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on Labor Markets - Supply, Demand, and Wages |
| By: | Lucie Schmidt; Lara Shore-Sheppard; Tara Watson |
| Abstract: | The expansion of public insurance eligibility that occurred with the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Medicaid expansions may have spillover effects to other public assistance programs. We explore the impact of the ACA on two large safety net programs: the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). We use a county border-pair research design, examining county-level administrative measures of EITC and SNAP participation in contiguous county pairs that cross state lines where the county on one side of the border experienced the Medicaid expansion and the county on the other side did not. This approach allows us to focus narrowly on differences arising from the ACA Medicaid expansion choice, implicitly controlling for local economic trends that could affect safety net participation. Our results suggest that the Medicaid expansion increased participation in SNAP, and possibly in the EITC, in counties that expanded relative to nearby counties that did not expand. We corroborate and extend these results using individual level data from the American Community Survey (ACS). Our results show that access to one safety net program may increase take-up of others. |
| JEL: | I13 I38 |
| Date: | 2019–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26504&r=all |
| By: | Hensvik, Lena (IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy); Nordström Skans, Oskar (IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy) |
| Abstract: | Using very detailed register data on cognitive abilities and productive personality traits for nearly all Swedish males at age 18, we show that employment in the recent past has shifted towards skill-intensive occupations. Employment growth is monotonically skill biased in relation to this set of general-purpose transferable skills, despite the well-known U-shaped (”polarizing”) relationship to occupational wage ranks. The patterns coexist because growing low-wage occupations tend to employ workers who are comparably skilled in these dimensions, whereas workers in declining mid-wage occupations instead have less of these general non-manual skills than suggested by their wages. Employment has primarily increased in occupations where workers have larger-than-average endowments of verbal and technical abilities and social maturity. Projections of future occupational decline and automation risks are even more skill-biased, but show similar associations to most of our specifc skill-measures. The most pronounced difference is that occupations relying on tolerance to stress are projected to decline in the coming decades. |
| Keywords: | Skills; Polarization; Future of Work |
| JEL: | J21 J31 |
| Date: | 2019–12–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2019_028&r=all |
| By: | Einiö, Elias |
| Abstract: | This study exploits a large-scale natural experiment in Finnish conscription to study how exposure to peers from different family backgrounds affects education, earnings, employment, and hourly wage. Our research design is based on the alphabetic rule in assigning conscripts to dorms, which induces credible exogenous variation in peer family backgrounds. Being exposed to a dormmate from a high-income family has a positive long-term effect on earnings. The effects are the largest for individuals who come from high-income families. Exposure to peers with one standard deviation higher average parent income raises their earnings at age 28-42 by 2.6%. The results suggest beneficial labor market networks as a key mechanism. Exposure to peers from high-income families has little impact on earnings and hourly wages of individuals who come from low-income families, but it increases their educational attainment in the long run. The findings imply that social stratification reinforces economic and educational inequality between rich and poor families. |
| Keywords: | earnings, employment, education, wages, peer effects, family background, Labour markets and education, J24, J31, |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fer:wpaper:128&r=all |
| By: | Ana Maria Takahashi (Graduate School of Economics, Kobe University); Shingo Takahashi (Graduate School for International Development and Cooperation); Atsuko Ueda (School of Political Science and Economics) |
| Abstract: | Using a complete survey of the entire faculty covering 2004 to 2013, we examine the gender promotion gap in Japanese academia and assess how it changed over time. The gap at the full professor rank in national and local public universities stayed constant at slightly above 7 percentage points, while the gap in private universities exhibited a mild increase from 5.9 to 8.1 percentage points. When we combine all universities, the gap shows a slight increase from 6.9 to 7.8 percentage points. Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields and social science fields in public universities have significantly higher gaps than other fields. We do not find consistent evidence that the two governmental grants, the ‘Grant Program for Supporting Female Researchers’ and the ‘Grant Program to Accelerate the Reform of Training Female Researchers’, that aimed to foster female academics’ careers, have reduced the gender promotion gaps. We also find no evidence that these grants increased the department level share of female faculty. JEL Classification: J7 |
| Date: | 2019–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:koe:wpaper:1914&r=all |
| By: | Ljunge, Martin (Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN)) |
| Abstract: | Individuals with ancestry from countries with advanced information technology in 1500 AD, such as movable type and paper, adopt the internet faster than those with less advanced ancestry. The analysis illustrates persistence over five centuries in information technology adoption in European and U.S. populations. The results hold when excluding the most and least advanced ancestries, and when accounting for additional deep roots of development. Historical information technology is a better predictor of internet adoption than current development. A machine learning procedure supports the findings. Human capital is a plausible channel as 1500 AD information technology predicts early 20th century school enrollment, which predicts 21st century internet adoption. A three-stage model including human capital around 1990, yields similar results. |
| Keywords: | Internet; Technology diffusion; Information technology; Intergenerational transmission; Printing press |
| JEL: | D13 D83 J24 N70 O33 Z13 |
| Date: | 2019–12–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:1312&r=all |
| By: | Bukowski, Pawel; Novokmet, Filip |
| Abstract: | How has Polish inequality evolved between communism and capitalism to reach one of the highest levels in Europe today? To address this question, we construct the first consistent series on the long-term distribution of income in Poland by combining tax, household survey and national accounts data. We document a U-shaped evolution of inequalities from the end of the 19th century until today: (i) inequality was high before WWII; (ii) abruptly fell after the introduction of communism in 1947 and stagnated at low levels during the whole communist period; (iii) experienced a sharp rise with the return to capitalism in 1989. Between 1989 and 2015 the top 10% income share increased from 23% to 35% and the top 1% income share from 4% to 13%. We find that official survey-based measures strongly under-estimate the rise of inequality since 1989. Our new estimates show that frequently quoted Poland’s transition success has largely benefited top income groups. We find that inequality was high in the first half of the 20th century due to strong concentration of capital income at the top of the distribution. The secular fall after WW2 was largely to a combination of capital income shocks from war destructions with communist policies both eliminating private ownership and forcing wage compression. The rise of inequality after the return to capitalism in the early 1990s was induced both by the rise of top labour and capital incomes. However, the strong rise in inequality in the 2000s was driven solely by the increase in top capital incomes, which is likely related to current globalization forces. Yet overall, the unique Polish inequality history speaks about the central role of policies and institutions in shaping inequality in the long run. |
| JEL: | D31 E01 J30 N34 |
| Date: | 2019–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:102834&r=all |
| By: | Hugh Macartney; Robert McMillan; Uros Petronijevic |
| Abstract: | We present an estimable framework expressing teacher value-added in terms of teacher ability and effort, along with a strategy to identify these two unobserved inputs and their distinct test score effects for the first time. This uses exogenous incentive policy variation and rich longitudinal data from North Carolina. We find both inputs raise current and future scores, and effort responds systematically to incentives, underlining the agency of the teaching force. To explore the policy implications of this agency, we use our estimates to compare the cost effectiveness of incentive and ability-based education reforms, finding incentive reforms often come out ahead. |
| Keywords: | Incentives, Education Production, Effort, Ability, Teacher Value- Added, Accountability, Education Policy, Cost-Effectiveness, Persistence |
| JEL: | I21 J24 M52 |
| Date: | 2019–12–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tor:tecipa:tecipa-650&r=all |
| By: | Hamish Low; Luigi Pistaferri |
| Abstract: | We show the extent of errors made in the award of disability insurance using matched survey-administrative data. False rejections (Type I errors) are widespread, and there are large gender differences in these type I error rates. Women with a severe, work-limiting, permanent impairment are 20 percentage points more likely to be rejected than men, controlling for the type of health condition, occupation, and a host of demographic characteristics. We investigate whether these gender differences in Type I errors are due to women being in better health than men, to women having lower pain thresholds, or to women applying more readily for disability insurance. None of these explanations are consistent with the data. We use evidence from disability vignettes to suggest that there are different acceptance thresholds for men and women. The differences by gender arise because women are more likely to be assessed as being able to fi nd other work than observationally equivalent men. Despite this, after rejection, women with a self-reported work limitation do not return to work, compared to rejected women without a work limitation. |
| JEL: | H55 J16 J71 |
| Date: | 2019–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26513&r=all |
| By: | Sameh Hallaq |
| Abstract: | This paper measures the wage differential between Palestinian non-refugees and Palestinian refugees in the West Bank and Gaza over the years 1999-2012. First, the main individual and occupational differences between the two groups in the two regions are presented. Then, the wage differential is decomposed into two components: a "human capital effect, explained part" and a "coefficient effect, unexplained part." Second, findings suggest that though the wage gap has always existed and favored non-refugees in the West Bank, it has a more substantial impact among low-skilled workers and those in the private sector. Furthermore, most of this gap is attributed to the unexplained part of the wage decomposition model. In Gaza, the wage gap favored refugee workers. Most of this wage gap among unskilled workers is attributed to the endowment/human capital effect, while for skilled workers most of the wage gap is due to the unexplained part--the "coefficient effect"--after 2006. |
| Keywords: | West Bank; Gaza Strip; Wage Differential; Refugees |
| JEL: | J31 J71 |
| Date: | 2019–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lev:wrkpap:wp_941&r=all |