nep-lab New Economics Papers
on Labour Economics
Issue of 2024‒01‒29
sixteen papers chosen by
Joseph Marchand, University of Alberta


  1. Motherhood and the Cost of Job Search By Philippe, Arnaud; Skandalis, Daphné
  2. Job Ladder and Wealth Dynamics in General Equilibrium By Kaas, Leo; Lalé, Etienne; Siassi, Nawid
  3. Estimating Returns to Schooling and Experience: A History of Thought By Chiswick, Barry R.
  4. Childhood Shocks and Fertility: Evidence from Parental Job Loss By Riukula, Krista
  5. Essays on Health, Labor Market Behavior, and Economic Incentives By Vega, Alejandro
  6. Gender Gap in Reported Childcare Preferences among Parents By Filip Pertold; Sofiana Sinani; Michal Šoltés
  7. Third-Country Effects of U.S. Immigration Policy By Agostina Brinatti; Xing Guo
  8. Workplace Connections and Labor Migration: The Role of Information in Shaping Expectations By Michelle Hansch; Jan Nimczik; Alexandra Spitz-Oener
  9. Till mess do us part: Married women's market hours, home production, and divorce By García-Morán, Eva; Kuehn, Zoe
  10. Predictive Analytics Supporting Labor Market Success: A Career Explorer for Job Seekers and Workforce Professionals in Michigan By Christopher J. O'Leary; Salomon Orellana; Kevin Doyle; Randall W. Eberts; Ben Damerow; Amy Myers; Kenneth Kline; Anna Wilcoxson; Beth C. Truesdale; Scott Powell
  11. Grads on the Go: Measuring College-Specific Labor Markets for Graduates By Jonathan G. Conzelmann; Steven W. Hemelt; Brad J. Hershbein; Shawn M. Martin; Andrew Simon; Kevin M. Stange
  12. Short-time Work during the COVID-19 Crisis: Lessons learned By Fitzenberger, Bernd; Walwei, Ulrich
  13. Capital Markets, Temporary Migration and Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Bangladesh By Bossavie, Laurent; Goerlach, Joseph-Simon; Özden, Çağlar; Wang, He
  14. States of Opportunity for Youth Aging Out of Foster Care By Alexa Prettyman
  15. Residential Segregation at Physical Neighborhood Boundaries By Kenneth Whaley
  16. Dealing With Imperfect Randomization: Inference for the Highscope Perry Preschool Program By Heckman, James J.; Pinto, Rodrigo; Shaikh, Azeem M.

  1. By: Philippe, Arnaud (University of Bristol); Skandalis, Daphné (University of Copenhagen)
    Abstract: Why do women experience a persistent drop in labor earnings upon becoming mothers, i.e. a "child penalty"? We study a new mechanism: search frictions. We analyze data on job applications sent on a popular online platform linked with administrative data for 350, 000 involuntarily unemployed workers in France. First, we highlight differences in job search behavior between mothers and similar women with no children. Mothers send 12.2% fewer job applications and are more selective regarding wage and non-wage amenities. Consistently, they have a lower job finding rate. Second, we analyze the exact time when applications are sent and highlight differences in the timing of job search. We find that mothers' rate of applications decreases by 20.3% in the hours and days when there is no school. We also show that mothers responded to a reform that introduced school on Wednesday by smoothing their search across weekdays and narrowing their search timing gap with other women. In a simple search model, we show that our results imply that mothers both face lower incentives and higher costs to search. We conclude that search frictions disproportionately prevent mothers from improving their labor market situation and contribute to the child penalty.
    Keywords: job search, gender inequality, time allocation, child penalty
    JEL: J16 J22 J64
    Date: 2023–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16669&r=lab
  2. By: Kaas, Leo (Goethe University Frankfurt); Lalé, Etienne (York University, Canada); Siassi, Nawid (University of Konstanz)
    Abstract: This paper develops a macroeconomic model that combines an incomplete-markets overlapping-generations economy with a job ladder featuring sequential wage bargaining, endogenous search effort of employed and non-employed workers, and differences in match quality. The calibrated model offers a good fit to the empirical age profiles of search activity, job-finding rates, wages and savings, so that we use the model to examine the role of age and wealth for worker flows and for the consequences of job loss. We further analyze the impact of unemployment insurance and progressive taxation for labor market dynamics and aggregate economic activity via capital, employment and labor efficiency channels. Lower unemployment benefits or a less progressive tax schedule bring about welfare losses for a newborn worker household.
    Keywords: search and matching, job-to-job transitions, incomplete markets, overlapping generations, wealth accumulation
    JEL: E21 E24 H24 J64 J65
    Date: 2023–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16664&r=lab
  3. By: Chiswick, Barry R. (George Washington University)
    Abstract: This paper is a review of the literature in economics up to the early 1980s on the issue of estimating the earnings return to schooling and labor market experience. It begins with a presentation of Adam Smith's (1776) analysis of wage determination, with the second of his five points on compensating wage differentials being "the easiness or cheapness, or the difficulty and expense" of acquiring skills. It then proceeds to the analysis by Walsh (1935) estimating the net present value of investments at various levels of educational attainment. Friedman and Kuznets (1945) also used the net present value method to study the earnings in five independent professional practices. Based on the net present value technique, Becker (1964) estimates internal rates of return from high school and college/university schooling, primarily for native-born white men, but also for other demographic groups. The first regression-based approach is the development of the schooling-earnings function by Becker and Chiswick (1966), which relates the logarithm of earnings, as a linear function of years invested in human capital, with the application to years of schooling. This was expanded by Mincer (1974) to the "human capital earnings function" (HCEF), which added years of post-school labor market experience. Attractive features of the HCEF are discussed. Extensions of the HCEF in the 1970s and early 1980s account for interrupted labor marker experience, geographic mobility, and self-employment and unpaid family workers.
    Keywords: human capital, schooling earnings function, human capital earnings function, schooling, labor market experience, women, immigrants, less developed countries, self-employed, unpaid workers
    JEL: I24 I26 J3 J46 J61 O15 B29
    Date: 2023–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16668&r=lab
  4. By: Riukula, Krista
    Abstract: Abstract Do economic shocks experienced in childhood carry on to the fertility outcomes in adulthood and if they do, how? Using plant closures from the years 1991–1993 in Finland, I find that maternal and paternal job loss have asymmetric effects on children’s fertility outcomes. Maternal job loss increases the probability of a son becoming a parent, while paternal job loss decreases it. For paternal job loss, I find negative effects on son’s other outcomes, such as having a spouse, earnings, and employment which might drive the effects on their fertility outcomes. Instead, maternal job loss has no effect on son’s other outcomes. Hence, fertility might be affected through other channels such as changes in parent-child relationship quality. For daughters, I find effects on timing; they have children earlier due to maternal job loss and later due to paternal job loss. There are no effects on daughters’ other outcomes suggesting that the effects on fertility outcomes might work through other channels. The results might be best interpreted in terms of spousal roles; mothers might shift more energy towards their role as a caregiver, while paternal job loss can be more stressful if the father fails to fulfill his role as a breadwinner.
    Keywords: Job loss, Fertility, Childhood shocks
    JEL: J13 J63
    Date: 2024–01–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rif:wpaper:112&r=lab
  5. By: Vega, Alejandro (Department of Economics, Umeå University)
    Abstract: Paper [1] analyzes how labor force participation changes in response to major health shocks, such as new cancer diagnoses, heart attacks, and strokes, in middle-aged to elderly Mexican couples, and how the spouses interact in their responses to these shocks. The data originates from the Mexican Health and Aging Study and provides information on how couples coordinate their labor market activities in response to major health shocks. The results show that women’s labor force participation is negatively affected by a major health shock to their husbands. In contrast, men’s labor force participation does not change significantly in response to a major health shock to their wives. <p> Paper [2] focuses on the correlation between negative health shocks and the households’ share of wealth held in risky assets. By using U.S. data from the Health and Retirement Study, we try to establish a link between negative health shocks and financial outcomes such as the household’s probability of owning risky assets and the share of risky assets held. We define a recent negative health shock to include cancer or malignant tumor diagnoses, stroke or transient ischemic attack, heart attack, coronary heart disease, angina, congestive heart failure, or other heart problems. We find that both the probability of owning risky assets, and the share of risky assets, are significantly lower among households where the women has experienced a negative health shock. In contrast, neither the probability of owning risky assets nor the share of risky assets held by the household are significantly associated with a negative health shock to the man. <p> Paper [3] investigates whether job loss can cause symptoms of depression in later life. We focus on couples aged 50 or older. We use data from the Health and Retirement Study, which provides longitudinal information about changes in labor market status and mental health outcomes among respondents and their spouses in the United States. To deal with potential reverse causality problems, we utilize data on job loss resulting from business closures. We find that job loss can lead to depressive symptoms for the affected individual’s partner. The effects are gendered, as women are negatively affected by job losses experienced by their husbands, but we do not observe such harmful effects among men whose wives lose their jobs. We also show how the effects of job loss vary across couples with differing levels of economic resources and health care needs, as well as differential access to health care. <p> Paper [4] estimates the labor supply response to an increase in the marginal wage rate among middle-aged to elderly Mexican women. Using data from the National Survey of Occupation and Employment, I find that an increase in the marginal wage rate is associated with an increase in worked hours. The results suggest that the marginal wage rate elasticities are larger for older women than for their younger counterparts.
    Keywords: Labor force participation; labor supply; health status; financial risk-taking; gender differences; job loss
    JEL: G11 G50 I10 J01
    Date: 2023–12–26
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:umnees:1018&r=lab
  6. By: Filip Pertold; Sofiana Sinani; Michal Šoltés
    Abstract: The child penalty explains the majority of gender employment and wage gaps; however, less is known about the factors driving the child penalty itself. In this paper, we study the gender gap in childcare preferences as a potential factor that contributes to the child penalty. We surveyed Czech parents and elicited the minimal compensation they would require to stay home to care for a child. Mothers require less compensation for childcare than fathers. The estimated gender gap in childcare preferences is CZK 2, 500 monthly, 7.6% of the median female wage, and cannot be explained by differences in labor market opportunities or prosocial motives to care for a family member. We further document widespread misperception of fathers’ preferences, as respondents incorrectly expect fathers to require less to care for a child than to care for an elderly parent.
    Date: 2023–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cer:papers:wp770&r=lab
  7. By: Agostina Brinatti; Xing Guo
    Abstract: We study how the effects of U.S. restrictions on skilled immigration affect the Canadian economy and American workers’ welfare. In 2017, the United States implemented a policy that tightened the eligibility criteria for U.S. visas. This was followed immediately by a trend break in the number of skilled immigrant admissions to Canada. We use quasi-experimental variation introduced by this policy over time and across immigrant groups, along with U.S. and Canadian visa applications data, to show that in 2018 visa applications for moving to Canada increased by 30% relative to the period before the restrictions were imposed. We then study how the restrictions affected Canadian firms. We use comprehensive Canadian administrative databases containing the universe of employer-employee linked records, immigration records, and international trade data. We find that Canadian firms that were relatively more exposed to the inflow of immigrants increased production, exports, and employment of Canadian workers. Finally, we study the policy’s impact on American workers by incorporating immigration policy into a multi-sector international trade model. With international trade, the increase in immigration to other countries due to the restrictions affects American wages through U.S. exports and consumption prices. We calibrate the model using our novel data and reduced-form estimates. We find that the welfare gains for American workers targeted for protection by the 2017 policy are up to 25% larger in a closed economy than they are in an open economy with the observed trade levels.
    Keywords: International topics; Labour markets; Recent economic and financial developments; Trade integration
    JEL: F16 F22 J61
    Date: 2023–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bca:bocawp:23-60&r=lab
  8. By: Michelle Hansch (HU Berlin); Jan Nimczik (ESMT, RFBerlin, IAB, IZA); Alexandra Spitz-Oener (HU Berlin, RFBerlin, IAB, IZA)
    Abstract: In a context where improved employment outcomes entail relocating to a new destination, how does information from former coworkers alter workers’ labor migration decisions? We explore this question using the unique backdrop of German reunification in the early 1990s. For former workers of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), improving employment outcomes typically meant relocating to West Germany, which most were reluctant to do. We show that information from former GDR coworkers in West Germany significantly increased the employment probability of East Germans in West Germany. To identify these network effects, we document and exploit that GDR workers were as-good-as randomly assigned to networks by the GDR system from the perspective of the West German market economy. We then establish that the networks only trigger migration responses among East Germans whose contacts had positive work experiences in the West and were similar in their earnings potential in the market-based economy of reunified Germany. These contacts, in essence, serve as role models for the workers’ prospects in the West, leading workers to trust the advice and assessments provided and ultimately altering the expected benefits from labor migration for the specific worker.
    Date: 2024–01–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rco:dpaper:490&r=lab
  9. By: García-Morán, Eva; Kuehn, Zoe
    Abstract: Part time jobs facilitate the conciliation of work and family life. But they entail reduced returns to experience and translate into lower own income in case of divorce. Given non-trivial divorce risks, why do married women work so little? Using micro data for Germany, we show married mothers' market hours (hours dedicated to housework) to be positively (negatively) related to separations. We then propose a dynamic life-cycle model of mothers' labor force participation, home production, and endogenous divorce which we calibrate to German data. Making divorce exogenous or ruling out divorce leads to an overestimation of the share of married mothers working full time and an underestimation of their housework and child care time, particularly among medium and highly educated women. Carrying out three policy experiments (increasing alimony, eliminating joint taxation, subsidizing child care) we highlight how couples' considerations of divorce risks condition the effects of such policies on married mothers' market hours.
    Keywords: female labor force participation, home production, divorce
    JEL: H42 J12 J13 J22
    Date: 2023–12–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:119324&r=lab
  10. By: Christopher J. O'Leary (W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research); Salomon Orellana (Michigan Center for Data and Analytics); Kevin Doyle (Michigan Center for Data and Analytics); Randall W. Eberts (W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research); Ben Damerow (W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research); Amy Myers (W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research); Kenneth Kline (W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research); Anna Wilcoxson (Michigan Center for Data and Analytics); Beth C. Truesdale (W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research); Scott Powell (Michigan Center for Data and Analytics)
    Abstract: Career Explorer provides customized career exploration tools for workforce development staff and job seekers in Michigan. There are separate Career Explorer modules for mediated staff services and self-service by job seekers. The system was developed by the Michigan Center for Data and Analytics in collaboration with the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research and Michigan Works! Southwest. It was funded by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Workforce Investment and the Schmidt Futures foundation’s Data for the American Dream (D4AD) project. In this paper, we describe specifications of the models behind the frontline-staff-mediated version of Career Explorer, which are based on program administrative data, applying data-science methods for predictive analytics. We also describe the self-service Career Explorer, which provides customized labor market information based on published Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Career Explorer became an active feature of Michigan’s online reemployment-services system in June 2021.
    Keywords: dislocated workers, disadvantaged adults, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), labor market information, career exploration, reemployment services, occupational choice, occupational mix of employment, industrial mix of employment, workforce areas
    JEL: J65 J68 H76
    Date: 2023–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:upj:weupjo:23-391&r=lab
  11. By: Jonathan G. Conzelmann (The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill); Steven W. Hemelt (The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill); Brad J. Hershbein (W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research); Shawn M. Martin (University of Michigan); Andrew Simon (The University of Chicago and Australian National University Research School of Economics); Kevin M. Stange (University of Michigan)
    Abstract: This paper introduces a new measure of the labor markets served by colleges and universities across the United States. About 50 percent of recent college graduates are living and working in the metro area nearest the institution they attended, with this figure climbing to 67 percent in-state. The geographic dispersion of alumni is more than twice as great for highly selective 4-year institutions as for 2-year institutions. However, more than one-quarter of 2-year institutions disperse alumni more diversely than the average public 4-year institution. In one application of these data, we find that the average strength of the labor market to which a college sends its graduates predicts college-specific intergenerational economic mobility. In a second application, we quantify the extent of “brain drain” across areas and illustrate the importance of considering migration patterns of college graduates when estimating the social return on public investment in higher education.
    Keywords: colleges, labor markets, postsecondary education, economic mobility
    JEL: I23 I25 J21 J40 J61
    Date: 2023–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:upj:weupjo:23-393&r=lab
  12. By: Fitzenberger, Bernd (Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Nuremberg, Germany ; FAU); Walwei, Ulrich (Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Nuremberg, Germany ; Univ. Regensburg)
    Abstract: "During the COVID-19 crisis, the use of short-time work in Germany reached unprecedented levels, as during the financial crisis of 2008/2009, proving its usefulness as key rescue measure for the labour market. Quickly after the start of the crisis, the German government had considerably eased the conditions for firms and employees to receive short-time working benefits, extending the maximum entitlement period during which the benefits could be drawn and granting higher benefit levels after longer benefit receipt. In light of the high level of economic uncertainty, particularly at the beginning of the crisis, this gave firms a greater planning security with regard to their staff. Despite a rapid decline in short-time working as early as summer 2020, use remained at a historically high level up to the year 2022, after a second temporary peak in winter 2020/21. Germany was no exception among OECD countries in its heavy use of job retention schemes. Elsewhere, government measures to safeguard employment were also implemented on an unprecedented scale during the crisis. The German model of short-time work has served as a role model for many countries, since the financial crisis at the latest. The measures used internationally range from classic short-time work to wage subsidies, subsidies for periods of leave and bans on dismissals in times of crisis. However, some countries primarily relied on income transfers to employees. In addition, business aid programs played a major role in stabilizing firms. At the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, the use of job retention schemes in Germany was rather below average compared with other countries, but it declined much more slowly than in most other countries. This was partly due to the fact that in many countries, force majeure measures were activated on a large scale at the beginning of the crisis, and these measures often expired in 2020 or 2021 at the latest, i.e., at a time when the economic recovery was on its way faster than previously expected. This research report investigates the development of the use of short-time work in Germany and compares it with the use of employment stabilization measures in the US, Australia, France, Italy, and Spain. The stabilizing effect of short-time work was also evident in the European countries considered here, France, Italy, and Spain. These countries made it even easier to use short-time work. It is noteworthy that with the strong use of short-time work Spain, for example, succeeded for the first time in noticeably mitigating the effects of a GDP decline on employment, while a comparable effect of securing employment was not observed in the USA key reason for this is probably that the U.S. short-time work program - not applied in all states - could not be scaled up in the same way as in Europe. In contrast, Australia succeeded in securing employment with an alternative to short-time work, namely a wage subsidy. The use of short-time work in Germany was made easier because it was possible to build on an established instrument and the experience gained with it during the economic and financial crisis. Irrespective of this, the use of short-time work on a massive scale by local standards has reached its administrative limits, particularly concerning the high degree of flexibility in the amount of possible work loss of individual workers compensated for and the multi-stage procedure for applying for and settling short-time work. In contrast to Germany, countries such as France, Italy and Spain referred to force majeure when relaxing their regulations in the context of the COVID-19 crisis. The enormous use of wage subsidies in Australia was the response to the severe consequences of the crisis. There are opportunities and risks associated with declaring such an exceptional situation. If access rules are strongly simplified and benefits made more generous in such a situation, the likelihood of heavy use increases. The goal of stabilizing employment and the economy in the short term can thus be achieved more easily. At the same time, however, the risk of unintended negative incentive effects, such as windfall gains, which have been observed in Italy and France and especially in Australia, increases. The research report also discusses lessons from the international comparison for the debate in Germany. Basically, in times of a severe economic crisis, countries face the difficult trade-off between (desirable) stabilization effects on the one hand and (undesirable) efficiency losses on the other. The main possible disincentive effects are free riding and the risk of maintaining non-viable firms and slowing down reallocation processes to new, promising fields of business activity. As the international comparison shows, there are three approaches to limiting or compensating for disincentives: Appropriate exit scenarios, suitable models of co-financing by firms, and incentives to strengthen the transformation of the economy. To take account of the cost efficiency of short-time work, the OECD favours co-financing by firms, the argument being that a long use of short-term work can slow down economic transformation processes. Whether and to what extent this has actually happened cannot be ascertained for the various countries based on what is known so far. The descriptive evidence for Germany shows that long periods of use were only observed for a very small proportion of firms. In order to reduce disincentives for long use, incentives to end short-time work could be introduced. One possibility is the introduction of an "experience rating" scheme. Firms that use short-time work to a large extent and for a long time during difficult times would have to know in advance that they would then have to make repayments or pay higher contributions in normal times. The revenues could then serve as a reserve for future crises. Similar arrangements exist in Italy and under the short-time work program which is part of the U.S. unemployment insurance system. In order to further counteract an inappropriate preservation of business models through short-time work, the scheme could be used to an even greater extent to support structural change by means of appropriate supplements. Some countries (especially France and Spain) were more successful than Germany in combining short-time work with training. Spain is of particular interest in this context because, in addition to training, incentives were introduced to encourage workers to leave short-time work by fostering mobility at an inter-company level. Finally, especially in times of severe crises, the use of short-time work must take into account distributional issues. As an insurance benefit, short-time work in Germany, like unemployment benefits, is subject to the equivalence principle and is restricted to employees subject to social insurance contributions; mini-jobbers and the self-employed are not covered by it. In the U.S., for example, the existing short-time work program, which was only used to a limited extent, was extended to the self-employed. If in severe and protracted crises special regulations are used that aim to increase wage replacement rates, one could consider, instead of increasing rates over the course of the reference period (as has been done in Germany), focussing on increasing wage replacement rates for workers with low incomes, similar to the case of France. In the absence of insurance coverage, as in the case of the self-employed and mini-jobbers, appropriate income support schemes to compensate for hardship should be considered in the event of a severe crisis, similar to what has been done in the U.S.. In Germany, this was done, for example, through simplified access to basic benefits or, most recently, through subsidies in the context of the energy crisis." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))
    Keywords: Australien ; Bundesrepublik Deutschland ; Frankreich ; Italien ; Spanien ; USA ; Pandemie ; IAB-Open-Access-Publikation ; Beschäftigungseffekte ; Beschäftigungsentwicklung ; Finanzkrise ; Inanspruchnahme ; internationaler Vergleich ; Krisenmanagement ; Kurzarbeit ; Kurzarbeitergeld ; Lohnsubvention ; Rezession ; Wirtschaftskrise ; Arbeitsplatzsicherung ; 2008-2022
    Date: 2023–10–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iab:iabfob:202305(en)&r=lab
  13. By: Bossavie, Laurent (World Bank); Goerlach, Joseph-Simon (Bocconi University); Özden, Çağlar (World Bank); Wang, He (World Bank)
    Abstract: This paper examines international temporary migration as an intermediary step among aspiring entrepreneurs to accumulate the needed capital when they face credit constraints at home. The analysis is based on a representative dataset of lifetime employment histories of return migrants from Bangladesh. After establishing the credit constraints that potential entrepreneurs face, the paper shows that non-agricultural self-employment rates are significantly higher among returning migrants – over half versus around 20% of non-migrants. Most migrants transition into self-employment by using their savings from abroad as the main source of financing. The paper then offers, for the first time, a detailed account of the financial costs and benefits of international migration. Our findings suggest that temporary migration can contribute to structural transformation of lower-income countries by enabling credit-constrained workers to enter into non-agricultural entrepreneurship.
    Keywords: temporary migration, credit constraints, risky investment, entrepreneurship
    JEL: J61 O15
    Date: 2023–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16662&r=lab
  14. By: Alexa Prettyman (Department of Economics, Towson University)
    Abstract: Over 20, 000 youth age out of foster care each year in the United States facing various hardships. Research demonstrates that extended foster care beneficially impacts youth aging out of care; however, it is less clear which states assist these youth. This descriptive paper explores which states effectively assist foster youth aging out of care. I use the National Youth in Transition Database and a value-added model to determine state effectiveness across a variety of outcomes, including college enrollment, employment, homelessness, incarceration, substance abuse, and parenthood. I find that there is considerable variation in state effectiveness depending on the outcome.
    Keywords: Foster youth, Extended foster care, Transition to adulthood, Value-added model.
    JEL: I38 J13
    Date: 2024–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tow:wpaper:2024-01&r=lab
  15. By: Kenneth Whaley (South Florida)
    Abstract: Physical boundaries delineate neighborhoods and are distinguishable from administrative boundaries like school districts and county lines. This paper sheds light on historic railroad placement as a predictor of contemporary segregation by employing a digitized map of Texas railroads circa 1911 to compare census block groups separated by train tracks today. Using a boundary discontinuity design, I first document an unconditional house price premium of 21% to live on the high income side of the tracks. Exploiting distinct variation in race and income demographics at railroad boundaries, I obtain hedonic estimates of the price premium for white population share and income composition. Conditional on differences in school quality and access to private consumption amenities, households are willing to pay up to 16% of home price for the race and income composition available on the high income side of the tracks.
    JEL: R23 J15 O18
    Date: 2024–02
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:usf:wpaper:2024-02&r=lab
  16. By: Heckman, James J. (University of Chicago); Pinto, Rodrigo (University of California, Los Angeles); Shaikh, Azeem M. (University of Chicago)
    Abstract: This paper considers the problem of making inferences about the effects of a program on multiple outcomes when the assignment of treatment status is imperfectly randomized. By imperfect randomization we mean that treatment status is reassigned after an initial randomization on the basis of characteristics that may be observed or unobserved by the analyst. We develop a partial identification approach to this problem that makes use of information limiting the extent to which randomization is imperfect to show that it is still possible to make nontrivial inferences about the effects of the program in such settings. We consider a family of null hypotheses in which each null hypothesis species that the program has no effect on one of many outcomes of interest. Under weak assumptions, we construct a procedure for testing this family of null hypotheses in a way that controls the familywise error rate – the probability of even one false rejection – in finite samples. We develop our methodology in the context of a reanalysis of the HighScope Perry Preschool program. We find statistically signicant effects of the program on a number of different outcomes of interest, including outcomes related to criminal activity for males and females, even after accounting for imperfections in the randomization and the multiplicity of null hypotheses.
    Keywords: exact inference, experiments, familywise error rate, imperfect randomization, multiple testing, multiple outcomes, permutation tests, Perry Preschool Program, program evaluation
    JEL: C31 I21 J13
    Date: 2023–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16675&r=lab

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