nep-ltv New Economics Papers
on Unemployment, Inequality and Poverty
Issue of 2023‒05‒15
six papers chosen by



  1. Risk Aversion and COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy By Lepinteur, Anthony; Borga, Liyousew G.; Clark, Andrew E.; Vögele, Claus; D'Ambrosio, Conchita
  2. Background Matters, but not Whether Parents are Immigrants: Outcomes of Children Born in Denmark By Mathias Fjællegaard Jensen; Alan Manning
  3. What We Teach about Race and Gender: Representation in Images and Text of Children's Books By Adukia, Anjali; Eble, Alex; Harrison, Emileigh; Runesha, Hakizumwami Birali; Szasz, Teodora
  4. Intergenerational Child Mortality Impacts of Deworming: Experimental Evidence from Two Decades of the Kenya Life Panel Survey By Michael W. Walker; Alice H. Huang; Suleiman Asman; Sarah J. Baird; Lia Fernald; Joan Hamory Hicks; Fernando Hoces de la Guardia; Satoshi Koiso; Michael Kremer; Matthew N. Krupoff; Michelle Layvant; Eric Ochieng; Pooja Suri; Edward Miguel
  5. Employers' Demand for Personality Traits By Brenčič, Vera; McGee, Andrew
  6. Intergenerational Mobility in the Land of Inequality By Paolo Pinotti; Diogo G. C. Britto; Alexandre Fonseca; Breno Sampaio; Lucas Warwar

  1. By: Lepinteur, Anthony (University of Luxembourg); Borga, Liyousew G. (Luxembourg Institute of Health); Clark, Andrew E. (Paris School of Economics); Vögele, Claus (University of Luxembourg); D'Ambrosio, Conchita (University of Luxembourg)
    Abstract: We here investigate the role of risk aversion in COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. The theoretical effect is ambiguous, as both COVID-19 infection and vaccination side-effects involve probabilistic elements. In large-scale data covering five European countries, we find that vaccine hesitancy falls with risk aversion, so that COVID-19 infection is perceived as involving greater risk than is vaccination.
    Keywords: risk aversion, COVID-19, vaccine hesitancy
    JEL: I12 D81
    Date: 2023–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16084&r=ltv
  2. By: Mathias Fjællegaard Jensen; Alan Manning
    Abstract: In Europe, the children of migrants often have worse economic outcomes than those with local-born parents. This paper shows that children born in Denmark with immigrant parents (first-generation locals) have lower earnings, higher unemployment, less education, more welfare transfers, and more criminal convictions than children with local-born parents. However, when we condition on parental socio-economic characteristics, first-generation locals generally perform as well or slightly better than the children of locals. Our results suggest that there is little distinctive about being a child of immigrants, other than the fact that they are more likely to come from deprived backgrounds.
    Date: 2023–03–31
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oxf:wpaper:1003&r=ltv
  3. By: Adukia, Anjali (Harris School, University of Chicago); Eble, Alex (Columbia University); Harrison, Emileigh (University of Chicago); Runesha, Hakizumwami Birali (University of Chicago); Szasz, Teodora (University of Chicago)
    Abstract: Books shape how children learn about society and norms, in part through representation of different characters. We introduce new artificial intelligence methods for systematically converting images into data and apply them, along with text analysis methods, to measure the representation of skin color, race, gender, and age in award-winning children's books widely read in homes, classrooms, and libraries over the last century. We find that more characters with darker skin color appear over time, but the most influential books persistently depict characters with lighter skin color, on average, than other books, even after conditioning on race; we also find that children are depicted with lighter skin than adults on average. Relative to their growing share of the U.S. population, Black and Latinx people are underrepresented in these same books, while White males are overrepresented. Over time, females are increasingly present but appear less often in text than in images, suggesting greater symbolic inclusion in pictures than substantive inclusion in stories. We then present analysis of the supply of, and demand for, books with different levels of representation to better understand the economic behavior that may contribute to these patterns. On the demand side, we show that people consume books that center their own identities. On the supply side, we document higher prices for books that center non-dominant social identities and fewer copies of these books in libraries that serve predominantly White communities. Lastly, we show that the types of children's books purchased in a neighborhood are related to local political beliefs.
    Keywords: representation, images as data, curriculum, children, education, libraries, race, gender
    JEL: I24 I21 Z1 J15 J16
    Date: 2023–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16058&r=ltv
  4. By: Michael W. Walker; Alice H. Huang; Suleiman Asman; Sarah J. Baird; Lia Fernald; Joan Hamory Hicks; Fernando Hoces de la Guardia; Satoshi Koiso; Michael Kremer; Matthew N. Krupoff; Michelle Layvant; Eric Ochieng; Pooja Suri; Edward Miguel
    Abstract: We assess the impacts of a randomized school-based deworming intervention in Kenya on the mortality of recipients’ children using a 23-year longitudinal data set of over 6, 500 original participants and their offspring. The under-5 mortality rate fell by 22% (17 deaths per 1000 live births) for children of treatment group individuals. We find that a combination of improved health, education and living standards, increased urban residence, delayed fertility, and greater use of health care in the parent generation contributed to the reduction. The results provide evidence for meaningful intergenerational benefits of child health investments.
    JEL: H51 I15 I25
    Date: 2023–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:31162&r=ltv
  5. By: Brenčič, Vera (University of Alberta); McGee, Andrew (University of Alberta)
    Abstract: We measure firms' demand for workers' personality traits expressed in job ads and find that firms primarily demand workers who are extroverted, conscientious, and open-to-experience. The personality demand measures are correlated with the soft skills required on the job and produce intuitively plausible rankings of occupations in terms of personality requirements. Consistent with firms needing more time to fill vacancies with more requirements, ads requiring extroversion and conscientiousness remain posted online longer. Using the personality demand measures and wage information in the ads, we show theoretically and empirically that firms seeking conscientious workers are less likely to offer incentive pay.
    Keywords: personality, job ads, method of pay
    JEL: D22 J23 J24 J33 M51
    Date: 2023–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16083&r=ltv
  6. By: Paolo Pinotti (Bocconi University); Diogo G. C. Britto (Bocconi University); Alexandre Fonseca (Federal Revenue of Brazil); Breno Sampaio (Universidade Federal de Pernambuco); Lucas Warwar (Universidade Federal de Pernambuco)
    Abstract: We provide the first estimates of intergenerational income mobility for a developing country, namely Brazil. We measure formal income from tax and employment registries, and we train machine learning models on census and survey data to predict informal income. The data reveal a much higher degree of persistence than previous estimates available for developed economies: a 10 percentile increase in parental income rank is associated with a 5.5 percentile increase in child income rank, and persistence is even higher in the top 5%. Children born to parents in the first income quintile face a 46% chance of remaining at the bottom when adults. We validate these estimates using two novel mobility measures that rank children and parents without the need to impute informal income. We document substantial heterogeneity in mobility across individual characteristics - notably gender and race - and across Brazilian regions. Leveraging children who migrate at different ages, we estimate that causal place effects explain 57% of the large spatial variation in mobility. Finally, assortative mating plays a strong role in household income persistence, and parental income is also strongly associated with several key long-term outcomes such as education, teenage pregnancy, occupation, mortality, and victimization.
    Keywords: Intergenerational Mobility, Inequality, Brazil, Migration, Place Effects
    JEL: J62 D31 I31 R23
    Date: 2022–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:2223&r=ltv

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