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on Labour Economics |
| By: | Jocelyn Wikle; Riley Wilson |
| Abstract: | Over the last 70 years, there has been a dramatic increase in female labor supply. However, gender gaps in employment trajectories remain, in part because the role of childrearing has largely fallen upon women. Providing more publicly funded childcare could relax these constraints, which may have ramifications for mothers' labor supply decisions over time. We examine the dynamic effects of gaining childcare access earlier on mothers' labor supply. Using a regression discontinuity in kindergarten eligibility cutoffs for nearly 7.5 million U.S. mothers, we estimate how gaining access to childcare, through public school, one year earlier affects maternal employment over time. Enrolling a child in school one year earlier increases annual maternal employment by 2.2 percentage points, and the effect persists for two years, even though children born after the eligibility cutoff gain similar access the next year. However, employment effects eventually fade out, highlighting the limited role publicly-provided childcare plays in closing long-term gender gaps. We show that mothers take on additional family management responsibilities after childbirth, and these responsibilities are not relaxed by gaining childcare access. Moving childcare access earlier will not necessarily close gender gaps in employment as mothers still face these additional constraints. |
| Keywords: | maternal labor supply, public school, kindergarten |
| JEL: | H75 I28 J13 J16 J22 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12727 |
| By: | Laliberté, Jean-William (University of Calgary); Whalley, Alexander (University of Calgary) |
| Abstract: | We use matched parent-child-employer-employee data from Canada, linked to detailed educational records, to quantify the contribution of social connections to employers to intergenerational income mobility. Sorting across employers accounts for roughly a third of the transmission of income across generations. To estimate the impact of social connections on differential representation across employers, we compare classmates -- those with the same degree from the same institution -- who have different social connections. We find social connections in the labor market explain about 15% of the firm-sorting component of the intergenerational income rank-rank relationship, about a third the explanatory power of education. |
| Keywords: | social connections, intergenerational mobility |
| JEL: | J62 J31 J24 L25 E24 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18691 |
| By: | Christiane Szerman; Lukas Althoff |
| Abstract: | The World War II GI Bill was the largest education subsidy in US history and a cornerstone of the postwar US transition to a knowledge economy. Although formally race-blind, the program's decentralized administration left implementation to local officials and segregated institutions, with sharply different consequences for Black and white veterans. This paper quantifies the GI Bill's impact on Black and white Americans' economic outcomes across two generations, using a regression discontinuity around WWII service eligibility cutoffs and a new data linkage from veterans in the 1940 and 1950 censuses to their sons' neighborhood outcomes between 1990 and 2025. The GI Bill widened racial inequality, doubling white veterans' college completion while steering Black veterans into often-fraudulent vocational programs with no earnings returns. The disparities persisted across generations, increasing the white-Black gap in sons' adult-neighborhood outcomes, including a 5-percentage-point (47 percent) widening of the racial college gap. Unequal returns to the same eligibility account for the intergenerational gap, with no contribution from prewar differences in socioeconomic status or geography. In sum, access to the GI Bill was not nearly the same economic opportunity for Black Americans as it was for white Americans, highlighting that race-blind policy does not guarantee racial equality. |
| Keywords: | Racial Inequality; Intergenerational Mobility; Race-Blind Policy; Discrimination; Education |
| JEL: | I24 I38 J15 J62 J71 |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26163 |
| By: | Fernanda Rojas-Ampuero; Felipe Carrera |
| Abstract: | We examine the difference between two policies that target urban slums, relocation versus redevelopment on-site, on children’s future outcomes. We use evidence from a slum clearance program in Chile between 1979 and 1984, where two-thirds of slum-dwelling families were relocated to housing projects on the city’s periphery, and one-third received housing through on-site redevelopment at their original locations. We find that 40 years post-policy, displaced children receive 0.62 fewer years of schooling, earn 10.2% less, experience higher labor informality, and live in higher poverty areas compared to non-displaced children. Relocation to lower-opportunity areas and disruption of social networks explain the negative displacement effects. |
| JEL: | H75 I38 J13 N36 O18 R23 |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35318 |
| By: | Battiston, Diego (University of Edinburgh and CEP); Maurer, Stephan (UPF Barcelona School of Management, CEP, IZA@LISER, and Cluster of Excellence "Politics of Inequality"); Potlogea, Andrei (University of Edinburgh); Rodríguez Mora, José (CUNEF Universidad, University of Edinburgh, and CEPR) |
| Abstract: | The strong evidence in support of the Great Gatsby Curve (i.e. the negative cross-sectional relationship between intergenerational mobility and inequality) seems to be at odds with the fact that large increases in inequality in the US have not resulted in decreases in mobility. We tackle this puzzle by measuring a dynamic version of the “Great Gatsby Curve†that relates changes in inequality to changes in intergenerational income mobility. We find that across US counties and during the last century the relationship is weak and unstable over relatively short intervals of two decades, but negative and significant over a longer period of almost a century. The historical record suggests that if the large increase of inequality observed in the US does not reverse, this may result in substantially lower socioeconomic mobility in the long term, even if mobility has not decreased yet. |
| Keywords: | intergenerational mobility, inequality, Great Gatsby Curve |
| JEL: | J62 N12 N52 R11 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18679 |
| By: | Huebener, Mathias (Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB)); Mahlbacher, Malin (Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB)); Schmitz, Sophia (Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB)) |
| Abstract: | We study how expansions of publicly subsidized childcare affect the intra-household allocation of labor supply in early childhood, with a particular focus on fathers. Exploiting variation in the roll-out of childcare places for children under three across German counties, we show that increased availability accelerates childcare entry and maternal return to work. Fathers also adjust their labor supply: they take more parental leave and subsequently reduce full-time work, yet without significantly increasing weekday caregiving. These findings imply that childcare policies can reshape labor supply within households, leading to smaller aggregate labor supply effects than suggested by maternal responses alone. |
| Keywords: | public childcare, family policies, parental leave, paternal labor supply |
| JEL: | J13 J16 J18 J22 D13 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18696 |
| By: | Ahmet Gulek; Christina Langer |
| Abstract: | We study the effect of the post-COVID expansion of remote work on the child penalty. Our empirical design proceeds in three steps: using pseudo-panels to estimate child penalties across occupations, exploiting cross-occupational variation in remote work adoption, and using synthetic controls to adjust for differential pre-COVID trajectories. Remote work reduces the hours penalty for mothers: each percentage point increase in an occupation's remote work share raises mothers' hours worked by 0.23%, eliminating one-sixth of the baseline motherhood penalty for the average remote occupation. We find no effects on employment, income, or wages for mothers, and no average effects on men. |
| Keywords: | Working from Home, Child Penalty, Gender Inequality |
| JEL: | J13 J16 J22 J31 |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26162 |
| By: | Hu, Yan (Copenhagen Business School); Maurer, Stephan (UPF Barcelona School of Management) |
| Abstract: | Do minorities benefit from social networks? In this paper, we study this question using the historical example of China’s first modern bureaucratic organization, the Chinese Maritime Customs Service. Drawing on newly digitized personnel records from 1876-1911, we first show that the Chinese clerks employed by the service were predominantly Cantonese. Using the plausibly exogenous transfers of clerks across stations, we then estimate that a non-Cantonese (minority) clerk benefited significantly from meeting at least one colleague from his same province and dialect. Such connections led to faster promotion and a 5.6% salary increase, with even stronger effects when meeting a clerk who was either senior or of high quality. |
| Keywords: | Chinese Maritime Customs Service, social connections, wages, promotion, minorities |
| JEL: | J15 J31 J45 N35 N75 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18689 |
| By: | Alice Chong (Graduate School of Economics, Waseda University, and Waseda Institute of Social & Human Capital Studies(WISH)); Hiroyuki Motegi (National Institute of Population and Social Security Research); Masato Oikawa (Faculty of Education and Integrated Arts and Sciences, Waseda University, and Waseda Institute of Social & Human Capital Studies (WISH)); Takumi Toyono (Waseda Institute of Social & Human Capital Studies (WISH)); Haruko Noguchi (Faculty of Political Science and Economics, Waseda University, and Waseda Institute of Social & Human Capital Studies (WISH)) |
| Abstract: | We provide causal evidence on whether working from home (WFH) enables workers to balance employment and eldercare, and how formal care infrastructure and gender norms shape this relationship. Exploiting Japan’s COVID-19-induced remote work expansion, we find striking heterogeneity: WFH increases caregiving among part-time workers with positive health effects, but among full-time employees, only women increase caregiving — and their health deteriorates. Greater formal care availability and progressive gender norms substantially attenuate these effects. Realizing the work-care balance benefits of workplace flexibility requires complementary investments in care infrastructure and progress toward gender equality. |
| Keywords: | working from home, informal caregiving, work-care balance, gender norms, long-term care, double burden, difference-in-differences (DID) |
| JEL: | I10 J14 J20 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wap:wpaper:2601 |
| By: | Philipp Ager; Davide M. Coluccia |
| Abstract: | This paper provides novel evidence on how technological change shaped women’s labor market participation, fertility, and marriage in 19th-century Massachusetts. We distin guish between the sewing machine’s dual role as a manufacturing technology and as a household appliance. Using rich town- and individual-level longitudinal data, we show that this innovation induced divergent responses across the wealth distribution. Women from lower-wealth households increased labor supply, delaying marriage and reducing fertility. In contrast, for wealthierwomen, thesewingmachinefunctionedasadomesticef ficiency tool, enabling earlier family formation and greater civic engagement while reducing market work. Ourfindings demonstrate how household constraints and social norms mediate the effects of labor-saving technologies, suggesting that technological progress can reinforce inequality by influencing women’s economic and social roles. |
| Keywords: | Technology, Gender, Female Labor Force Participation, Fertility. |
| JEL: | J13 J16 N31 N61 O33 |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2025_761 |
| By: | Michael A. Clemens; Amy M. Nice; Natalia Rigol |
| Abstract: | Legalizing work by asylum seekers is politically contested. Many states view work permits as a necessary expedient for self-reliance. Others limit or ban asylum seekers' labor, citing concerns about labor-market competition for natives, fiscal drain, and ‘magnet' effects on subsequent asylum inflows. Empirical tests of these effects are numerous in Europe, rare in the United States. We use full-universe anonymized court records that precisely locate asylum applicants' residences to test the effects of the post-2021 surge in asylum-seeker arrivals on native labor-market outcomes, and on fiscal and economic-growth indicators at the local level. Using a nationality-based shift-share instrument across commuting zones, we find that an asylum-seeker inflow equal to 1% of local population raises incumbent employment by 2.8 percentage points, wages by 6.3%, and local real GDP by approximately 5.5%, while reducing unemployment and means-tested public-benefit reliance. The result is consistent with asylum seekers' labor acting as a strong complement to native labor and native capital in the production process due to task specialization. It is also in line with independent estimates of macroeconomic impacts from general-equilibrium models. We find no relationship between major changes in the number of asylum applications (past collapses and recent surges alike) and changes in US employment-authorization policy for asylum seekers. The evidence supports a substantial stimulus to local economies from asylum seekers' labor, and shows no important role for formal work authorization in asylum seekers' migration decisions. |
| Keywords: | immigration, asylum, forced, economic, impact, employment, irregular |
| JEL: | J61 J15 R23 H53 K37 |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26169 |
| By: | Naoki Aizawa; Hanming Fang; Katsuhiro Komatsu |
| Abstract: | We study the labor market impacts of unions by accounting for their effects on employers' insurance provision and examine how social insurance policies, in turn, affect unionization and labor market outcomes. We document that unions increase employer-sponsored insurance provision and that expansions in social insurance reduce unionization in the United States. We then develop and estimate an equilibrium labor search model where unionization, wages, and non-wage benefits are endogenously determined. We demonstrate that unionization, as well as the threat of unionization, increases employer-sponsored insurance provision in both unionized and nonunionized firms. We find that social insurance policies can affect labor market inequality through (de)unionization, and inequality may increase or decrease depending on how social insurance is targeted. Social insurance expansions, along with technological changes, contribute to the long-term decline of unions in the U.S. in the last fifty years. Although historical deunionization driven by these forces increased overall welfare, we find that subsidizing unions in the current economy can improve welfare. |
| Keywords: | Labor unions; Non-wage benefits; Employer-provided insurance; Social insurance; Technological change |
| JEL: | J42 J51 J52 I13 |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26167 |
| By: | Taiyo FUKAI; Hiromi HARA |
| Abstract: | This paper provides causal evidence that firms act as important intermediaries in the implementation of social policy. In 2005, Japan introduced a policy requiring large firms to develop action plans to establish or expand their company-specific childcare programs. Using pooled repeated cross-sectional survey data with retrospective fertility and employment histories and a Difference-in-Differences (DD) framework, we estimate the policy's impact on working mothers. The results show significant increases in the uptake of maternity and parental leave and improvements in post-birth employment outcomes, with mothers more likely to remain employed and to return as regular employees after the birth of their first child. However, we do not find robust evidence that the policy affected higher-order fertility. These results highlight the importance of firms as institutional channels for implementing family-friendly policies, while also suggesting that workplace-based measures alone may be insufficient to influence fertility behavior and address Japan’s broader demographic challenges. |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eti:dpaper:26050 |
| By: | Alam, Afroza; Diegmann, André |
| Abstract: | This paper provides new causal evidence on how patent allowances affect firms and their employees based on quasi-random assignment of patent applications to examiners. Exploiting employer-employee records with newly linked German firm data and web-scraped patent documents, we show that patent-induced shocks reduce firm exit, improve productivity, and increase wages, with rent-sharing elasticities between 0.10 and 0.21. Wage gains are broadly observed across occupational tasks, with high heterogeneity: managers benefit disproportionately in publicly traded firms, whereas broader wage increases accrue to workers in non-traded firms. Our findings highlight the role of institutional features and firm organization in shaping how rents are shared. |
| Keywords: | firm performance, innovation, rent sharing, worker compensation |
| JEL: | D22 J31 O31 O34 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:iwhdps:341391 |
| By: | Kochems, Johannes; Schmidhäuser, Jakob |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the local economic impacts of troop deployments. We exploit variation from the historic large-scale US troop withdrawal from Germany triggered by the end of the Cold War, to estimate the effect on local labor markets and public finances. We use administrative data provided by the US Department of Defense to quantify the size of the troop withdrawal at the municipal level. Using a synthetic difference-in-differences estimator, we find negative effects on local labor markets: for each withdrawn US soldier, the number of local jobs decreases by 0.53. The decrease in economic activity results in a reduction of revenues which municipalities balance by lowering their expenditures, while increasing business and property tax multipliers. In individual-level analyses, we document that workers displaced by the closure of a US military base have persistently lower employment rates. Moreover, their daily wages remain around 9.2 percent lower fifteen years after the layoff. The negative impact on labor outcomes is particularly pronounced for women, older workers, and those employed in regions with more unfavorable initial labor market conditions. |
| Keywords: | military base closure, local labor markets, worker displacement, fiscal multipliers, spatial spillovers, public finance |
| JEL: | J21 J23 J63 H56 H71 H72 R11 R51 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:341412 |
| By: | Singhal, Karan (University of Luxembourg); Grabka, Markus (DIW Berlin); Sierminska, Eva (Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER)) |
| Abstract: | We study gender disparities in intergenerational wealth transfers in Germany over more than four decades, focusing on inheritances and inter vivos gifts. Using individual-level data from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we document persistent gaps: while women are in some cases more likely to report receiving an inheritance, men are more likely to receive gifts and obtain larger overall transfer amounts. These differences are not uniform. In West Germany, younger women face particularly large disadvantages in gifts, whereas no systematic gaps are observed in East Germany. We also show that transfers, particularly gifts, contribute to the gender wealth gap. Oaxaca–Blinder decompositions indicate that gifts account for a measurable share of the mean gap in 2019, and RIF decompositions re-veal that transfer amounts contribute to both explained and unexplained components across the wealth distribution. Despite gender-neutral inheritance law, our findings suggest that testamentary freedom and persistent social norms continue to generate unequal outcomes. Addressing these disparities is essential in preventing wealth transfers from reinforcing intergenerational and gender-based economic inequality. |
| Keywords: | inheritances, gift, gender, SOEP, wealth gap, RIF-regression |
| JEL: | D64 J16 |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18706 |
| By: | Zachary Ward |
| Abstract: | During the Age of Mass Migration, over forty percent of immigrants were women, yet most research focuses on men. Using linked 1900 and 1910 Census records, I show that economic assimilation patterns differed for men and women, and families assimilated at different rates than individuals. Immigrant families improved their relative income scores compared with US-born families, driven by reliance on multiple earners, particularly women’s and children’s labor. At the individual level, gaps between immigrant and US-born income scores were larger for women than men, and the gap for women barely changed even after twenty years of stay. |
| JEL: | J61 J62 N31 |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35332 |
| By: | Harrison H Li; Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz; David Yokum |
| Abstract: | Prolonged unemployment carries serious economic, health, and wellbeing costs. With federal support, most U.S. states now operate a Reemployment Services and Eligibility Assessment (RESEA) program to help Unemployment Insurance (UI) claimants return to work faster. We report results from a large (N = 23, 549) preregistered randomized controlled trial (RCT) evaluating Rhode Island's RESEA program from February 2022 to September 2023. We estimate that selection into the program increased annualized wages by \$1, 153, increased reemployment by 1.5 percentage points, and reduced UI duration by nearly two weeks. The vast majority of these wage and reemployment effects appeared within two quarters of claimants' first pay dates and persisted through at least the following year, and we estimate that each dollar spent on the program saved the state \$2.64. Using causal forests, a machine learning technique for estimating heterogeneous treatment effects (HTE), we also conduct an exploratory analysis to investigate if there are differential effects of selection into the RESEA program. We find that all participants experienced positive wage benefits from RESEA selection, with particularly large effects for older and lower-income workers. Finally, we improve upon prior RESEA evaluations by explicitly controlling for the week of treatment assignment -- a methodological refinement absent from several existing RCTs of job-training programs that is important to eliminate confounding bias. We also discuss ways to harvest precision gains from baseline covariate adjustment without introducing large-sample bias. |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2606.14621 |
| By: | Remy Levin; Daniela Vidart |
| Abstract: | Male labor force participation has declined steadily for 50 years in the United States. We show that one cause has been changes in men's beliefs about the returns to work, shaped by lifetime experiences of the aggregate male labor market. We find that experience effects on participation persist for men who move across state lines, are stronger for same-race male experiences, and are driven by formative childhood years. We also document effects of experiences on direct measures of labor market expectations. Our findings suggest that experience effects can turn short-run declines in labor demand into long-run declines in labor supply. |
| JEL: | D83 E24 J22 |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35327 |
| By: | Martin Leites (IECON-UDELAR); Xavier Ramos (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona); Cecilia Rodriguez (cecilia.rodriguez@fcea.edu.uy); Joan Vila (IECON-UDELAR) |
| Abstract: | We contribute to the very incipient literature that estimates the intergenerational mobility of income from large-scale administrative data using high-quality income data and provide novel evidence of intergenerational income mobility in a middle-income country, Uruguay. Our estimates address the important role of informal labor markets, one of the features of low- and middle-income countries, and a major challenge to obtain unbiased estimates of intergenerational mobility in these countries. We estimate an IRA of 0.292, indicating that persistence is higher in Uruguay than in high-income countries, but lower than in the US. Our results show that (i) informal income increases intergenerational persistence, (ii) intergenerational persistence is higher at the upper half of the distribution, especially at the richest decile, and (iii) intergenerational income persistence is largest among parents and children of the same sex. |
| Keywords: | Intergenerational income mobility, Informal labor markets, Uruguay, Non-linearities |
| JEL: | D31 J62 E26 |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2026-694 |
| By: | Kennedy Johnston; Jonathan Meer; Danila Serra |
| Abstract: | Existing studies show that high school counselors can significantly influence students' graduation rates and college enrollment; less is known about their ability to direct students toward particular fields of study. We evaluate an information intervention aimed at increasing counselors' awareness of economics, a major often associated with misconceptions about its content and career opportunities, and characterized by substantial under-representation of women and racial and ethnic minorities. Counselors from randomly selected Texas high schools were invited to participate in a one-day information workshop on the economics major. We evaluate the impact of the intervention on students' major preferences and outcomes using application and admissions data from a large public university attended by many graduates from the treatment schools, as well as enrollment and course-taking records from the Texas Education Research Center. The intervention led to substantial increases in interest in economics at the college application stage, particularly among high-achieving women, but did not lead to significant changes in college major outcomes. We conclude that high school counselors can play an important role in shaping students' field-of-study preferences, but translating preferences into enrollment requires additional exposure and reinforcement. |
| JEL: | C93 D83 I23 J16 |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35365 |
| By: | Aderonke Osikominu; Gregor Pfeifer; Tim Ruberg |
| Abstract: | We estimate heterogeneous returns to STEM education by leveraging relative distances to technical versus general universities in Switzerland. While individuals who choose a STEM education gain on average, a declining marginal treatment effect curve indicates positive selection on gains, suggesting that low-resistance individuals benefit the most. Through policy simulations aimed at increasing STEM enrollment and estimating corresponding policy-relevant treatment effects, we demonstrate that these policies' effectiveness critically depends on both observable and unobservable characteristics of affected individuals. Furthermore, we highlight how policies should be designed to both increase STEM enrollment and generate positive returns for targeted groups, particularly women. |
| Keywords: | Returns to Education; STEM; MTE; PRTE; Gender |
| JEL: | C26 I26 I28 J16 J24 |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26160 |