Showing papers in "Journal of Human Resources in 2004"
TL;DR: This article used a larger data set and several regres-sion strategies in an attempt to generate more consistent estimates of the effect of weight on wages, and explored differences across gender, race, and ethnicity.
Abstract: Previous studies of the relationship between body weight and wages have found mixed results. This paper uses a larger data set and several regres-sion strategies in an attempt to generate more consistent estimates of the effect of weight on wages. Differences across gender, race, and ethnicity are explored. This paperjnds that weight lowers wages for white females; OLS esti-mates indicate that a difference in weight of two standard deviations (roughly 65 pounds) is associated with a difference in wages of 9 percent. In absolute value, this is equivalent to the wage effect of roughly one and a half years of education or three years of work experience. Negative cor-relations between weight and wages observed for other gender-ethnic groups appear to be due to unobserved heterogeneity. I. Introduction Several previous studies have found, among females, a negative cor-relation between body weight and wages.' There exist three broad categories of ex-planations for this finding. The first explanation is that obesity lowers wages; for example, by lowering productivity or because of workplace discrimination. The sec-ond is that low wages cause obesity. This would be true if poorer people consume
1,098 citations
TL;DR: This article found that teacher mobility is much more strongly related to characteristics of the students, particularly race and achievement, than to salary, although salary exerts a modest impact once compensating differentials are taken into account.
Abstract: Many school districts experience difficulties attracting and retaining teachers, and the impending retirement of a substantial fraction of public school teachers raises the specter of severe shortages in some public schools. Schools in urban areas serving economically disadvantaged and minority students appear particularly vulnerable. This paper investigates those factors that affect the probabilities that teachers switch schools or exit the public schools entirely. The results indicate that teacher mobility is much more strongly related to characteristics of the students, particularly race and achievement, than to salary, although salary exerts a modest impact once compensating differentials are taken into account.
943 citations
TL;DR: This article found that maternal employment during the first three years of the child's life has a small deleterious effect on estimated verbal ability of three- and four year- olds and a larger negative impact on reading and mathematics achievement of five- and six-year-olds.
Abstract: Maternal employment during the first three years of the child’s life has a small deleterious effect on estimated verbal ability of three- and four year- olds and a larger negative impact on reading and mathematics achievement of five- and six-year-olds. This study provides a more pessimistic assessment than most prior research for two reasons. First, previous analyses often control crudely for differences in child and household characteristics. Second, the negative relationships are more pronounced for the reading and mathematics performance of ? ve- and six-year-old children than for the verbal scores of three- and four-year-olds.
401 citations
TL;DR: The authors provides evidence on a wide set of margins along which labor markets can adjust in response to increases in the minimum wage, including wages, hours, employment, and ultimately labor income.
Abstract: This paper provides evidence on a wide set of margins along which labor markets can adjust in response to increases in the minimum wage, including wages, hours, employment, and ultimately labor income. Not surprisingly, the evidence indicates that low-wage workers are most strongly affected, while higher-wage workers are little affected. Workers who initially earn near the minimum wage experience wage gains. Nevertheless, their hours and employment decline, and the combined effect of these changes on earned income suggests adverse consequences, on net, for low-wage workers.
342 citations
TL;DR: This article found that these measures are subject to considerable response error resulting in large attenuation biases when they are used as explanatory variables, and they also found that self-reported measures of health status are more objective than self-assessed measures of global well-being.
Abstract: Survey reports of the incidence of chronic conditions are considered by many researchers to be more objective, and thus preferable, measures of unobserved health status than self-assessed measures of global well being. In this paper we evaluate this hypothesis by attempting to validate these "objective, self-reported" measures of health. Our analysis makes use of a unique data set that matches a variety of self-reports of health with respondents' medical records. We find that these measures are subject to considerable response error resulting in large attenuation biases when they are used as explanatory variables.
305 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the role that economic incentives, particularly changes in wages at the bottom end of the wage distribution, play in determining crime rates and find that relative falls in the wages of low-wage workers lead to increases in crime.
Abstract: We explore the role that economic incentives, particularly changes in wages at the bottom end of the wage distribution, play in determining crime rates. We use data on the police force areas of England and Wales between 1975 and 1996 and find (relative) falls in the wages of low-wage workers lead to increases in crime. We carry out a number of experiments with different wage measures, including a wage measure that accounts for the effects of changes in the composition of employment. These reinforce the picture of a strong association between the low-wage labor market and crime. The result that incentives play a central role is reinforced further by the strong impact on crime of deterrence measures and of a measure of the returns to crime.
301 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a measure of labor force attachment, the subjective probability of continued work, was used to examine the role of health and changes in health status in the relationship between health and early retirement.
Abstract: The choice of a retirement date is one of the most important decisions facing older workers. It is a decision that will affect their economic well-being for the remainder of their lives. One factor that undoubtedly impacts this choice is the worker's health. However, the many studies examining the relationship between health and retirement have failed to agree on the relative importance of health compared with financial variables. Efforts to do so have been hampered by the difficulty of correctly measuring health status. Much of the concern centers on the fear that subjective reports of health are biased by individuals using poor health as a justification for early retirement. This paper takes advantage of a unique measure of labor force attachment, the subjective probability of continued work, to reexamine the role of health and changes in health status. By focusing exclusively on workers, I eliminate the concern about justification bias among retired individuals and find that subjective reports of health do have important effects on retirement, effects that are arguably stronger than those of the financial variables. The effects of subjective health remain large even when the model includes more objective measures of health, such as disease conditions. I also find that changes in retirement expectations are driven to a much greater degree by changes in health than by changes in income or wealth.
236 citations
TL;DR: The authors investigated the patterns and determinants of life satisfaction in Germany following reunification and found that East Germans experienced a continued improvement in life satisfaction to which increased household incomes contributed around 12 percent.
Abstract: This paper investigates the patterns and determinants of life satisfaction in Germany following reunification. We implement a new fixed-effect estimator for ordinal life satisfaction in the German Socio-Economic Panel and find negative effects on life satisfaction from being recently fired, losing a spouse through either death or separation, and time spent in hospital, while we find strong positive effects from income and marriage. Using a new causal decomposition technique, we find that East Germans experienced a continued improvement in life satisfaction to which increased household incomes contributed around 12 percent. Most of the improvement is explained by better average circumstances, such as greater political freedom. For West Germans, we find little change in average life satisfaction over this period.
223 citations
TL;DR: This paper used a regression discontinuity strategy to estimate the effect of teacher training on the reading and math performance of elementary students in high-poverty schools in Chicago, finding that marginal increases in in-service training have no statistically or academically significant effect on either reading or math achievement.
Abstract: While there is a substantial literature on the relationship between general teacher characteristics and student learning, school districts and states often rely on in-service teacher training as a part of school reform efforts. Recent school reform efforts in Chicago provide an opportunity to examine in-service training using a quasi-experimental research design. In this paper, we use a regression discontinuity strategy to estimate the effect of teacher training on the math and reading performance of elementary students. We find that marginal increases in in-service training have no statistically or academically significant effect on either reading or math achievement, suggesting that modest investments in staff development may not be sufficient to increase the achievement of elementary school children in high-poverty schools.
196 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors test whether mortality is related to individual income, mean community income, and community income inequality, controlling for initial health status and personal characteristics, and find that mortality decreases significantly as individual income increases.
Abstract: We test whether mortality is related to individual income, mean community income, and community income inequality, controlling for initial health status and personal characteristics. The analysis is based on a random sample from the adult Swedish population of more than 40, 000 individuals who were followed up for 10-17 years. We find that mortality decreases significantly as individual income increases. For mean community income and community income inequality we cannot, however, reject the null hypothesis of no effect on mortality. This result is stable with respect to a number of measurement and specification issues explored in an extensive sensitivity analysis.
195 citations
TL;DR: This article examined race differences in patterns of asset accumulation and found that inheritances raise the rate of wealth accumulation of whites relative to that of African Americans, but while whites devote a greater share of their income to saving, racial differences in saving rates are not significant, once they control for income.
Abstract: Making use of PSID data for 1984, 1989, and 1994, we examine race differences in patterns of asset accumulation. Our results indicate, as expected, that inheritances raise the rate of wealth accumulation of whites relative to that of African Americans. But, while whites devote a greater share of their income to saving, racial differences in saving rates are not significant, once we control for income. Though our results may be period-specific, we also do not find evidence that the rate of return to capital is greater for whites than for African Americans. Simulations suggest that African Americans would have gained significant ground relative to whites during the period if they had inherited similar amounts, saved at the same rate, had comparable income levels and, more speculatively, had portfolios closer in composition to those of whites.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors compare changes in homicide and arrest rates among cohorts born before and after the legalization of abortion to changes in crime in the same years among similar cohorts who were unexposed to legalized abortion.
Abstract: In this paper I compare changes in homicide and arrest rates among cohorts born before and after the legalization of abortion to changes in crime in the same years among similar cohorts who were unexposed to legalized abortion. I find little consistent evidence that the legalization of abortion in selected states around 1970 and then in the remaining states following Roe v. Wade had an effect on recent crime rates. I conclude that the dramatic association as reported in a recent study is most likely the result of unmeasured period effects such as changes in crack cocaine use. (authors)
TL;DR: This paper found that the responses of women to changes in their husbands' wages attenuated somewhat the increases in individual wage inequality at the family level, but assortative mating implies that wage changes of husbands and wives are correlated and so family earnings inequality still grew during the decade of the 1980s.
Abstract: The large changes in relative wages that occurred during the 1980s provide fertile ground for studying the behavioral responses of married couples to the wage changes of husbands and wives. I find estimates of own-wage and cross-wage elasticities for men that are very small. The own-wage elasticity for women is positive and the cross-wage elasticity for women suggests a strong negative response of female labor supply to changes in their husband’s wages. Family labor supply behavior determines how changes in individual wage rates translate into family earnings changes. The responses of women to changes in their husband’s wages attenuated somewhat the increases in individual wage inequality at the family level: The results suggest that the earnings of the wives of low-income men would actually have fallen over the decade if women’s labor supply did not respond to changes in their husbands’ wages. However, assortative mating implies that wage changes of husbands and wives are correlated and so family earnings inequality still grew during the decade of the 1980s.
TL;DR: The authors examined the determinants of expenditures on weddings and dowries in rural India and found that dowries were affected by competition for scarce men the quality of grooms and social norms and high social status.
Abstract: This study examined the determinants of expenditures on weddings and dowries in rural India. Data were obtained from a survey among a random sample of 800 households in 5 districts in rural Karnataka state in the south open-ended interviews with 100 households from 2 villages in the sample and focus groups. The in-depth interviews revealed that dowries were affected by competition for scarce men the quality of grooms and social norms and high social status. Marriage celebrations signal wealth. Arranging marriage partners and celebration expenses follow different cultural patterns. The theoretical model differentiates between dowry and wedding celebration expenses. Marriages can be from inside or outside the brides village. It is posited that families with high quality husbands have a defined range of celebration costs that cannot be met by families with low quality husbands. The decision to signal social status depends upon whether the groom comes from within or outside the brides village. The brides family spends a higher amount when the groom is not from the same village. Greater brides family wealth reduces the dowry paid. Marriage squeeze raises costs. Average wedding expenses amount to about 3000 rupees; average dowry is about 26000 rupees. Analysis of dowry was generally consistent with theories. Regressions on celebration costs were very consistent with theories. Findings suggest that dowries were largely affected by marriage market factors and match quality while wedding expenses signaled conspicuous consumption and were highest when an exogamous household married a high-quality groom.
TL;DR: The authors extended, tested, and revised a previous meta-regression analysis of the gender wage gap and found that there remains a strong tendency for discrimination estimates to fall, and male researchers still report significantly larger amounts of wage discrimination against women.
Abstract: This paper extends, tests, and revises a previous meta-regression analysis of the gender wage gap (Stanley and Jarrell 1998). We find that there remains a strong, though dampened, tendency for discrimination estimates to fall, and male researchers still report significantly larger amounts of wage discrimination against women. This extensive research base, containing 104 estimates, suggests that there is less need to correct for selection bias-an indirect sign of lessened discrimination. There is evidence that gender research is changing and improving. Although gender wage discrimination has lessened, the research base still finds a significant gender wage inequality.
TL;DR: This article examined the impact of family economic resources on developmental outcomes in early childhood, the stage of life during which developmental psychologists have suggested income effects should be largest, using participants from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care, and estimate income effects that are comparable in absolute terms to those reported in previous research.
Abstract: Prior research has identified statistically significant but small income effects for children’s cognitive, language, and social outcomes. We examine the impact of family economic resources on developmental outcomes in early childhood, the stage of life during which developmental psychologists have suggested income effects should be largest. Using participants from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care, we estimate income effects that are comparable in absolute terms to those reported in previous research. Relative income effect sizes are found to have practical significance, however, both within our sample, and compared to participation in Early Head Start.
TL;DR: The authors re-examine the economic model and find no connection between credit markets and earnings regression nonlinearities, in particular, credit constraints need not produce concavity and concavities does not imply credit market failure, and propose an amended test using quantile regressions.
Abstract: Intergenerational earnings regression among Canadian men is nonlinear; middle-earning families experience slower regression. This pattern appears to confirm economic models of educational choice with credit constraints. This paper reexamines the economic model and finds no connection between credit markets and earnings regression nonlinearities. In particular, credit constraints need not produce concavity and concavity does not imply credit market failure. Despite the invalidity of the test, data availability will likely lead to continued research along this path. The paper proposes an amended test using quantile regressions. Applied to Canadian data, the simple liquidity constraint conclusion is rejected.
TL;DR: Using 25 years of data from the March Current Population Survey augmented by child-support policies, the authors examined the impact of child support enforcement on single mothers and found that early child support reforms have succeeded in increasing child support, but recent reforms have not been examined.
Abstract: An increasingly large number of children are being raised by single parents. Child-support enforcement is aimed at mitigating the economic loss that these children face as a result of living with just one parent. Prior research has shown that early child-support reforms have succeeded in increasing child support, but recent reforms have not been examined and the critical role of welfare participation has been overlooked. Using 25 years of data from the March Current Population Survey augmented by child-support policies, this paper updates and expands our understanding of the impact of child-support enforcement on single mothers.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the effects of financial aid policies on the behavior of post-secondary institutions and found that the institutional responses reduced the intended benefit of the scholarship and increased the cost of college for non-recipients.
Abstract: This paper examines the effects of financial aid policies on the behavior of post-secondary institutions. Using the introduction of the Georgia HOPE Scholarship as a natural experiment, it investigates the impact of the policy on college pricing, institution aid, expenditures, and state appropriations. The results suggest that four-year colleges in Georgia, particularly private institutions, did respond by increasing student charges. In the most extreme case, colleges recouped approximately 30 percent of the scholarship award. As a result, the institutional responses reduced the intended benefit of the scholarship and increased the cost of college for nonrecipients.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors show that Joyce's failure to uncover a negative relationship between abortion and crime is a direct consequence of his decision to focus exclusively on the six-year period 1985-90 without including adequate controls for the crack epidemic.
Abstract: Donohue and Levitt (2001) present a number of analyses that suggest a causal link between legalized abortion and reductions in crime almost two decades later when the cohorts exposed to legalized abortion reach their peak crime years. Joyce (2003) challenges that finding. In this paper, we demonstrate that Joyce's failure to uncover a negative relationship between abortion and crime is a direct consequence of his decision to focus exclusively on the six-year period 1985-90 without including adequate controls for the crack epidemic. We provide empirical evidence that crack hit the high-abortion early legalizing states harder and earlier. We then demonstrate that using precisely the same treatment and control groups as Joyce, but extending the data analysis to encompass the lifetime criminal experiences (as opposed to an arbitrary six-year window), the evidence strongly supports the hypothesis that legalized abortion reduces crime. We also show that our original results are robust to focusing on only the cohorts born immediately before or after Roe v. Wade. The data suggest that ease of access to abortion, rather than simply de jure legalization, is a critical determinant of the extent of the crime reduction.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors assess the benefits of unemployment insurance by measuring its effect in match quality, and find that greater UI generosity leads to longer job tenure, and that this effect is more pronounced during busts, UI having a limited dampening effect on the cyclical variation in the match quality.
Abstract: This paper assesses the benefits of unemployment insurance (UI) by measuring its effect in match quality. We note that UI generosity should affect the decision to match or not and should therefore have some effect on match quality. Using NLSY data, we analyze the relationship between postunemployment job tenure and measures of the state-level UI generosity and the unemployment rate at the time the job is started. We show that greater UI generosity leads to longer job tenure. Furthermore, we find some evidence that this effect is more pronounced during busts, UI having a limited dampening effect on the cyclical variation in match quality.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors exploit the variation across states in the timing of policy implementation to determine if family cap policies lead to a reduction in births to women aged 15 to 34.
Abstract: This analysis exploits the variation across states in the timing of policy implementation to determine if family cap policies lead to a reduction in births to women aged 15 to 34. Vital statistics birth data for the years 1989 to 1998 offer no such evidence. The data reject a decline in births of more than one percent. The finding is robust to multiple specification checks. The data also reject large declines in higher-order births among demographic groups with high welfare participation rates.
TL;DR: In this article, Stepparent effects were identified by comparing half-siblings in families in which one child has both parents and the other a parent and stepparent, and most estimated effects retain their sign after differencing across siblings, and a third remain statistically significant.
Abstract: Examining 33 indicators of well-being from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we conclude that stepchildren’ s inferior outcomes are not entirely explained by sample selection. Using sibling comparisons to control for unobserved family characteristics, we identify stepparent effects by comparing half-siblings in families in which one child has both parents and the other a parent and stepparent. Most estimated effects retain their sign after differencing across siblings, and a third remain statistically significant. The estimates’ sensitivity to the choice of indicator suggests that studies based on a single measure of child wellbeing may be misleading.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors report the results of the first systematic study of the wage expectations of European university students, based on a uniform questionnaire answered by about 3,000 business and economics university students across Europe.
Abstract: Expected earnings and expected returns to education are seen by labor economists as a major determinant of educational attainment. In spite of this, the empirical knowledge about expectations and their formation is scarce. In this paper we report the results of the first systematic study of the wage expectations of European university students. Our data are based on a uniform questionnaire answered by about 3,000 business and economics university students across Europe. We study the determinants of wage expectations and expected employment probabilities, the variability of these expectations and their variation across countries and universities. We also examine the tradeoff between expected starting wages and expected wage growth.
TL;DR: This paper examined whether welfare reform affected caseloads of another program - Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and found that female-headed households in states aggressively pursuing welfare reform were 21.6 percent more likely to receive SSI.
Abstract: Welfare reform has made receipt of cash benefits more difficult and less attractive for single mothers. We examine whether reforms of AFDC affected caseloads of another program - Supplemental Security Income (SSI). We exploit state variation in welfare reform over time, and find that female-headed households in states aggressively pursuing welfare reform were 21.6 percent more likely to receive SSI. This implies that a decrease in caseloads in one program cannot be interpreted as an equal-sized decrease in the number of families receiving public assistance. In addition, our results have policy implications for the well-being of families affected by welfare reform time limits.
TL;DR: This article examined the effects of family structure on economic resources, controlling for unobservable family characteristics and found that in the year following a divorce, family income falls by 41 percent and family food consumption falls by 18 percent.
Abstract: We examine the effects of family structure on economic resources, controlling for unobservable family characteristics. In the year following a divorce, family income falls by 41 percent and family food consumption falls by 18 percent. Six or more years later, the family income of the average child whose parent remains unmarried is 45 percent lower than it would have been if the divorce had not occurred. Marriage raises the long-run family income of children born to single parents by 45 percent. These estimates are substantially smaller than the losses that are implied by cross-sectional comparisons across family types.
TL;DR: This article found that time limits have larger effects on families with younger children than families with older children and that anticipatory responses to time limits decreased welfare use by 6 to 7 percent, accounting for 12 to 13 percent of the decline in welfare use during the late 1990s.
Abstract: Time limits represent a substantial departure from previous welfare policy. Theory suggests that their effects should vary according to the age of the youngest child of the family. I test this prediction using data from the Current Population Survey and find that time limits indeed have larger effects on families with younger children. I further estimate that anticipatory responses to time limits have decreased welfare use by 6 to 7 percent, accounting for 12 to 13 percent of the decline in welfare use during the late 1990s.
TL;DR: In this paper, the causal effect of marital status and computer usage on wages was analyzed using data from the CPS, NLSY and a data set of identical twins, and new econometric specifications were applied to these data which indicated that marital status was not important causal determinants of earnings, even after adjustments are made for measurement error and within-twin differences in ability.
Abstract: This analysis uses several identification strategies and data sources to control for individual ability and determine the causal effect of marital status and computer usage on wages. Although data from the CPS, NLSY and a data set of identical twins show that there are large cross-sectional effects of these variables, new econometric specifications are applied to these data which indicate that marital status and computer usage are not important causal determinants of earnings, even after adjustments are made for measurement error and within-twin differences in ability.
TL;DR: In this paper, the stock-flow model was used to assess the welfare caseload movements during the 1990s and found that approximately 50 percent of the welfare drop in California can be attributed to the declining unemployment rate.
Abstract: This paper reconsiders the methods used in previous studies to assess the welfare caseload movements during the 1990s. We develop a model in which the welfare caseload is the net outcome of past flows onto and off of the caseload and show that such a stock-flow model can explain some of the anomalous findings in previous studies. We then estimate the stock-flow model using California administrative data. We find that approximately 50 percent of the caseload decline in California can be attributed to the declining unemployment rate. These estimates are more robust and larger than those obtained when applying more typical methods to the same California data.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors show that employment among disabled people has declined since the ADA and that this decline was not the result of disabled individuals fleeing the labor market, but rather a result of reclassification of nondisabled, nonparticipants, as disabled.
Abstract: This paper replicates recent findings that employment among disabled people has declined since the ADA. A closer look indicates that this decline results from a drop in the labor force participation rate among those classified as disabled. Further analysis indicates that this labor force participation rate decline, however, was not the result of disabled individuals fleeing the labor market, but, rather, more likely a result of the reclassification of nondisabled, nonparticipants, as disabled. The unconditional employment probability among disabled people (taking selection into the labor market into account) has not declined, and may have actually improved for certain disability classifications.