the Technology of Children's Skill Formation." NBER Working Paper No. 22442, National Bureau of Economic Research, July 2016. |
3. |
Akbulut-Yuksel, Mevlude Kugler, Adriana D. |
Intergenerational Persistence of Health in the U.S.: Do Immigrants Get Healthier as they Assimilate? NBER Working Paper No. 21987, National Bureau of Economic Research, February 2016. Also: http://www.nber.org/papers/w21987 Cohort(s): NLSY79, NLSY79 Young Adult Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Asthma; Body Mass Index (BMI); Depression (see also CESD); Height; Immigrants; Intergenerational Patterns/Transmission; Mothers, Education; Weight It is well known that a substantial part of income and education is passed on from parents to children, generating substantial persistence in socio-economic status across generations. In this paper, we examine whether another form of human capital, health, is also largely transmitted from generation to generation, contributing to limited socio-economic mobility. Using data from the NLSY, we first present new evidence on intergenerational transmission of health outcomes in the U.S., including weight, height, the body mass index (BMI), asthma and depression for both natives and immigrants. We show that both native and immigrant children inherit a prominent fraction of their health status from their parents, and that, on average, immigrants experience higher persistence than natives in weight and BMI. We also find that mothers' education decreases children's weight and BMI for natives, while single motherhood increases weight and BMI for both native and immigrant children. Finally, we find that the longer immigrants remain in the U.S., the less intergenerational persistence there is and the more immigrants look like native children. Unfortunately, the more generations immigrant families remain in the U.S., the more children of immigrants resemble natives' higher weights, higher BMI and increased propensity to suffer from asthma. |
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Bibliography Citation
Akbulut-Yuksel, Mevlude and Adriana D. Kugler. "Intergenerational Persistence of Health in the U.S.: Do Immigrants Get Healthier as they Assimilate?" NBER Working Paper No. 21987, National Bureau of Economic Research, February 2016. |
4. |
Almada, Lorenzo Nicolas Tchernis, Rusty |
Measuring Effects of SNAP on Obesity at the Intensive Margin NBER Working Paper No. 22681, National Bureau of Economic Research, September 2016. Also: http://nber.org/papers/w22681 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Body Mass Index (BMI); Food Stamps (see Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program); Obesity; Program Participation/Evaluation; Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly Food Stamps) The effects of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) on obesity have been the focus of much debate. However, causal interpretation of estimates from previous studies, comparing participants to non-participants, is complicated by endogeneity and possible misreporting of participation in SNAP. In this paper, we take a novel approach to examine quasi-experimental variation in SNAP benefit amount on adult obesity. Children of SNAP households qualify for free in-school meals, thus freeing some additional benefits for the household. A greater proportion of school-age children eligible for free in-school meals proxies for an exogenous increase in the amount of SNAP benefits available per adult. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-1979 we show that school meals represent a non-trivial part of the food budget for SNAP households. We find that increases in SNAP benefits have no effect on obesity levels for the full sample of those who report SNAP participation. To better isolate the effects of additional benefits from other potential changes we restrict our analysis to adults living in households with at least one child under 5 years of age. In this setting, we find that additional SNAP benefits reduce BMI and the probability of being obese for SNAP adults. |
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Bibliography Citation
Almada, Lorenzo Nicolas and Rusty Tchernis. "Measuring Effects of SNAP on Obesity at the Intensive Margin." NBER Working Paper No. 22681, National Bureau of Economic Research, September 2016. |
5. |
Arcidiacono, Peter Aucejo, Esteban M. Maurel, Arnaud Ransom, Tyler |
College Attrition and the Dynamics of Information Revelation NBER Working Paper No. 22325, National Bureau of Economic Research, June 2016. Also: http://www.nber.org/papers/w22325 Cohort(s): NLSY97 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB); Attrition; College Enrollment; College Graduates; College Major/Field of Study/Courses; Grade Point Average (GPA)/Grades; Test Scores/Test theory/IRT; Wages This paper investigates the role played by informational frictions in college and the workplace. We estimate a dynamic structural model of schooling and work decisions, where individuals have imperfect information about their schooling ability and labor market productivity. We take into account the heterogeneity in schooling investments by distinguishing between two- and four-year colleges, graduate school, as well as science and non-science majors for four-year colleges. Individuals may also choose whether to work full-time, part-time, or not at all. A key feature of our approach is to account for correlated learning through college grades and wages, whereby individuals may leave or re-enter college as a result of the arrival of new information on their ability and productivity. Our findings indicate that the elimination of informational frictions would increase the college graduation rate by 9 percentage points, and would increase the college wage premium by 32.7 percentage points through increased sorting on ability. |
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Bibliography Citation
Arcidiacono, Peter, Esteban M. Aucejo, Arnaud Maurel and Tyler Ransom. "College Attrition and the Dynamics of Information Revelation." NBER Working Paper No. 22325, National Bureau of Economic Research, June 2016. |
6. |
Ashworth, Jared Hotz, V. Joseph Maurel, Arnaud Ransom, Tyler |
Changes across Cohorts in Wage Returns to Schooling and Early Work Experiences NBER Working Paper No. 24160, National Bureau of Economic Research, December 2017. Also: http://www.nber.org/papers/w24160 Cohort(s): NLSY79, NLSY97 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Educational Attainment; Educational Returns; Wages; Work Experience This paper investigates the wage returns to schooling and actual early work experiences, and how these returns have changed over the past twenty years. Using the NLSY surveys, we develop and estimate a dynamic model of the joint schooling and work decisions that young men make in early adulthood, and quantify how they affect wages using a generalized Mincerian specification. Our results highlight the need to account for dynamic selection and changes in composition when analyzing changes in wage returns. In particular, we find that ignoring the selectivity of accumulated work experiences results in overstatement of the returns to education. |
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Bibliography Citation
Ashworth, Jared, V. Joseph Hotz, Arnaud Maurel and Tyler Ransom. "Changes across Cohorts in Wage Returns to Schooling and Early Work Experiences." NBER Working Paper No. 24160, National Bureau of Economic Research, December 2017. |
7. |
Baggio, Michele Chong, Alberto Simon, David |
Sex, Drugs, and Baby Booms: Can Behavior Overcome Biology? NBER Working Paper No. 25208, National Bureau of Economic Research, November 2018. Also: https://www.nber.org/papers/w25208 Cohort(s): NLSY97 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Contraception; Drug Use; Fertility; Geocoded Data; Sexual Activity; State-Level Data/Policy We study the behavioral changes due to marijuana consumption on fertility and its key mechanisms, as opposed to physiological changes. We can employ several large proprietary data sets, including the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, Nielsen Retail Scanner database, as well as the Vital Statistics Natality files and apply a differences-in-differences approach by exploiting the timing of the introduction of medical marijuana laws among states. We first replicate the earlier literature by showing that marijuana use increases after the passage of medical marijuana laws. Our novel results reveal that birth rates increased after the passage of a law corresponding to increased frequency of sexual intercourse, decreased purchase of condoms and suggestive evidence on decreased condom use during sex. More sex and less contraceptive use may be attributed to behavioral responses such as increased attention to the immediate hedonic effects of sexual contact, delayed discounting and ignoring costs associated with risky sex. These findings are consistent with a large observational literature linking marijuana use with increased sexual activity and multiple partners. Our findings are robust to a broad set of tests. |
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Bibliography Citation
Baggio, Michele, Alberto Chong and David Simon. "Sex, Drugs, and Baby Booms: Can Behavior Overcome Biology?" NBER Working Paper No. 25208, National Bureau of Economic Research, November 2018. |
8. |
Basu, Susanto House, Christopher L. |
Allocative and Remitted Wages: New Facts and Challenges for Keynesian Models NBER Working Paper No. 22279, National Bureau of Economic Research, May 2016. Also: http://www.nber.org/papers/w22279 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Wage Models; Wages Modern monetary business-cycle models rely heavily on price and wage rigidity. While there is substantial evidence that prices do not adjust frequently, there is much less evidence on whether wage rigidity is an important feature of real world labor markets. While real average hourly earnings are not particularly cyclical, and do not react significantly to monetary policy shocks, systematic changes in the composition of employed workers and implicit contracts within employment arrangements make it difficult to draw strong conclusions about the importance of wage rigidity. We augment a workhorse monetary DSGE model by allowing for endogenous changes in the composition of workers and also by explicitly allowing for a difference between allocative wages and remitted wages. Using both individual-level and aggregate data, we study and extend the available evidence on the cyclicality of wages and we pay particular attention to the response of wages to identified monetary policy shocks. Our analysis suggests several broad conclusions: (i) in the data, composition bias plays a modest but noticeable role in cyclical compensation patterns; (ii) empirically, both the wages for newly hired workers and the "user cost of labor" respond strongly to identified monetary policy innovations; (iii) a model with implicit contracts between workers and firms and a flexible allocative wage replicates these patterns well. We conclude that price rigidity likely plays a substantially more important role than wage rigidity in governing economic fluctuations. |
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Bibliography Citation
Basu, Susanto and Christopher L. House. "Allocative and Remitted Wages: New Facts and Challenges for Keynesian Models." NBER Working Paper No. 22279, National Bureau of Economic Research, May 2016. |
9. |
Baum, Charles L., II Ruhm, Christopher J. |
The Effects of Paid Family Leave in California on Labor Market Outcomes NBER Working Paper No. 19741, National Bureau of Economic Research, December 2013. Also: http://www.nber.org/papers/w19741 Cohort(s): NLSY97 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA); Fathers; Labor Market Outcomes; Leave, Family or Maternity/Paternity; Mothers; Wages; Work Hours/Schedule; Work Reentry Using data from the 1997 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY-97), we examine the effects of California’s first in the nation government-mandated paid family leave program (CA-PFL) on mothers’ and fathers’ use of leave during the period surrounding child birth, and on the timing of mothers’ return to work, the probability of eventually returning to pre-childbirth jobs, and subsequent labor market outcomes. Our results show that CA-PFL raised leave-taking by around 2.4 weeks for the average mother and just under one week for the average father. The timing of the increased leave use – immediately after birth for men and around the time that temporary disability insurance benefits are exhausted for women – is consistent with causal effects of CA-PFL. Rights to paid leave are also associated with higher work and employment probabilities for mothers nine to twelve months after birth, possibly because they increase job continuity among those with relatively weak labor force attachments. We also find positive effects of California’s program on hours and weeks of work during their child’s second year of life and possibly also on wages. |
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Bibliography Citation
Baum, Charles L., II and Christopher J. Ruhm. "The Effects of Paid Family Leave in California on Labor Market Outcomes." NBER Working Paper No. 19741, National Bureau of Economic Research, December 2013. |
10. |
Black, Dan A. Hsu, Yu-Chieh Sanders, Seth G. Schofield, Lynne Steuerle Taylor, Lowell J. |
The Methuselah Effect: The Pernicious Impact of Unreported Deaths on Old Age Mortality Estimates NBER Working Paper No. 23574, National Bureau of Economic Research, July 2017. Also: http://www.nber.org/papers/w23574 Cohort(s): Older Men Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Data Quality/Consistency; Ethnic Differences; Hispanics; Mortality; National Health Interview Survey (NHIS); Racial Differences We examine inferences about old age mortality that arise when researchers use survey data matched to death records. We show that even small rates of failure to match respondents can lead to substantial bias in the measurement of mortality rates at older ages. This type of measurement error is consequential for three strands in the demographic literature: (1) the deceleration in mortality rates at old ages, (2) the black-white mortality crossover, and (3) the relatively low rate of old age mortality among Hispanics--often called the "Hispanic paradox." Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Older Men (NLS-OM) matched to death records in both the U.S. Vital Statistics system and the Social Security Death Index, we demonstrate that even small rates of missing mortality matching plausibly lead to an appearance of mortality deceleration when none exists, and can generate a spurious black-white mortality crossover. We confirm these findings using data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) matched to the U.S. Vital Statistics system, a dataset known as the "gold standard" (Cowper et al., 2002) for estimating age-specific mortality. Moreover, with these data we show that the Hispanic paradox is also plausibly explained by a similar undercount. |
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Bibliography Citation
Black, Dan A., Yu-Chieh Hsu, Seth G. Sanders, Lynne Steuerle Schofield and Lowell J. Taylor. "The Methuselah Effect: The Pernicious Impact of Unreported Deaths on Old Age Mortality Estimates." NBER Working Paper No. 23574, National Bureau of Economic Research, July 2017. |
11. |
Boar, Corina Lashkari, Danial |
Occupational Choice and the Intergenerational Mobility of Welfare NBER Working Paper No. 29381, National Bureau of Economic Research, October 2021. Also: https://www.nber.org/papers/w29381 Cohort(s): NLSY97 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): General Social Survey (GSS); Household Income; Intergenerational Patterns/Transmission; Mobility, Economic; Occupational Choice; Occupational Prestige; Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID); Parental Influences; Well-Being Based on responses in the General Social Survey, we construct an index that captures non-monetary qualities of occupations, such as respect, learning, and work hazards, relevant to the well-being of workers. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data, we document that the children of richer US parents are more likely to select into occupations that rank higher in terms of this index. We rationalize this fact by introducing occupational choice with preferences over the intrinsic qualities of occupations into a standard theory of intergenerational mobility. Estimating the model allows us to infer the equivalent monetary compensation each worker receives from the intrinsic qualities of their chosen occupation. Earnings adjusted to reflect this additional compensation show substantially larger persistence of income from parents to children. Our model further predicts that the trends in the composition of labor demand in the US over the past three decades decreased intergenerational persistence, and also led to higher growth in the welfare of the average worker than that implied by observed earnings. |
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Bibliography Citation
Boar, Corina and Danial Lashkari. "Occupational Choice and the Intergenerational Mobility of Welfare." NBER Working Paper No. 29381, National Bureau of Economic Research, October 2021. |
12. |
Campante, Filipe Yanagizawa-Drott, David |
The Intergenerational Transmission of War NBER Working Paper No. 21371, National Bureau of Economic Research, July 2015. Also: http://www.nber.org/papers/w21371 Cohort(s): NLSY97 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Fathers and Sons; Fathers, Influence; Intergenerational Patterns/Transmission; Military Service; Occupational Choice We study whether war service by one generation affects service by the next generation in later wars, in the context of the major US theaters of the 20th century. To identify a causal effect, we exploit the fact that general suitability for service implies that how close to age 21 an individual's father happened to be at a time of war is a key determinant of the father's likelihood of participation. We find that a father's war service experience has a positive and significant effect on his son's likelihood of service. We estimate an intergenerational transmission parameter of approximately 0.1, across all wars, and that each individual war had a substantial impact on service in those that followed. We find evidence consistent with cultural transmission of war service from fathers to sons, and with the presence of substitutability between this direct transmission and oblique transmission (from society at large). In contrast, father's war service increases sons' educational achievement and actually reduces the likelihood of military service outside of wartime, suggesting that the results cannot be explained by material incentives or broader occupational choice. Taken together, our results indicate that a history of wars helps countries overcome the collective action problem of getting citizens to volunteer for war service. |
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Bibliography Citation
Campante, Filipe and David Yanagizawa-Drott. "The Intergenerational Transmission of War." NBER Working Paper No. 21371, National Bureau of Economic Research, July 2015. |
13. |
Carneiro, Pedro Heckman, James J. Vytlacil, Edward |
Estimating Marginal Returns to Education NBER Working Paper No. 16474, National Bureau of Economic Research, October 2010. Also: http://www.nber.org/papers/w16474 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): College Enrollment; Educational Returns; Variables, Instrumental This paper estimates the marginal returns to college for individuals induced to enroll in college by different marginal policy changes. The recent instrumental variables literature seeks to estimate this parameter, but in general it does so only under strong assumptions that are tested and found wanting. We show how to utilize economic theory and local instrumental variables estimators to estimate the effect of marginal policy changes. Our empirical analysis shows that returns are higher for individuals with values of unobservables that make them more likely to attend college. We contrast the returns to well-defined marginal policy changes with IV estimates of the return to schooling. Some marginal policy changes inducing students into college produce very low returns. |
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Bibliography Citation
Carneiro, Pedro, James J. Heckman and Edward Vytlacil. "Estimating Marginal Returns to Education." NBER Working Paper No. 16474, National Bureau of Economic Research, October 2010. |
14. |
Collins, William J. Wanamaker, Marianne H. |
Up from Slavery? African American Intergenerational Economic Mobility Since 1880 NBER Working Paper No. 23395, National Bureau of Economic Research, May 2017. Also: http://www.nber.org/papers/w23395 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Black Studies; Census of Population; Intergenerational Patterns/Transmission; Mobility, Economic; Occupational Choice; Racial Differences; Wage Gap We document the intergenerational mobility of black and white American men from 1880 through 2000 by building new datasets to study the late 19th and early 20th century and combining them with modern data to cover the mid- to late 20th century. We find large disparities in intergenerational mobility, with white children having far better chances of escaping the bottom of the distribution than black children in every generation. This mobility gap was more important than the gap in parents' status in approximately determining each new generation's racial income gap. Evidence suggests that human capital disparities underpinned the mobility gap. |
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Bibliography Citation
Collins, William J. and Marianne H. Wanamaker. "Up from Slavery? African American Intergenerational Economic Mobility Since 1880." NBER Working Paper No. 23395, National Bureau of Economic Research, May 2017. |
15. |
Cooper, Russell Liu, Huacong |
Money or Grit? Determinants of MisMatch by Race and Gender NBER Working Paper No. 22734, National Bureau of Economic Research, October 2016. Also: http://nber.org/papers/w22734 Cohort(s): NLSY97 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): College Degree; Educational Attainment; Educational Returns; Gender Differences; Racial Differences This paper studies mismatch in educational attainment. Mismatch arises when high ability individuals do not obtain a college degree and/or low ability individuals do obtain such a degree. Using data from the NLSY97 survey, the paper estimates a structural model of education choice that matches the moments of mismatch, college attainment and labor market outcomes. The analysis conditions on both gender and race. The model with occasionally binding borrowing constraint fits the moments better than a model with perfect capital markets, indicating that capital market frictions may contribute to mismatch. The influence of parents on educational attainment is present though this channel appears to operate through attitudes rather than through the provision of resources. Once this link between parents and children is taken into account, the influence of borrowing constraints disappears. In this case, mismatch reflects differences in tastes rather than borrowing constraints. The paper also presents a decomposition of the college wage premium into the returns to schooling and the selection into higher education. The analysis highlights the power of selection into higher education as an explanation of the college wage premium by gender and race. |
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Bibliography Citation
Cooper, Russell and Huacong Liu. "Money or Grit? Determinants of MisMatch by Race and Gender." NBER Working Paper No. 22734, National Bureau of Economic Research, October 2016. |
16. |
Courtemanche, Charles Heutel, Garth McAlvanah, Patrick |
Impatience, Incentives, and Obesity NBER Working Paper No. 17483, National Bureau of Economic Research, October 2011. Also: http://www.nber.org/papers/w17483 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Body Mass Index (BMI); Obesity; Time Preference This paper explores the relationship between time preferences, economic incentives, and body mass index (BMI). Using data from the 1979 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we first show that greater impatience increases BMI even after controlling for demographic, human capital, and occupational characteristics as well as income and risk preference. Next, we provide evidence of an interaction effect between time preference and food prices, with cheaper food leading to the largest weight gains among those exhibiting the most impatience. The interaction of changing economic incentives with heterogeneous discounting may help explain why increases in BMI have been concentrated amongst the right tail of the distribution, where the health consequences are especially severe. Lastly, we model time-inconsistent preferences by computing individuals quasi-hyperbolic discounting parameters (β and δ). Both long-run patience (δ) and present-bias (β) predict BMI, suggesting obesity is partly attributable to rational intertemporal tradeoffs but also partly to time inconsistency. |
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Bibliography Citation
Courtemanche, Charles, Garth Heutel and Patrick McAlvanah. "Impatience, Incentives, and Obesity." NBER Working Paper No. 17483, National Bureau of Economic Research, October 2011. |
17. |
Courtemanche, Charles Tchernis, Rusty Zhou, Xilin |
Parental Work Hours and Childhood Obesity: Evidence Using Instrumental Variables Related to Sibling School Eligibility NBER Working Paper No. 23376, National Bureau of Economic Research, May 2017. Also: http://www.nber.org/papers/w23376 Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79, NLSY79 Young Adult Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Childhood; Maternal Employment; Modeling, Instrumental Variables; Obesity; Parental Influences; School Entry/Readiness; Siblings; Work Hours/Schedule This study exploits plausibly exogenous variation from the youngest sibling's school eligibility to estimate the effects of parental work on the weight outcomes of older children in the household. Data come from the 1979 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth linked to the Child and Young Adult Supplement. We first show that mothers' work hours increase gradually as the age of the youngest child rises, whereas mothers' spouses' work hours exhibit a discontinuous jump at kindergarten eligibility. Leveraging these insights, we develop an instrumental variables model that shows that parents' work hours lead to larger increases in children's BMI z-scores and probabilities of being overweight and obese than those identified in previous studies. We find no evidence that the impacts of maternal and paternal work are different. Subsample analyses find that the effects are concentrated among advantaged households, as measured by an index involving education, race, and mother's marital status. |
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Bibliography Citation
Courtemanche, Charles, Rusty Tchernis and Xilin Zhou. "Parental Work Hours and Childhood Obesity: Evidence Using Instrumental Variables Related to Sibling School Eligibility." NBER Working Paper No. 23376, National Bureau of Economic Research, May 2017. |
18. |
Darden, Michael |
Cities and Smoking NBER Working Paper No. 27334, National Bureau of Economic Research, June 2020. Also: https://www.nber.org/papers/w27334 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Geocoded Data; Rural/Urban Differences; Smoking (see Cigarette Use) In 1956, 52% of urban men and 42% of rural men smoked cigarettes. By 2010, the disparity had flipped: 24.7% of urban men and 30.6% of rural men smoked. Smoking remains the greatest preventable cause of mortality in the United States, and understanding the underlying causes of place-specific differences in behavior is crucial for policy aimed at reducing regional inequality. Using geocoded data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, I estimate a dynamic model that captures smoking behavior, location decisions, and education over thirty years. Simulation of the estimated model demonstrates that selection on permanent unobserved variables that are correlated with smoking cessation, both in native populations and in those who migrate between rural and urban areas, explains 62.8% of the urban/rural smoking disparity. Alternatively, differential tobacco control policies explain only 7.3% of the urban/rural smoking disparity, which suggests that equalizing cigarette taxes across regions may fail to bridge gaps in behavior and health. This paper emphasizes that rural smoking disparities are largely driven by who selects into rural communities. |
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Bibliography Citation
Darden, Michael. "Cities and Smoking." NBER Working Paper No. 27334, National Bureau of Economic Research, June 2020. |
19. |
Darden, Michael Hotchkiss, Julie L. Pitts, M. Melinda |
The Dynamics of the Smoking Wage Penalty NBER Working Paper No. 27567, National Bureau of Economic Research, July 2020. Also: https://www.nber.org/papers/w27567 Cohort(s): NLSY97 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Gender Differences; Smoking (see Cigarette Use); Wage Gap; Wage Penalty/Career Penalty Cigarette smokers earn significantly less than nonsmokers, but the magnitude of the smoking wage gap and the pathways by which it originates are unclear. Proposed mechanisms often focus on spot differences in employee productivity or employer preferences, neglecting the dynamic nature of human capital development and addiction. In this paper, we formulate a dynamic model of young workers as they transition from schooling to the labor market, a period in which the lifetime trajectory of wages is being developed. We estimate the model with data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 Cohort, and we simulate the model under counterfactual scenarios that isolate the contemporaneous effects of smoking from dynamic differences in human capital accumulation and occupational selection. Results from our preferred model, which accounts for unobserved heterogeneity in the joint determination of smoking, human capital, labor supply, and wages, suggest that continued heavy smoking in young adulthood results in a wage penalty at age 30 of 14.8% and 9.3% for women and men, respectively. These differences are less than half of the raw difference in means in wages at age 30. We show that the contemporaneous effect of heavy smoking net of any life-cycle effects explains roughly 67% of the female smoking wage gap but only 11% of the male smoking wage gap. |
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Bibliography Citation
Darden, Michael, Julie L. Hotchkiss and M. Melinda Pitts. "The Dynamics of the Smoking Wage Penalty." NBER Working Paper No. 27567, National Bureau of Economic Research, July 2020. |
20. |
Dave, Dhaval Corman, Hope Kalil, Ariel Schwartz-Soicher, Ofira Reichman, Nancy |
Effects of Maternal Work Incentives on Adolescent Social Behaviors NBER Working Paper No. 25527, National Bureau of Economic Research, February 2019. Also: https://www.nber.org/papers/w25527 Cohort(s): NLSY79, NLSY79 Young Adult Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Adolescent Behavior; Delinquency/Gang Activity; Geocoded Data; Intergenerational Patterns/Transmission; Maternal Employment; State-Level Data/Policy; Substance Use; Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF); Welfare This study exploits variations in the timing of welfare reform implementation in the U.S. in the 1990s to identify plausibly causal effects of welfare reform on a range of social behaviors of the next generation as they transition to adulthood. We focus on behaviors that are important for socioeconomic and health trajectories, estimate effects by gender, and explore potentially mediating factors. Welfare reform had no favorable effects on any of the youth behaviors examined and led to decreased volunteering among girls, increases in skipping school, damaging property, and fighting among boys, and increases in smoking and drug use among both boys and girls, with larger effects for boys (e.g., -6% for boys compared to 4% for girls for any substance use). Maternal employment, supervision, and child's employment explain little of the effects. Overall, the intergenerational effects of welfare reform on adolescent behaviors were unfavorable, particularly for boys, and do not support longstanding arguments that limiting cash assistance leads to responsible behavior in the next generation. As such, the favorable effects of welfare reform for women may have come at a cost to the next generation, particularly to boys who have been falling behind girls in high school completion for decades. |
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Bibliography Citation
Dave, Dhaval, Hope Corman, Ariel Kalil, Ofira Schwartz-Soicher and Nancy Reichman. "Effects of Maternal Work Incentives on Adolescent Social Behaviors." NBER Working Paper No. 25527, National Bureau of Economic Research, February 2019. |
21. |
Deming, David |
The Growing Importance of Social Skills in the Labor Market NBER Working Paper No. 21473, National Bureau of Economic Research, August 2015. Also: http://www.nber.org/papers/w21473 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Cognitive Ability; Noncognitive Skills; Sociability/Socialization/Social Interaction; Wage Growth; Wages The slow growth of high-paying jobs in the U.S. since 2000 and rapid advances in computer technology have sparked fears that human labor will eventually be rendered obsolete. Yet while computers perform cognitive tasks of rapidly increasing complexity, simple human interaction has proven difficult to automate. In this paper, I show that the labor market increasingly rewards social skills. Since 1980, jobs with high social skill requirements have experienced greater relative growth throughout the wage distribution. Moreover, employment and wage growth has been strongest in jobs that require high levels of both cognitive skill and social skill. To understand these patterns, I develop a model of team production where workers "trade tasks" to exploit their comparative advantage. In the model, social skills reduce coordination costs, allowing workers to specialize and trade more efficiently. The model generates predictions about sorting and the relative returns to skill across occupations, which I test and confirm using data from the NLSY79. The female advantage in social skills may have played some role in the narrowing of gender gaps in labor market outcomes since 1980. |
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Bibliography Citation
Deming, David. "The Growing Importance of Social Skills in the Labor Market." NBER Working Paper No. 21473, National Bureau of Economic Research, August 2015. |
22. |
Dench, Daniel Grossman, Michael |
Health and the Wage: Cause, Effect, Both, or Neither? New Evidence on an Old Question NBER Working Paper No. 25264, National Bureau of Economic Research, November 2018. Also: https://www.nber.org/papers/w25264 Cohort(s): NLSY97 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Career Patterns; Health/Health Status/SF-12 Scale; Wage Differentials; Wage Rates We investigate two-way causality between health and the hourly wage by employing insights from the human capital and compensating wage differential models, a panel formed from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, and dynamic panel estimation methods in this investigation. We uncover a causal relationship between two of five measures of health and the wage in which a reduction in health leads to an increase in the wage rate but find no evidence of a causal relationship running from the wage rate to health. The former result is consistent with a framework in which a large amount of effort in one period is required to obtain promotions and the wage increases that accompany them in subsequent periods. That effort may cause reductions in health and result in a negative effect of health in the previous period on the current period wage. The finding also is consistent with a model in which investments in career advancement compete with investments in health for time--the ultimate scarce resource. The lack of a causal effect of the wage on health may suggest that forces that go in opposite directions in the human capital and compensating wage differential models offset each other. |
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Bibliography Citation
Dench, Daniel and Michael Grossman. "Health and the Wage: Cause, Effect, Both, or Neither? New Evidence on an Old Question." NBER Working Paper No. 25264, National Bureau of Economic Research, November 2018. |
23. |
Deza, Monica Mezza, Alvaro |
The Intergenerational Effects of the Vietnam Draft on Risky Behaviors NBER Working Paper No. 27830, National Bureau of Economic Research, September 2020. Also: https://www.nber.org/papers/w27830 Cohort(s): NLSY97 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Adolescent Behavior; Delinquency/Gang Activity; Fathers and Children; Military Draft; Substance Use We exploit the natural experiment provided by the Vietnam lottery draft to evaluate the intergenerational effect of fathers' draft eligibility on children's propensity to engage in risky health behaviors during adolescence using the NLSY97. Draft eligibility increases measures of substance use, intensity of use, decreases age of initiation--particularly for marijuana--and increases measures of delinquency. We explore potential mechanisms: Draft eligibility affects paternal parenting styles and attitudes towards the respondent, environmental aspects, and even maternal factors. Results are robust to alternative specifications and falsification diagnostics. Our results indicate that previous analyses underestimate the full negative effects of draft eligibility. |
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Bibliography Citation
Deza, Monica and Alvaro Mezza. "The Intergenerational Effects of the Vietnam Draft on Risky Behaviors." NBER Working Paper No. 27830, National Bureau of Economic Research, September 2020. |
24. |
Dillon, Eleanor Wiske Smith, Jeffrey A. |
The Consequences of Academic Match Between Students and Colleges Working Paper No 25069, National Bureau of Economic Research, September 2018. Also: http://www.nber.org/papers/w25069 Cohort(s): NLSY79, NLSY97 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): College Enrollment; Earnings; Educational Outcomes; STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) We consider the effects of student ability, college quality, and the interaction between the two on academic outcomes and earnings using data on two cohorts of college enrollees. Student ability and college quality strongly improve degree completion and earnings for all students. We find evidence of meaningful complementarity between student ability and college quality in degree completion at four years and long-term earnings, but not in degree completion at six years or STEM degree completion. This complementarity implies some tradeoff between equity and efficiency for policies that move lower ability students to higher quality colleges. |
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Bibliography Citation
Dillon, Eleanor Wiske and Jeffrey A. Smith. "The Consequences of Academic Match Between Students and Colleges." Working Paper No 25069, National Bureau of Economic Research, September 2018. |
25. |
Dillon, Eleanor Wiske Smith, Jeffrey A. |
The Determinants of Mismatch Between Students and Colleges Working Paper No. 19286, National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), August 2013. Also: http://www.nber.org/papers/w19286 Cohort(s): NLSY97 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); College Characteristics; College Education; School Completion; School Progress; Schooling, Post-secondary; Test Scores/Test theory/IRT We use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 cohort to examine mismatch between student ability and college quality. Mismatch has implications for the design of state higher education systems and for student aid policy. The data indicate substantial amounts of both undermatch (high ability students at low quality colleges) and overmatch (low ability students at high quality colleges). Student application and enrollment decisions, rather than college admission decisions, drive most mismatch. Financial constraints, information, and the public college options facing each student all affect the probability of mismatch. More informed students attend higher quality colleges, even when doing so involves overmatching. |
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Bibliography Citation
Dillon, Eleanor Wiske and Jeffrey A. Smith. "The Determinants of Mismatch Between Students and Colleges." Working Paper No. 19286, National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), August 2013. |
26. |
Doran, Elizabeth L. Bartel, Ann P. Waldfogel, Jane |
Gender in the Labor Market: The Role of Equal Opportunity and Family-Friendly Policies NBER Working Paper No. 25378, National Bureau of Economic Research, December 2018. Also: https://www.nber.org/papers/w25378 Cohort(s): NLSY97 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): American Time Use Survey (ATUS); Child Care; Gender Differences; Job Characteristics; Leave, Family or Maternity/Paternity; Part-Time Work; Wage Gap Although the gender wage gap in the U.S. has narrowed, women's career trajectories diverge from men's after the birth of children, suggesting a potential role for family-friendly policies. We provide new evidence on employer provision of these policies. Using the American Time Use Survey, we find that women are less likely than men to have access to any employer-provided paid leave and this differential is entirely explained by part-time status. Using the NLSY97, we find that young women are more likely to have access to specifically designated paid parental leave, even in part-time jobs. Both datasets show insignificant gender differentials in access to employer-subsidized child care and access to scheduling flexibility. We conclude with a discussion of policy implications |
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Bibliography Citation
Doran, Elizabeth L., Ann P. Bartel and Jane Waldfogel. "Gender in the Labor Market: The Role of Equal Opportunity and Family-Friendly Policies." NBER Working Paper No. 25378, National Bureau of Economic Research, December 2018. |
27. |
Dossi, Gaia Figlio, David N. Giuliano, Paola Sapienza, Paola |
Born in the Family: Preferences for Boys and the Gender Gap in Math NBER Working Paper No. 25535, National Bureau of Economic Research, February 2019. Also: https://www.nber.org/papers/w25535 Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79, NLSY79 Young Adult Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Children, Academic Development; Gender Attitudes/Roles; Gender Differences; Mothers and Daughters; Parental Influences; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math) We study the correlation between parental gender attitudes and the performance in mathematics of girls using two different approaches and data. First, we identify families with a preference for boys by using fertility stopping rules in a population of households whose children attend public schools in Florida. Girls growing up in a boy-biased family score 3 percentage points lower on math tests when compared to girls raised in other families. Second, we find similar strong effects when we study the correlations between girls' performance in mathematics and maternal gender role attitudes, using evidence from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. We conclude that socialization at home can explain a non-trivial part of the observed gender disparities in mathematics performance and document that maternal gender attitudes correlate with those of their children, supporting the hypothesis that preferences transmitted through the family impact children behavior. |
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Bibliography Citation
Dossi, Gaia, David N. Figlio, Paola Giuliano and Paola Sapienza. "Born in the Family: Preferences for Boys and the Gender Gap in Math." NBER Working Paper No. 25535, National Bureau of Economic Research, February 2019. |
28. |
Fletcher, Jason Wolfe, Barbara L. |
Child Mental Health and Human Capital Accumulation: The Case of ADHD Revisited NBER Working Paper No. 13474, National Bureau of Economic Research, October 2007. Also: http://www.nber.org/papers/w13474 Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Attention/Attention Deficit; Behavior Problems Index (BPI); Children, Mental Health; Educational Attainment; Grade Retention/Repeat Grade; Human Capital; Modeling, Fixed Effects; National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (AddHealth); School Progress; Siblings; Special Education Recently, Currie and Stabile (2006) made a significant contribution to our understanding of the influence of ADHD symptoms on a variety of school outcomes including participation in special education, grade repetition and test scores. Their contributions include using a broad sample of children and estimating sibling fixed effects models to control for unobserved family effects. In this paper we look at a sample of older children and confirm and extend many of the JCMS findings in terms of a broader set of measures of human capital and additional specifications. |
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Bibliography Citation
Fletcher, Jason and Barbara L. Wolfe. "Child Mental Health and Human Capital Accumulation: The Case of ADHD Revisited." NBER Working Paper No. 13474, National Bureau of Economic Research, October 2007. |
29. |
Fone, Zachary S. Sabia, Joseph J. Cesur, Resul |
Do Minimum Wage Increases Reduce Crime? NBER Working Paper No. 25647, National Bureau of Economic Research, March 2019. Also: https://www.nber.org/papers/w25647 Cohort(s): NLSY97 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Arrests; Crime; Minimum Wage An April 2016 Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) report advocated raising the minimum wage to deter crime. This recommendation rests on the assumption that minimum wage hikes increase the returns to legitimate labor market work while generating minimal adverse employment effects. This study comprehensively assesses the impact of minimum wages on crime using data from the 1998-2016 Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), and National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY). Our results provide no evidence that minimum wage increases reduce crime. Instead, we find that raising the minimum wage increases property crime arrests among those ages 16-to-24, with an estimated elasticity of 0.2. This result is strongest in counties with over 100,000 residents and persists when we use longitudinal data to isolate workers for whom minimum wages bind. Our estimates suggest that a $15 Federal minimum wage could generate criminal externality costs of nearly $2.4 billion. |
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Bibliography Citation
Fone, Zachary S., Joseph J. Sabia and Resul Cesur. "Do Minimum Wage Increases Reduce Crime?" NBER Working Paper No. 25647, National Bureau of Economic Research, March 2019. |
30. |
Gilleskie, Donna B. Han, Euna Norton, Edward C. |
Disentangling the Contemporaneous and Dynamic Effects of Human and Health Capital on Wages over the Life Cycle NBER Working Paper No. 22430, National Bureau of Economic Research, July 2016. Also: http://www.nber.org/papers/w22430 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Body Mass Index (BMI); Human Capital; Life Cycle Research; Wage Determination; Wages, Women; Weight In this study we quantify the life-cycle effects of human and health capital on the wage distribution of females, with a focus on health measured by body mass. We use NLSY79 data on women followed annually up to twenty years during the time of their lives when average annual weight gain is greatest. We allow body mass to explain variation in wages contemporaneously conditional on observed measures of human capital and productivity histories (namely, education, employment experience, marital status, and family size) and dynamically over the life cycle through its impact on the endogenous histories of behaviors that determine wages. We find significant differences in the contemporaneous effect and the dynamic effect of body mass on wages, both across females of different races and over the distribution of wages. |
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Bibliography Citation
Gilleskie, Donna B., Euna Han and Edward C. Norton. "Disentangling the Contemporaneous and Dynamic Effects of Human and Health Capital on Wages over the Life Cycle." NBER Working Paper No. 22430, National Bureau of Economic Research, July 2016. |
31. |
Gittleman, Maury Kleiner, Morris M. |
Wage Effects of Unionization and Occupational Licensing Coverage in the United States Working Paper No. 19061. National Bureau of Economic Research, May 2013. Also: http://www.nber.org/papers/w19061 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Occupations; Unions; Wage Determination; Wage Models Recent estimates in standard models of wage determination for both unionization and occupational licensing have shown wage effects that are similar across the two institutions. These cross-sectional estimates use specialized data sets, with small sample sizes, for the period 2006 through 2008. Our analysis examines the impact of unions and licensing coverage on wage determination using new data collected on licensing statutes that are then linked to longitudinal data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) from 1979 to 2010. We develop several approaches, using both cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses, to measure the impact of these two labor market institutions on wage determination. Our estimates of the economic returns to union coverage are greater than those for licensing requirements. |
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Bibliography Citation
Gittleman, Maury and Morris M. Kleiner. "Wage Effects of Unionization and Occupational Licensing Coverage in the United States." Working Paper No. 19061. National Bureau of Economic Research, May 2013. |
32. |
Grossman, Daniel S. Tello-Trillo, Sebastian Willage, Barton |
Health Insurance for Whom? The 'Spill-up' Effects of Children's Health Insurance on Mothers NBER Working Paper No. 29661, National Bureau of Economic Research, January 2022. Also: https://www.nber.org/papers/w29661 Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79, NLSY79 Young Adult Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): CESD (Depression Scale); Children; Geocoded Data; Insurance, Health; Medicaid/Medicare; Mothers; State-Level Data/Policy; Well-Being A rich literature documents the benefits of social safety net programs for children. This paper focuses on an unexplored margin: how children's programs impact parents' well-being. We explore changes in children's public health insurance and its effects on parents' economic and behavioral outcomes. Using a simulated eligibility for Medicaid eligibility expansions in the 1980s and 1990s, we isolate variation in children's Medicaid eligibility due to changes in government policies. We find that increases in children's Medicaid eligibility increases the likelihood a mother is married, decreases her labor market participation, and reduces her smoking and alcohol consumption. Our findings suggest improved maternal well-being as measured by the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression score, a proxy for mental health. These results uncover a new link that provides an important mechanism, parental well-being, for interpreting the literature's findings on the long-term, short-term, and intergenerational effects of Medicaid coverage. |
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Bibliography Citation
Grossman, Daniel S., Sebastian Tello-Trillo and Barton Willage. "Health Insurance for Whom? The 'Spill-up' Effects of Children's Health Insurance on Mothers." NBER Working Paper No. 29661, National Bureau of Economic Research, January 2022. |
33. |
Guvenen, Fatih Kuruscu, Burhanettin Tanaka, Satoshi Wiczer, David Geoffrey |
Multidimensional Skill Mismatch NBER Working Paper No. 21376, National Bureau of Economic Research, July 2015. Also: http://www.nber.org/papers/w21376 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB); Earnings; Occupational Choice; Occupational Information Network (O*NET); Skills What determines the earnings of a worker relative to his peers in the same occupation? What makes a worker fail in one occupation but succeed in another? More broadly, what are the factors that determine the productivity of a worker-occupation match? In this paper, we propose an empirical measure of skill mismatch for a worker-occupation match, which sheds light on these questions. This measure is based on the discrepancy between the portfolio of skills required by an occupation (for performing the tasks that produce output) and the portfolio of abilities possessed by a worker for learning those skills. This measure arises naturally in a dynamic model of occupational choice with multidimensional skills and Bayesian learning about one's ability to learn these skills. In this model, mismatch is central to the career outcomes of workers: it reduces the returns to occupational tenure, and it predicts occupational switching behavior. We construct our empirical analog by combining data from the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB), O*NET, and National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79). Our empirical results show that the effects of mismatch on wages are large and persistent: mismatch in occupations held early in life has a strong effect on wages in future occupations. Skill mismatch also significantly increases the probability of an occupational switch and predicts its direction in the skill space. These results provide fresh evidence on the importance of skill mismatch for the job search process. |
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Bibliography Citation
Guvenen, Fatih, Burhanettin Kuruscu, Satoshi Tanaka and David Geoffrey Wiczer. "Multidimensional Skill Mismatch." NBER Working Paper No. 21376, National Bureau of Economic Research, July 2015. |
34. |
Hai, Rong Heckman, James J. |
The Causal Effects of Youth Cigarette Addiction and Education NBER Working Paper No. 30304, National Bureau of Economic Research, July 2022. Also: https://www.nber.org/papers/w30304 Cohort(s): NLSY97 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Addiction; Cigarette Use (see Smoking); Educational Attainment We develop and estimate a life-cycle model in a rational addiction framework where youth choose to smoke, attend school, work part-time, and consume while facing borrowing constraints. The model features multiple channels for studying the reciprocal causal effects of addiction and education. Variations in endowments and cigarette prices are sources of identification. We show that education causally reduces smoking. A counterfactual experiment finds that in absence of cigarettes, college attendance rises by three percentage points in the population. A practical alternative of 40% additional excise tax achieves similar results. Impacts vary substantially across persons of different cognitive and non-cognitive abilities. |
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Bibliography Citation
Hai, Rong and James J. Heckman. "The Causal Effects of Youth Cigarette Addiction and Education." NBER Working Paper No. 30304, National Bureau of Economic Research, July 2022. |
35. |
Heckman, James J. Humphries, John Eric Veramendi, Gregory |
The Non-Market Benefits of Education and Ability NBER Working Paper No. 23896, National Bureau of Economic Research, October 2017. Also: http://www.nber.org/papers/w23896 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Cognitive Ability; Depression (see also CESD); Educational Returns; Incarceration/Jail; Self-Esteem; Trust; Voting Behavior; Welfare This paper analyzes the non-market benefits of education and ability. Using a dynamic model of educational choice we estimate returns to education that account for selection bias and sorting on gains. We investigate a range of non-market outcomes including incarceration, mental health, voter participation, trust, and participation in welfare. We find distinct patterns of returns that depend on the levels of schooling and ability. Unlike the monetary benefits of education, the benefits to education for many non-market outcomes are greater for low-ability persons. College graduation decreases welfare use, lowers depression, and raises self-esteem more for less-able individuals. |
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Bibliography Citation
Heckman, James J., John Eric Humphries and Gregory Veramendi. "The Non-Market Benefits of Education and Ability." NBER Working Paper No. 23896, National Bureau of Economic Research, October 2017. |
36. |
Heckman, James J. Raut, Lakshmi K. |
Intergenerational Long Term Effects of Preschool--Structural Estimates from a Discrete Dynamic Programming Model NBER Working Paper No. 19077, National Bureau of Economic Research, May 2013 Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Children, Academic Development; Children, Behavioral Development; Earnings; Head Start; Intergenerational Patterns/Transmission; Mobility, Schools; Noncognitive Skills; Pearlin Mastery Scale; Preschool Children; Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) (see Self-Esteem); Sociability/Socialization/Social Interaction; Socioeconomic Status (SES) This paper formulates a structural dynamic programming model of preschool investment choices of altruistic parents and then empirically estimates the structural parameters of the model using the NLSY79 data. The paper finds that preschool investment significantly boosts cognitive and non-cognitive skills, which enhance earnings and school outcomes. It also finds that a standard Mincer earnings function, by omitting measures of non-cognitive skills on the right hand side, overestimates the rate of return to schooling. From the estimated equilibrium Markov process, the paper studies the nature of within generation earnings distribution and intergenerational earnings and schooling mobility. The paper finds that a tax financed free preschool program for the children of poor socioeconomic status generates positive net gains to the society in terms of average earnings and higher intergenerational earnings and schooling mobility. |
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Bibliography Citation
Heckman, James J. and Lakshmi K. Raut. "Intergenerational Long Term Effects of Preschool--Structural Estimates from a Discrete Dynamic Programming Model." NBER Working Paper No. 19077, National Bureau of Economic Research, May 2013. |
37. |
Hotz, V. Joseph Pantano, Juan |
Strategic Parenting, Birth Order and School Performance NBER Working Paper No. 19542, National Bureau of Economic Research, October 2013 (Revised Jan 2015). Also: IZA Discussion Paper No. 7680. Forthcoming in Journal of Population Economics. Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Academic Development; Achievement; Birth Order; Child School Survey 1994-1995; Child Self-Administered Supplement (CSAS); Discipline; Family Size; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Parent Supervision/Monitoring; Parent-Child Interaction; Parental Influences; Parental Investments; Parenting Skills/Styles; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT); School Progress; Schooling; Siblings; Television Viewing Fueled by new evidence, there has been renewed interest about the effects of birth order on human capital accumulation. The underlying causal mechanisms for such effects remain unsettled. We consider a model in which parents impose more stringent disciplinary environments in response to their earlier-born children�s poor performance in school in order to deter such outcomes for their later-born offspring. We provide robust empirical evidence that school performance of children in the NLSY-C declines with birth order as does the stringency of their parents' disciplinary restrictions. And, when asked how they will respond if a child brought home bad grades, parents state that they would be less likely to punish their later-born children. Taken together, these patterns are consistent with a reputation model of strategic parenting. |
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Bibliography Citation
Hotz, V. Joseph and Juan Pantano. "Strategic Parenting, Birth Order and School Performance." NBER Working Paper No. 19542, National Bureau of Economic Research, October 2013 (Revised Jan 2015). |
38. |
Hu, Qing Levine, Ross Lin, Chen Tai, Mingzhu |
Finance and Children's Academic Performance NBER Working Paper No. 26678, National Bureau of Economic Research, January 2020. Also: https://www.nber.org/papers/w26678 Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Children, Academic Development; Family Income; Family Influences; Human Capital; Legislation; Maternal Employment; Parent Supervision/Monitoring; Parent-Child Interaction; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Work Hours/Schedule What is the impact of regulatory reforms that enhance credit market efficiency on children's human capital? Using a parent-child panel dataset, we find that such reforms reduced children's academic performance in low-income families. Consistent with the view that financial development entices low-income parents to substitute out of childrearing and into employment with adverse effects on children’s education, we find that among low-income families, regulatory reforms: increased mother's employment hours, reduced parental supervision and parent-child discussions about school and college, and had bigger adverse effects when mothers were not already working full-time and grandparents were not living with the child. |
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Bibliography Citation
Hu, Qing, Ross Levine, Chen Lin and Mingzhu Tai. "Finance and Children's Academic Performance." NBER Working Paper No. 26678, National Bureau of Economic Research, January 2020. |
39. |
Juhn, Chinhui Rubinstein, Yona Zuppann, Charles Andrew |
The Quantity-Quality Trade-off and the Formation of Cognitive and Non-cognitive Skills NBER Working Paper No. 21824, National Bureau of Economic Research, December 2015 Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79, NLSY79 Young Adult Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Age at First Birth; Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Behavior Problems Index (BPI); Birth Order; Educational Attainment; Family Size; Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME); Parental Investments; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading) We estimate the impact of increases in family size on childhood and adult outcomes using matched mother-child data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979. Using twins as an instrumental variable and panel data to control for omitted factors we find that families face a substantial quantity-quality trade-off: increases in family size decrease parental investment, decrease childhood cognitive abilities, and increase behavioral problems. The negative effects on cognitive abilities are much larger for girls while the detrimental effects on behavior are larger for boys. We also find evidence of heterogeneous effects by mother's AFQT score, with the negative effects on cognitive scores being much larger for children of mothers with low AFQT scores. |
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Bibliography Citation
Juhn, Chinhui, Yona Rubinstein and Charles Andrew Zuppann. "The Quantity-Quality Trade-off and the Formation of Cognitive and Non-cognitive Skills." NBER Working Paper No. 21824, National Bureau of Economic Research, December 2015. |
40. |
Kaestner, Robert Faundez, Luis F. |
Estimating a Theoretically Consistent Human Capital Production Function With an Application to Head Start NBER Working Paper No. 31199, National Bureau of Economic Research, April 2023. Also: https://www.nber.org/papers/w31199 Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79, NLSY79 Young Adult Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Behavior Problems Index (BPI); Educational Attainment; Head Start; Human Capital; Labor Market Outcomes; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT); Siblings This article describes a conceptual and empirical approach for estimating a human capital production function of child development that incorporates mother- or child-fixed effects. The use of mother- or child-fixed effects is common in this applied economics literature, but its application is often inconsistent with human capital theory. We outline the problem and demonstrate its empirical importance with an analysis of the effect of Head Start and preschool on child and adult outcomes. The empirical specification we develop has broad implications for a variety of applied microeconomic analyses beyond our specific application. Results of our analysis indicate that attending Head Start or preschool had no economically or statistically significant effect on child or adult outcomes. |
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Bibliography Citation
Kaestner, Robert and Luis F. Faundez. "Estimating a Theoretically Consistent Human Capital Production Function With an Application to Head Start." NBER Working Paper No. 31199, National Bureau of Economic Research, April 2023. |
41. |
Kaestner, Robert Malamud, Ofer |
Headstrong Girls and Dependent Boys: Gender Differences in the Labor Market Returns to Child Behavior NBER Working Paper No. 29509, National Bureau of Economic Research, November 2021. Also: https://www.nber.org/papers/w29509 Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79 Young Adult Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Behavior Problems Index (BPI); Earnings; Gender Attitudes/Roles; Gender Differences; Wage Penalty/Career Penalty The authors use data from the Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (C-NLSY79) to examine gender differences in the associations between child behavioral problems and early adult earnings. They find large and significant earnings penalties for women who exhibited more headstrong behavior and for men who exhibited more dependent behavior as children. In contrast, there are no penalties for men who were headstrong or for women who were dependent. While other child behavioral problems are also associated with labor market earnings, their associations are not significantly different by gender. The gender differences in headstrong and dependent behavior are not explained by education, marriage, depression, self-esteem, health, or adult personality traits. However, one potential explanation is that these gender differences are a consequence of deviations from gender norms and stereotypes in the workplace. |
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Bibliography Citation
Kaestner, Robert and Ofer Malamud. "Headstrong Girls and Dependent Boys: Gender Differences in the Labor Market Returns to Child Behavior." NBER Working Paper No. 29509, National Bureau of Economic Research, November 2021. |
42. |
Kaestner, Robert Schiman, Cuiping Ward, Jason M. |
Education and Health Over the Life Cycle NBER Working Paper No. 26836, National Bureau of Economic Research, March 2020. Also: https://www.nber.org/papers/w26836 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Depression (see also CESD); Educational Attainment; Health/Health Status/SF-12 Scale; High School Diploma; Life Cycle Research; National Health Interview Survey (NHIS); Rotter Scale (see Locus of Control); Self-Esteem There is little theoretical and empirical research on the effects of education on health over the life cycle. In this article, we extend the Grossman (1972) model of the demand for health and use the extended model to analyze the effect of education on health at different ages. The main conclusion from our model is that it is unlikely that the relationship between education and health will be constant over the life cycle and that education is likely to have little effect on health at younger ages when there is little depreciation of the health stock. We also present an extensive empirical analysis documenting the association between education and health over the life cycle. Results of our analysis suggest that in terms of mortality, education has little effect until age 60, but then lowers the hazard rate of death. For measures of morbidity, education has an effect at most ages between 45 to 60, but after age 60 has apparently little effect most likely due to selective mortality. In addition, most of the apparent beneficial effect of education stems from obtaining a high school degree or more. It is the health and mortality of lowest education group--those with less than a high school degree--that diverges from the health and mortality of other education groups. Finally, we find that the educational differences in health have become larger for more recent birth cohorts. |
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Bibliography Citation
Kaestner, Robert, Cuiping Schiman and Jason M. Ward. "Education and Health Over the Life Cycle." NBER Working Paper No. 26836, National Bureau of Economic Research, March 2020. |
43. |
Kalil, Ariel Corman, Hope Dave, Dhaval Schwartz-Soicher, Ofira Reichman, Nancy |
Welfare Reform and the Quality of Young Children's Home Environments NBER Working Paper No. 30407, National Bureau of Economic Research, August 2022. Also: https://www.nber.org/papers/w30407 Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Child Development; Children, Home Environment; Geocoded Data; Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME); Human Capital; State-Level Data/Policy; Welfare This study investigates effects of welfare reform in the U.S., a major policy shift that increased employment of low-income mothers and reliance on their own earnings instead of cash assistance through the welfare system, on the quality of the home environments they provide for their preschool-age children. Using empirical methods designed to identify plausibly causal effects, we estimate effects of welfare reform on validated survey and observational measures of maternal behaviors that support children's cognitive skills and emotional adjustment and material goods that parents purchase to stimulate their children's skill development. The results suggest that welfare reform did not affect the amount of time and material resources mothers devoted to cognitively stimulating activities with their young children but was significantly associated with approximately 0.3-0.4 standard deviation lower scores on provision of emotional support, with stronger effects for mothers with low human capital. The findings provide evidence that maternal work incentives as implemented by welfare reform came at a cost to children in the form of lower quality parenting and underscore the importance of considering quality, and not just quantity, in assessing the effects of maternal work incentive policies on parenting and children's home environments. |
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Bibliography Citation
Kalil, Ariel, Hope Corman, Dhaval Dave, Ofira Schwartz-Soicher and Nancy Reichman. "Welfare Reform and the Quality of Young Children's Home Environments." NBER Working Paper No. 30407, National Bureau of Economic Research, August 2022. |
44. |
Kearney, Melissa S. Levine, Phillip B. |
Income Inequality, Social Mobility, and the Decision to Drop Out of High School NBER Working Paper No. 20195, National Bureau of Economic Research, June 2014. Also: http://www.nber.org/papers/w20195 Cohort(s): NLSY79, NLSY97 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Dropouts; Educational Attainment; Educational Longitudinal Study (ELS:2002); High School and Beyond (HSB); High School Diploma; Income; Income Distribution; Mobility, Social; National Education Longitudinal Survey (NELS); Socioeconomic Status (SES) This paper considers the role that high levels of income inequality and low rates of social mobility play in driving the educational attainment of youth in low-income households in the United States. Using high school degree status from five individual-level surveys, our analysis reveals that low-socioeconomic status (SES) students, and particularly boys, who grow up in locations with greater levels of lower-tail income inequality and lower levels of social mobility are relatively more likely to drop out of high school, conditional on other individual characteristics and contextual factors. The data indicate that this relationship does not reflect alternative characteristics of the place, such as poverty concentration, residential segregation, or public school financing. We propose that the results are consistent with a class of explanations that emphasize a role for perceptions of one’s own identity, position in society, or chances of success. In the end, our empirical results indicate that high levels of lower-tail income inequality and low levels of social mobility hinder educational advancement for disadvantaged youth. |
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Bibliography Citation
Kearney, Melissa S. and Phillip B. Levine. "Income Inequality, Social Mobility, and the Decision to Drop Out of High School." NBER Working Paper No. 20195, National Bureau of Economic Research, June 2014. |
45. |
Kleven, Henrik |
The Geography of Child Penalties and Gender Norms: Evidence from the United States NBER Working Paper No. 30176, National Bureau of Economic Research, July 2022. Also: https://www.nber.org/papers/w30176 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): American Community Survey; Current Population Survey (CPS) / CPS-Fertility Supplement; Gender Attitudes/Roles; Immigrants; Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID); Parenthood; State-Level Data/Policy; Wage Penalty/Career Penalty This paper develops a new approach to estimating child penalties based on crosssectional data and pseudo-event studies around child birth. The approach is applied to US data and validated against the state-of-the-art panel data approach. Child penalties can be accurately estimated using cross-sectional data, which are widely available and give more statistical power than typical panel datasets. Five main empirical findings are presented. First, US child penalties have declined significantly over the last five decades, but almost all of this decline occurred during the earlier part of the period. Child penalties have been virtually constant since the 1990s, explaining the slowdown of gender convergence during this period. Second, child penalties vary enormously over space. The employment penalty ranges from 12% in the Dakotas to 38% in Utah, while the earnings penalty ranges from 21% in Vermont to 61% in Utah. Third, child penalties correlate strongly with measures of gender norms. The evolution of child penalties mirrors the evolution of gender progressivity over time, with a greater fall in child penalties in states where gender progressivity has increased more. Fourth, an epidemiological study of gender norms using US-born movers and foreign-born immigrants is presented. The child penalty for US movers is strongly related to the child penalty in their state of birth, adjusting for selection in their state of residence. Parents born in high-penalty states (such as Utah or Idaho) have much larger child penalties than those born in low-penalty states (such as the Dakotas or Rhode Island), conditional on where they live. Similarly, the child penalty for foreign immigrants is strongly related to the child penalty in their country of birth. Immigrants born in high-penalty countries (such as Mexico or Iran) have much larger child penalties than immigrants born in low-penalty countries (such as China or Sweden). Evidence is presented to show that these effects are not driven by selection. Finally, immigrants assimilate to US culture over time: A comparison of child penalties among first-generation and later-generation immigrants shows that differences by country of origin eventually disappear. |
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Bibliography Citation
Kleven, Henrik. "The Geography of Child Penalties and Gender Norms: Evidence from the United States." NBER Working Paper No. 30176, National Bureau of Economic Research, July 2022. |
46. |
Kuziemko, Ilyana Pan, Jessica Shen, Jenny Washington, Ebonya |
The Mommy Effect: Do Women Anticipate the Employment Effects of Motherhood? NBER Working Paper No. 24740, National Bureau of Economic Research, June 2018. Also: http://nber.org/papers/w24740 Cohort(s): NLSY79, Young Women Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): British Household Panel Survey (BHPS); Cross-national Analysis; Gender Attitudes/Roles; Maternal Employment; Motherhood; Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID); Wage Penalty/Career Penalty After decades of convergence, the gender gap in employment outcomes has recently plateaued in many rich countries, despite the fact that women have increased their investment in human capital over this period. We propose a hypothesis to reconcile these two trends: that when they are making key human capital decisions, women in modern cohorts underestimate the impact of motherhood on their future labor supply. Using an event-study framework, we show substantial and persistent employment effects of motherhood in U.K. and U.S. data. We then provide evidence that women do not anticipate these effects. Upon becoming parents, women (and especially more educated women) adopt more negative views toward female employment (e.g., they are more likely to say that women working hurts family life), suggesting that motherhood serves as an information shock to their beliefs. Women on average (and, again, more educated women in particular) report that parenthood is harder than they expected. We then look at longer horizons--are young women's expectations about future labor supply correct when they make their key educational decisions? In fact, female high school seniors are increasingly and substantially overestimating the likelihood they will be in the labor market in their thirties, a sharp reversal from previous cohorts who substantially underestimated their future labor supply. Finally, we specify a model of women's choice of educational investment in the face of uncertain employment costs of motherhood, which demonstrates that our results can be reconciled only if these costs increased unexpectedly across generations. We end by documenting a collage of empirical evidence consistent with such a trend. |
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Bibliography Citation
Kuziemko, Ilyana, Jessica Pan, Jenny Shen and Ebonya Washington. "The Mommy Effect: Do Women Anticipate the Employment Effects of Motherhood?" NBER Working Paper No. 24740, National Bureau of Economic Research, June 2018. |
47. |
Lang, Kevin Weinstein, Russell |
A Test of Adverse Selection in the Market for Experienced Workers NBER Working Paper No. 22387. National Bureau of Economic Research, July 2016. Also: http://nber.org/papers/w22387 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Clare Jellick; Wage Growth We show that in labor market models with adverse selection, otherwise observationally equivalent workers will experience less wage growth following a period in which they change jobs than following a period in which they do not. We find little or no evidence to support this prediction. In most specifications the coefficient has the opposite sign, sometimes statistically significantly so. When consistent with the prediction, the estimated effects are small and statistically insignificant. We consistently reject large effects in the predicted direction. We argue informally that our results are also problematic for a broader class of models of competitive labor markets. |
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Bibliography Citation
Lang, Kevin and Russell Weinstein. "A Test of Adverse Selection in the Market for Experienced Workers." NBER Working Paper No. 22387. National Bureau of Economic Research, July 2016. |
48. |
Levine, Ross Rubinstein, Yona |
Selection into Entrepreneurship and Self-Employment NBER Working Paper No. 25350, National Bureau of Economic Research, December 2018. Also: https://www.nber.org/papers/w25350 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Entrepreneurship; Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) (see Self-Esteem); Rotter Scale (see Locus of Control); Self-Employed Workers; Wealth We study the effects of ability and liquidity constraints on entrepreneurship. We develop a three sector Roy model that differentiates between entrepreneurs and other self-employed to address puzzling gaps that have emerged between theory and evidence on entry into entrepreneurship. The model predicts--and the data confirm--that entrepreneurs are positively selected on highly-remunerated human capital, but other self-employed are negatively selected on those same abilities; entrepreneurs are positively selected on collateral, but other self-employed are not; and entrepreneurship is procyclical, but self-employment is countercyclical. |
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Bibliography Citation
Levine, Ross and Yona Rubinstein. "Selection into Entrepreneurship and Self-Employment." NBER Working Paper No. 25350, National Bureau of Economic Research, December 2018. |
49. |
Levine, Ross Rubinstein, Yona |
Smart and Illicit: Who Becomes an Entrepreneur and Does It Pay? NBER Working Paper No. 19276, National Bureau of Economic Research, August 2013. Also: http://www.nber.org/papers/w19276 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Current Population Survey (CPS) / CPS-Fertility Supplement; Educational Attainment; Entrepreneurship; Illegal Activities; Occupational Aspirations; Occupational Choice; Risk-Taking; Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) (see Self-Esteem); Rotter Scale (see Locus of Control); Self-Employed Workers; Self-Esteem; Wages We disaggregate the self-employed into incorporated and unincorporated to distinguish between “entrepreneurs” and other business owners. The incorporated self-employed have a distinct combination of cognitive, noncognitive, and family traits. Besides coming from higher-income families with better-educated mothers, the incorporated—as teenagers—scored higher on learning aptitude tests, had greater self-esteem, and engaged in more aggressive, illicit, risk-taking activities. The combination of “smarts” and “aggressive/illicit/risk-taking” tendencies as a youth accounts for both entry into entrepreneurship and the comparative earnings of entrepreneurs. In contrast to a large literature, we also find that entrepreneurs earn much more per hour than their salaried counterparts. |
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Bibliography Citation
Levine, Ross and Yona Rubinstein. "Smart and Illicit: Who Becomes an Entrepreneur and Does It Pay?" NBER Working Paper No. 19276, National Bureau of Economic Research, August 2013. |
50. |
Lordan, Grace Pischke, Jorn-Steffen |
Does Rosie Like Riveting? Male and Female Occupational Choices NBER Working Paper No. 22495, National Bureau of Economic Research, August 2016. Also: http://www.nber.org/papers/w22495 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): British Household Panel Survey (BHPS); Gender Differences; Job Satisfaction; Occupational Choice; Occupational Segregation; Occupations, Female; Occupations, Male; Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS); Wage Gap Occupational segregation and pay gaps by gender remain large while many of the constraints traditionally believed to be responsible for these gaps have weakened over time. Here, we explore the possibility that women and men have different tastes for the content of the work they do. We run regressions of job satisfaction on the share of males in an occupation. Overall, there is a strong negative relationship between female satisfaction and the share of males. This relationship is fairly stable across different specifications and contexts, and the magnitude of the association is not attenuated by personal characteristics or other occupation averages. Notably, the effect is muted for women but largely unchanged for men when we include three measures that proxy the content and context of the work in an occupation, which we label 'people,' 'brains,' and 'brawn.' These results suggest that women may care more about job content, and this is a possible factor preventing them from entering some male dominated professions. We continue to find a strong negative relationship between female satisfaction and the occupation level share of males in a separate analysis that includes share of males in the firm. This suggests that we are not just picking up differences in the work environment, although these seem to play an independent and important role as well. |
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Bibliography Citation
Lordan, Grace and Jorn-Steffen Pischke. "Does Rosie Like Riveting? Male and Female Occupational Choices." NBER Working Paper No. 22495, National Bureau of Economic Research, August 2016. |
51. |
Lovenheim, Michael F. |
Does Federal Financial Aid Affect College Enrollment? Evidence from Drug Offenders and the Higher Education Act of 1998 NBER Working Paper No. 18749, National Bureau of Economic Research, February 2013. Also: http://www.nber.org/papers/w18749 Cohort(s): NLSY97 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Arrests; College Enrollment; Drug Use; Educational Outcomes; Financial Assistance In 2001, amendments to the Higher Education Act made people convicted of drug offenses ineligible for federal financial aid for up to two years after their conviction. Using rich data on educational outcomes and drug charges in the NLSY 1997, we show that this law change had a large negative impact on the college attendance of students with drug convictions. On average, the temporary ban on federal financial aid increased the amount of time between high school graduation and college enrollment by about two years, and we also present suggestive evidence that affected students were less likely to ever enroll in college. Students living in urban areas and those whose mothers did not attend college appear to be the most affected by these amendments. Importantly, we do not find that the law deterred young people from committing drug felonies nor did it substantively change the probability that high school students with drug convictions graduated from high school. We find no evidence of a change in college enrollment of students convicted of non-drug crimes, or of those charged by not convicted of drug offenses. In contrast to much of the existing research, we conclude that, for this high-risk group of students, eligibility for federal financial aid strongly impacts college investment decisions. |
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Bibliography Citation
Lovenheim, Michael F. "Does Federal Financial Aid Affect College Enrollment? Evidence from Drug Offenders and the Higher Education Act of 1998." NBER Working Paper No. 18749, National Bureau of Economic Research, February 2013. |
52. |
Lovenheim, Michael F. Reynolds, C. Lockwood |
The Effect of Housing Wealth on College Choice: Evidence from the Housing Boom NBER Working Paper No. 18075, National Bureau of Economic Research, May 2012. Also: http://www.nber.org/papers/w18075 Cohort(s): NLSY97 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Assets; College Characteristics; College Enrollment; Colleges; Wealth The higher education system in the United States is characterized by a large degree of quality heterogeneity, and there is a growing literature suggesting students attending higher quality universities have better educational and labor market outcomes. In this paper, we use NLSY97 data combined with the difference in the timing and strength of the housing boom across cities to examine how short-run home price growth affects the quality of postsecondary schools chosen by students. Our findings indicate a $10,000 increase in a family’s housing wealth in the four years prior to a student becoming of college-age increases the likelihood she attends a flagship public university relative to a non-flagship public university by 2.0 percent and decreases the relative probability of attending a community college by 1.6 percent. These effects are driven by relatively lower and middle-income families. We show that these changes are due to the effect of housing wealth on where students apply, not on whether they are admitted. We also find that short-run increases in home prices lead to increases in direct quality measures of the institutions students attend. Finally, for the lower-income sample, we find home price increases reduce student labor supply and that each $10,000 increase in home prices is associated with a 1.8% increase in the likelihood of completing college. |
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Bibliography Citation
Lovenheim, Michael F. and C. Lockwood Reynolds. "The Effect of Housing Wealth on College Choice: Evidence from the Housing Boom." NBER Working Paper No. 18075, National Bureau of Economic Research, May 2012. |
53. |
Miller, Douglas L. Shenhav, Na'ama Grosz, Michel Z. |
Selection into Identification in Fixed Effects Models, with Application to Head Start NBER Working Paper No. 26174, National Bureau of Economic Research, August 2019. Also: https://www.nber.org/papers/w26174 Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79 Young Adult Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Educational Attainment; Head Start; High School Completion/Graduates; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) Many papers use fixed effects (FE) to identify causal impacts of an intervention. In this paper we show that when the treatment status only varies within some groups, this design can induce non-random selection of groups into the identifying sample, which we term selection into identification (SI). We begin by illustrating SI in the context of several family fixed effects (FFE) applications with a binary treatment variable. We document that the FFE identifying sample differs from the overall sample along many dimensions, including having larger families. Further, when treatment effects are heterogeneous, the FFE estimate is biased relative to the average treatment effect (ATE). For the general FE model, we then develop a reweighting-on-observables estimator to recover the unbiased ATE from the FE estimate for policy-relevant populations. We apply these insights to examine the long-term effects of Head Start in the PSID and the CNLSY. Using our reweighting methods, we estimate that Head Start leads to a 2.6 percentage point (p.p.) increase (s.e. = 6.2 p.p.) in the likelihood of attending some college for white Head Start participants in the PSID. This ATE is 78% smaller than the traditional FFE estimate (12 p.p). Reweighting the CNLSY FE estimates to obtain the ATE produces similar attenuation in the estimated impacts of Head Start. |
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Bibliography Citation
Miller, Douglas L., Na'ama Shenhav and Michel Z. Grosz. "Selection into Identification in Fixed Effects Models, with Application to Head Start." NBER Working Paper No. 26174, National Bureau of Economic Research, August 2019. |
54. |
Mocan, Naci Unel, Bulent |
Skill-biased Technological Change, Earnings of Unskilled Workers, and Crime Working Paper No. 17605, National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), November 2011 Cohort(s): NLSY97 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Crime; Current Population Survey (CPS) / CPS-Fertility Supplement; Earnings; Skilled Workers; State-Level Data/Policy; Technology/Technological Changes; Wages This paper investigates the impact of unskilled workers' earnings on crime. Following the literature on wage inequality and skill-biased technological change, we employ CPS data to create state-year as well as state-year-and (broad) industry specific measures of skill-biased technological change, which are then used as instruments for unskilled workers' earnings in crime regressions. Regressions that employ state panels reveal that technology-induced variations in unskilled workers' earnings impact property crime with an elasticity of -1, but that wages have no impact on violent crime. The paper also estimates, for the first time in this literature, structural crime equations using micro panel data from NLSY97 and instrumenting real wages of young workers. Using state-year-industry specific technology shocks as instruments yields elasticities that are in the neighborhood of -2 for most types of crime, which is markedly larger than previous estimates. In both data sets there is evidence for asymmetric impact of unskilled workers' earnings on crime. A decline in earnings has a larger effect on crime in comparison to an increase in earnings by the same absolute value. |
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Bibliography Citation
Mocan, Naci and Bulent Unel. "Skill-biased Technological Change, Earnings of Unskilled Workers, and Crime." Working Paper No. 17605, National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), November 2011. |
55. |
Molloy, Raven Smith, Christopher L. Wozniak, Abigail |
Declining Migration within the U.S.: The Role of the Labor Market NBER Working Paper No. 20065, National Bureau of Economic Research, April 2014. Also: http://www.nber.org/papers/w20065 Cohort(s): NLSY79, NLSY97, Young Men Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Clare Jellick; Geocoded Data; Job Turnover; Migration; Occupations; Transition, Job to Job; Wage Growth Interstate migration has decreased steadily since the 1980s. We show that this trend is not primarily related to demographic and socioeconomic factors, but instead appears to be connected to a concurrent secular decline in labor market transitions. We explore a number of reasons for the declines in geographic and labor market transitions, and find the strongest support for explanations related to a decrease in the net benefit to changing employers. Our preferred interpretation is that the distribution of relevant outside offers has shifted in a way that has made labor market transitions, and thus geographic transitions, less desirable to workers. |
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Bibliography Citation
Molloy, Raven, Christopher L. Smith and Abigail Wozniak. "Declining Migration within the U.S.: The Role of the Labor Market." NBER Working Paper No. 20065, National Bureau of Economic Research, April 2014. |
56. |
Nguimkeu, Pierre Denteh, Augustine Tchernis, Rusty |
On the Estimation of Treatment Effects with Endogenous Misreporting NBER Working Paper No. 24117, National Bureau of Economic Research, December 2017. Also: http://www.nber.org/papers/w24117 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Body Mass Index (BMI); Geocoded Data; Modeling, OLS; Obesity; Program Participation/Evaluation; Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly Food Stamps); Underreporting Participation in social programs is often misreported in survey data, complicating the estimation of the effects of those programs. In this paper, we propose a model to estimate treatment effects under endogenous participation and endogenous misreporting. We show that failure to account for endogenous misreporting can result in the estimate of the treatment effect having an opposite sign from the true effect. We present an expression for the asymptotic bias of both OLS and IV estimators and discuss the conditions under which sign reversal may occur. We provide a method for eliminating this bias when researchers have access to information related to both participation and misreporting. We establish the consistency and asymptotic normality of our estimator and assess its small sample performance through Monte Carlo simulations. An empirical example is given to illustrate the proposed method. |
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Bibliography Citation
Nguimkeu, Pierre, Augustine Denteh and Rusty Tchernis. "On the Estimation of Treatment Effects with Endogenous Misreporting." NBER Working Paper No. 24117, National Bureau of Economic Research, December 2017. |
57. |
Reichman, Nancy Corman, Hope Dave, Dhaval Kalil, Ariel Schwartz-Soicher, Ofira |
Effects of Welfare Reform on Parenting NBER Working Paper No. 28077, National Bureau of Economic Research, November 2020. Also: https://www.nber.org/papers/w28077 Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Geocoded Data; Parent Supervision/Monitoring; Parent-Child Interaction; Parent-Child Relationship/Closeness; State-Level Data/Policy; Welfare This study investigated the effects of welfare reform in the 1990s, which represented a major policy shift that substantially and permanently retracted cash assistance to poor mothers in the U.S., on parenting. Using data on women from the 1979 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth linked with information on their 10- to 14-year-old children from the Child Self-Administered and Self-Report surveys, we exploited variation in the implementation of welfare reform across states, over time, and across treatment and comparison groups to estimate the effects of welfare reform on parent-child activities and closeness of the mother-child relationship. We found that welfare reform had adverse effects on engagement in parent-child activities, children feeling close to their mothers, and mothers knowing their children's whereabouts, with the effects generally concentrated among boys. These findings have implications for children's development and contribute to a virtually non-existent literature on the effects of welfare reform on parenting and the small but growing economic literature on parenting. We found no evidence that the effects of welfare reform on parenting operated through the mother working more than full time, having multiple jobs, working in a service job, or having a non-standard work schedule. |
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Bibliography Citation
Reichman, Nancy, Hope Corman, Dhaval Dave, Ariel Kalil and Ofira Schwartz-Soicher. "Effects of Welfare Reform on Parenting." NBER Working Paper No. 28077, National Bureau of Economic Research, November 2020. |
58. |
Sabia, Joseph J. Mackay, Taylor Nguyen, Thanh Tam Dave, Dhaval |
Do Ban the Box Laws Increase Crime? NBER Working Paper No. 24381, National Bureau of Economic Research, March 2018. Also: http://www.nber.org/papers/w24381 Cohort(s): NLSY97 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Arrests; Crime; Criminal Justice System; Discrimination; Geocoded Data; State-Level Data/Policy Ban-the-box (BTB) laws, which prevent employers from asking prospective employees about their criminal histories at initial job screenings, have been adopted by 25 states and the District of Columbia. Using data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System, the Uniform Crime Reports, and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, this study is the first to estimate the effect of BTB laws on crime. We find some evidence that BTB laws are associated with an increase in property crime among working-age Hispanic men. This finding is consistent with employer-based statistical discrimination as well as potential moral hazard. A causal interpretation of our results is supported by placebo tests on policy leads and a lack of BTB-induced increases in crime for non-Hispanic whites and women. Finally, we find that BTB laws are associated with a reduction in property crime among older and white individuals, consistent with labor-labor substitution toward those with perceived lower probabilities of having criminal records (Doleac and Hansen 2017). [Also presented at Austin TX, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, April 2019] |
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Bibliography Citation
Sabia, Joseph J., Taylor Mackay, Thanh Tam Nguyen and Dhaval Dave. "Do Ban the Box Laws Increase Crime?" NBER Working Paper No. 24381, National Bureau of Economic Research, March 2018. |
59. |
Saffer, Henry Dave, Dhaval Grossman, Michael |
Behavioral Economics and the Demand for Alcohol: Results from the NLSY97 NBER Working Paper No. 18180, National Bureau of Economic Research, June 2012. Also: http://www.nber.org/papers/w18180 Cohort(s): NLSY97 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Adolescent Behavior; Alcohol Use; Behavior; Data Linkage (also see Record Linkage); Education; Market Level Data; Modeling; Modeling, Latent Class Analysis/Latent Transition Analysis; Television Viewing The behavioral economic model presented in this paper argues that the effect of advertising and price differ by past consumption levels. The model predicts that advertising is more effective in reducing consumption at high past consumption levels but less effective at low past consumption levels. Conversely, the model predicts that higher prices are effective in reducing consumption at low past consumption levels but less effective at high past consumption levels. Unlike the models used in most prior studies, this model predicts that the effects of policy on average consumption and on the upper end of the distribution are different. Both FMM and Quantile models were estimated. The results from these regressions show that heavy drinkers are more responsive to advertising and less responsive to price than are moderate drinkers. The empirical evidence also supports the assumption that education is a proxy for self-regulation. The key conclusions are that restrictions on advertising are targeted at heavy drinkers and are an underutilized alcohol control policy. Higher excise taxes on alcohol reduce consumption by moderate drinkers and are of less importance in reducing heavy consumption. |
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Bibliography Citation
Saffer, Henry, Dhaval Dave and Michael Grossman. "Behavioral Economics and the Demand for Alcohol: Results from the NLSY97." NBER Working Paper No. 18180, National Bureau of Economic Research, June 2012. |
60. |
Taber, Christopher Robert Roys, Nicolas A. |
Skill Prices, Occupations, and Changes in the Wage Structure for Low Skilled Men NBER Working Paper No. 26453, National Bureau of Economic Research, November 2019. Also: https://www.nber.org/papers/w26453 Cohort(s): NLSY79, NLSY97 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Male Sample; Occupational Choice; Occupational Information Network (O*NET); Skills; Wage Levels This paper studies the effect of the change in occupational structure on wages for low skilled men. We develop a model of occupational choice in which workers have multi-dimensional skills that are exploited differently across different occupations. We allow for a rich specification of technological change which has heterogenous effects on different occupations and different parts of the skill distribution. We estimate the model combining four datasets: (1) O*NET, to measure skill intensity across occupations, (2) NLSY79, to identify life-cycle supply effects, (3) CPS (ORG), to estimate the evolution of skill prices and occupations over time, and (4) NLSY97 to see how the gain to specific skills has changed. We find that while changes in the occupational structure have affected wages of low skilled workers, the effect is not dramatic. First, the wages in traditional blue collar occupations have not fallen substantially relative to other occupations--a fact that we can not reconcile with a competitive model. Second, our decompositions show that changes in occupations explain only a small part of the patterns in wage levels over our time period. Price changes within occupation are far more important. Third, while we see an increase in the payoff to interpersonal skills, manual skills still remain the most important skill type for low educated males. |
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Bibliography Citation
Taber, Christopher Robert and Nicolas A. Roys. "Skill Prices, Occupations, and Changes in the Wage Structure for Low Skilled Men." NBER Working Paper No. 26453, National Bureau of Economic Research, November 2019. |
61. |
Thompson, Owen |
Human Capital and Black-White Earnings Gaps, 1966-2017 NBER Working Paper No. 28586, National Bureau of Economic Research, March 2021. Also: https://www.nber.org/papers/w28586 Cohort(s): NLSY79, NLSY97, Young Men Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Earnings; Educational Attainment; Human Capital This paper estimates the contribution of human capital, measured using both educational attainment and test performance, to the Black-white earnings gap in three separate samples of men spanning 1966 through 2017. There are three main findings. First, the magnitude of reductions in the Black-white earnings gap that occur after controlling for human capital have become much larger over time, suggesting a growing contribution of human capital to Black-white earnings disparities. Second, these increases are almost entirely due to growth in the returns to human capital, rather than changing racial gaps in the human capital traits themselves. Finally, growth in the explanatory power of human capital has been primarily due to increases in the association between human capital and the likelihood of non-work, with no clear increases in the extent to which human capital explains Black-white differences in hourly wages or other intensive margins. These findings highlight how apparently race-neutral structural developments in the US labor market, such as increasing skill prices and falling labor force participation rates among less skilled men, have had large impacts on the dynamics of racial inequality. |
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Bibliography Citation
Thompson, Owen. "Human Capital and Black-White Earnings Gaps, 1966-2017." NBER Working Paper No. 28586, National Bureau of Economic Research, March 2021. |
62. |
Wang, Buyi Frank, Richard G. Glied, Sherry A. |
Lasting Scars: The Impact of Depression in Early Adulthood on Subsequent Labor Market Outcomes NBER Working Paper No. 30776, National Bureau of Economic Research, December 2022. Also: https://www.nber.org/papers/w30776 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Depression (see also CESD); Labor Market Outcomes; Occupational Information Network (O*NET) A growing body of evidence indicates that poor health early in life can leave lasting scars on adult health and economic outcomes. While much of this literature focuses on childhood experiences, mechanisms generating these lasting effects--recurrence of illness and interruption of human capital accumulation--are not limited to childhood. In this study, we examine how an episode of depression experienced in early adulthood affects subsequent labor market outcomes. We find that, at age 50, people who had met diagnostic criteria for depression when surveyed at ages 27-35 earn 10% lower hourly wages (conditional on occupation) and work 120-180 fewer hours annually, together generating 24% lower annual wage incomes. A portion of this income penalty (21-39%) occurs because depression is often a chronic condition, recurring later in life. But a substantial share (25-55%) occurs because depression in early adulthood disrupts human capital accumulation, by reducing work experience and by influencing selection into occupations with skill distributions that offer lower potential for wage growth. These lingering effects of early depression reinforce the importance of early and multifaceted intervention to address depression and its follow-on effects in the workplace. |
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Bibliography Citation
Wang, Buyi, Richard G. Frank and Sherry A. Glied. "Lasting Scars: The Impact of Depression in Early Adulthood on Subsequent Labor Market Outcomes." NBER Working Paper No. 30776, National Bureau of Economic Research, December 2022. |
63. |
Yazici, Esel Y. Kaestner, Robert |
Medicaid Expansions and the Crowding Out of Private Health Insurance NBER Working Paper No. 6527, National Bureau of Economic Research, April 1998. Also: http://papers.nber.org/papers/w6527.pdf Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Benefits, Insurance; Children, Health Care; Health Care; Medicaid/Medicare; Poverty In this paper, we re-examine the question of crowd out among children. Our primary contribution is the use of longitudinal data. These data allow us to identify several groups of children depending on whether their eligibility for Medicaid was affected by the eligibility expansions, and to investigate whether changes in insurance coverage of children affected by the expansions differed from changes in insurance coverage of children unaffected by the expansions. For example, we directly measure whether children who became eligible for Medicaid due to the expansions decreased their enrollment in private insurance plans faster than children whose eligibility for Medicaid was unaffected by the expansions. Our results suggest that there was relatively little crowd out among children. We estimate that 14.5 percent of the recent increase in Medicaid enrollment came from private insurance. |
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Bibliography Citation
Yazici, Esel Y. and Robert Kaestner. "Medicaid Expansions and the Crowding Out of Private Health Insurance." NBER Working Paper No. 6527, National Bureau of Economic Research, April 1998. |