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on Unemployment, Inequality and Poverty |
| By: | John A. List; Haruka Uchida |
| Abstract: | An unsettling stylized fact is that decorated early childhood education programs improve cognitive skills in the short-term, but lose their efficacy after a few years. We implement a field experiment with two stages of randomization to explore the underpinnings of the fade-out effect. We first randomly assign preschool access to children, and then partner with the local school district to randomly assign the same children to classmates throughout elementary school. We find that the fade-out effect is critically-linked to the share of classroom peers assigned to preschool access—with enough treated peers the classic fade-out effect is muted. Our results highlight a paradoxical insight: while the fade-out effect has been viewed as a devastating critique of early childhood programs, our results highlight that fade-out is a key rationale for providing early education to all children. This is because human capital accumulation is inherently a social activity, leading early education programs to deliver their largest benefits at scale when everyone receives such programs. |
| JEL: | C93 I24 I30 J19 |
| Date: | 2024–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33027 |
| By: | Sadegh S.M. Eshaghnia; James J. Heckman; Rasmus Landersø; Rafeh Qureshi |
| Abstract: | This paper studies intergenerational mobility—the transmission of family influence. We develop and estimate measures of lifetime resources motivated by economic theory that account for differences in life-cycle trajectories, and uncertainty about future income. We identify the effects of parents’ resources on child outcomes through policy shocks at different childhood ages that affect family investments. Parents’ expected lifetime resources are stronger predictors of child outcomes than the income measures traditionally used in the literature on social mobility. Moreover, while effects estimated through exogenous variation in parents’ expected lifetime resources are smaller in magnitude than their correlational counterparts, they are still sizable and largest in early childhood. The paper illustrates how integrating key insights from different literatures when studying intergenerational mobility allows for a better understanding of the importance of factors such as the family’s role, changes in individual life cycles across generations, and the expectations and trajectories individuals face across their lifetimes. |
| JEL: | D31 I24 I30 |
| Date: | 2024–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33023 |
| By: | Antonia Díaz (Instituto Complutense de Análisis Económico (ICAE), Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain).); Juan J. Dolado (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Departamento de Economía.); Alvaro Jáñez (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Departamento de Economía.); Félix Wellschmied (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Departamento de Economía.) |
| Abstract: | We examine the impact of furlough schemes in scenarios where aggregate risk has a sector-specific component and workers have sector-specific human capital. In particular, we investigate the distinct responses of the Spanish labor market to the Great Recession and the Great Contagion as both downturns have been triggered by such shocks. However, the COVID-19 episode involves much less job destruction than the previous recession, possibly due to firms’ widespread adoption of furlough schemes (ERTEs) which had been seldom activated earlier. There is consensus that these policies help stabilize the unemployment rate by keeping matches alive in those sectors hardest hit by a crisis. However, under their current design, we argue both empirically and theoretically that ERTEs: (i) crowd out labor hoarding by employers in the absence of those schemes, (ii) increase the volatility of effective working rates and output, and (iii) hinder worker reallocation, especially in short recessions. |
| Keywords: | Strategy-Proofness; Single-Peaked Preferences; Social Choice Correspondences. |
| JEL: | J11 J18 J21 J64 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucm:doicae:2401 |
| By: | Chiara Costi; Andrew Clark; Conchita D'Ambrosio; Anthony Lepinteur; Giorgia Menta |
| Abstract: | We here exploit an exogenous shift in working conditions for public-sector workers in Italy to establish the causal effect of a return-to-office (RTO) mandate on worker health and well-being. In nine waves of quarterly panel data we first find a significant fall in teleworking for those affected by the RTO mandate, who also spend more time outdoors, work fewer hours, and interact less with relatives and friends. The net effect of these lifestyle changes on a battery of health and well-being measures following the return to office work is insignificant. The place of work post-pandemic has neither positive nor negative health implications. |
| Keywords: | Return to office; Working from home; Health; Well-being |
| JEL: | I18 I31 J88 |
| Date: | 2024–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:irs:cepswp:2024-07 |