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Working Paper
Smoking: taxing health and Social Security
While the health risks associated with smoking are well known, the impact on income distributions is not. This paper extends the literature by examining the distributional effects of a behavioral choice, in this case smoking, on net marginal Social Security tax rates (NMSSTR). The results show that smokers, as a result of shorter life expectancies, incur a higher NMSSTR than nonsmokers. In addition, as low-earnings workers have a higher smoking prevalence than high-earnings workers, smoking works to widen the income distribution. This higher tax rate could have implications for both labor ...
Working Paper
The role of labor market intermittency in explaining gender wage differentials
Using the Health and Retirement Survey and standard wage decomposition techniques, this paper finds that the difference in intermittent labor force participation between men and women accounts for 47 percent of the contribution to the wage gap of differences in observed characteristics. Not controlling for intermittent behavior results in too much importance being placed on gender differences in job characteristics.
Working Paper
A decomposition of the black-white differential in birth outcomes
Substantial racial disparities continue to persist in the prevalence of preterm births and low-birth-weight births. Health policy aimed at reducing these disparities could be better targeted if the differences in birth outcomes are better understood. This study decomposes these racial disparities in birth outcomes to determine the extent to which the disparities are driven by differences in measurable characteristics of black mothers and white mothers as well as the extent to which the gap results from differences in the impact of these characteristics. The analysis is focused on three ...
Working Paper
The gap between the conditional wage distributions of incumbents and the newly hired employees: decomposition and uniform ordering
We examine the cardinal gap between wage distributions of the incumbents and newly hired workers based on entropic distances that are well-defined welfare theoretic measures. Decomposition of several effects is achieved by identifying several counterfactual distributions of different groups. These go beyond the usual Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions at the (linear) conditional means. Much like quantiles, these entropic distances are well defined inferential objects and functions whose statistical properties have recently been developed. Going beyond these strong rankings and distances, we ...
Working Paper
Freshman learning communities, college performance, and retention
This paper applies a standard treatment effects model to determine that participation in Freshman Learning Communities (FLCs) improves academic performance and retention. Not controlling for individual self-selection into FLC participation leads one to incorrectly conclude that the impact is the same across race and gender groups. Accurately assessing the impact of any educational program is essential in determining what resources institutions should devote to it.
Working Paper
Incorporating insurance rate estimates and differential mortality into net marginal Social Security tax rate calculations
This paper extends the literature on net marginal tax rates created by the Social Security program by including variations in both the probability of being eligible to receive benefits and income-related life expectancy. The previous literature has found that women incur a lower net marginal tax rate because they have longer life expectancies. The results presented in this paper indicate that including variations in eligibility for benefits partially reverses this result by increasing net marginal Social Security tax rates for older women. In addition, the existing literature has shown that ...
Journal Article
Where Are They Now? Workers with Young Children during COVID-19
Employment levels for prime-age workers have been greatly reduced during the COVID-19 pandemic. The decline has fallen disproportionately on females, especially compared to past recessions, and the presence of young children is a driving factor in this differential response. This article identifies the impact of gender, young children, and the presence of a spouse on the attachment to employment for individuals who were employed immediately prior to the pandemic. Compared to the Great Recession and the most recent expansionary period in 2019, women with young children have a relatively lower ...
Working Paper
Evidence of demand factors in the determination of the labor market intermittency penalty
The purpose of this paper is to determine whether any empirical evidence exists for the contribution of employer, or demand-side, determinants of the labor market intermittency penalty. The documented negative relationship between the size of the penalty and labor market strength is interpreted as evidence that labor market intermittency is viewed as an undesirable characteristic that employers penalize more severely when the labor market is weak.
Working Paper
Losing Public Health Insurance: TennCare Disenrollment and Personal Financial Distress
A main goal of health insurance is to smooth out the financial risk that comes with health shocks and health care. Nevertheless, there has been relatively sparse evidence on how health insurance affects financial outcomes. The few studies that exist focus on the effect of gaining health insurance. This paper explores the effect of losing public health insurance on measures of individual financial well-being. In 2005, the state of Tennessee dropped about 170,000 individuals from Medicaid, resulting in a plausibly exogenous shock to health insurance status. Both across- and within-county ...
Journal Article
Smoking: taxing health and Social Security
Cigarette smoking is costly in terms of not only its effects on smokers' health but also the direct and indirect financial costs it imposes on smokers and their families. For instance, premature death caused by smoking may redistribute Social Security income in unexpected ways that affect behavior and reduce the economic well-being of smokers and their dependents. ; This article examines the effects of smoking-attributable mortality on the net marginal Social Security tax rate (NMSSTR)?the difference between the statutory payroll tax rate and the present value of future benefits to which a ...