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Working Paper
Why did Rich Families Increase their Fertility? Inequality and Marketization of Child Care
A negative relationship between income and fertility has persisted for so long that its existence is often taken for granted. One economic theory builds on this relationship and argues that rising inequality leads to greater differential fertility between rich and poor. We show that the relationship between income and fertility has ?attened between 1980 and 2010 in the US, a time of increasing inequality, as high income families increased their fertility. These facts challenge the standard theory. We propose that marketization of parental time costs can explain the changing relationship ...
Discussion Paper
Minimum Wage Impacts along the New York-Pennsylvania Border
The federal minimum wage, currently set at $7.25 per hour, has remained unchanged for the longest stretch of time since its 1938 inception under the Fair Labor Standards Act. With the real purchasing power of the federal minimum wage eroded by inflation, many states and municipalities have raised their local minimum wages. As of July 2019, fourteen states plus the District of Columbia—home to 35 percent of Americans—have minimum wages above $10 per hour, as do numerous localities scattered across other states. New York is among a handful of states—along with California, Connecticut, ...
Working Paper
The Evolution of Technological Substitution in Low-Wage Labor Markets
This paper uses minimum wage hikes to evaluate the susceptibility of low-wage employment to technological substitution. We find that automation is accelerating and supplanting a broader set of low-wage routine jobs in the decade since the Financial Crisis. Simultaneously, low-wage interpersonal jobs are increasing and offsetting routine job loss. However, interpersonal job growth does not appear to be enough – as it was previous to the Financial Crisis – to fully offset the negative effects of automation on low-wage routine jobs. Employment losses are most evident among minority workers ...
Report
Occupational Licensing and Labor Market Fluidity
We show that occupational licensing has significant negative effects on labor market fluidity defined as cross-occupation mobility. Using a balanced panel of workers constructed from the CPS and SIPP data, we analyze the link between occupational licensing and labor market outcomes. We find that workers with a government-issued occupational license experience churn rates significantly lower than those of non-licensed workers. Specifically, licensed workers are 24% less likely to switch occupations and 3% less likely to become unemployed in the following year. Moreover, occupational licensing ...
Working Paper
Who Cares? Paid Sick Leave Mandates, Care-Giving, and Gender
We use employment data from the Current Population Survey to assess the efficacy of state-mandated paid sick leave policies on leave-taking behavior with a focus on any variation by gender. We find that these policies increase leave taking for care-giving for men by 10-20%, and this effect is strongest for men with young children in the household. In addition, we find that Hispanic men and men without a bachelor’s degree, who historically have had low access to paid sick leave, are 20–25% more likely to take care-giving leave. By comparison, we do not find evidence that these policies ...
Working Paper
The Evolution of Technological Substitution in Low-Wage Labor Markets
This paper uses minimum wage hikes to evaluate the susceptibility of low-wage employment to technological substitution. We find that automation is accelerating and supplanting a broader set of low-wage routine jobs in the decade since the Financial Crisis. Simultaneously, low-wage interpersonal jobs are increasing and offsetting routine job loss. However, interpersonal job growth does not appear to be enough – as it was previous to the Financial Crisis – to fully offset the negative effects of automation on low-wage routine jobs. Employment losses are most evident among minority workers ...
Working Paper
Explaining Stagnation in the College Wage Premium
After growing substantially during the 1980s through the early 2000s, the college wage premium more recently has been largely unchanged, or stagnant. We extend the canonical production-function model of skill premiums to assess supply and demand contributions to the slowdown in college wage premium, using annual CPS ASEC data from the early 1960s through 2023. To account for the rising importance of women in the college educated workforce, we estimate a hybrid model that incorporates components that are disaggregated by age and gender. We also allow for non-linearities and changes over time ...
Working Paper
Minimum Wages and Consumer Credit : Impacts on Access to Credit and Traditional and High-Cost Borrowing
Proponents of minimum wage legislation point to its potential to raise earnings and reduce poverty, while opponents argue that disemployment effects lead to net welfare losses. But these arguments typically ignore the possibility of spillover effects on other aspects of households' financial circumstances. This paper examines how state-level minimum wages affect the decisions of lenders and low-income borrowers. Using data derived from direct mailings of credit offers, survey-reported usage of high-cost alternative credit products, and debt recorded in credit reports, we find that higher ...
Working Paper
Disparities and Mitigation Behavior during COVID-19
This paper uses a unique large-scale survey administered in April 2020 to assess disparities on several dimensions of wellbeing under rising COVID-19 infections and mitigation restrictions in the US. The survey includes three modules designed to assess different dimensions of well-being in parallel: physical health, mental and social health, and economic and financial security. The survey is unique among early COVID-19 data efforts in that provides insight on diverse dimensions of wellbeing and for subnational geographies. I find dramatic declines in wellbeing from pre-COVID baseline measures ...
Working Paper
Outsourcing Policy and Worker Outcomes: Causal Evidence from a Mexican Ban
A weakening of labor protection policies is often invoked as one cause of observed monopsony power and the decline in labor’s share of income, but little evidence exists on the causal impact of labor policies on wage markdowns. Using confidential Mexican economic census data from 1994 to 2019, we document a rising trend over this period in on-site outsourcing. Then, leveraging data from a manufacturing panel survey from 2013 to 2023 and a natural experiment featuring a ban on domestic outsourcing in 2021, we show that the ban drastically reduced outsourcing, increased wages, and reduced ...