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on Unemployment, Inequality and Poverty |
| By: | Ori Heffetz; Yehonatan Caspi |
| Abstract: | What should researchers consider when designing experiments that (also) collect self-reported well-being (SWB) data? Focusing on experiments in economics, we examine the motivation behind SWB-data collection, survey leading past examples, and highlight potential pitfalls and their proposed countermeasures. We offer three main messages and a call to action. First, SWB measures should be handled with caution, especially in experiments. Second, despite their limitations, SWB measures can be used cleverly in the lab to provide evidence on questions that choice data alone cannot answer. Third, when collected, analyzed, and interpreted with appropriate caution, SWB measures can be important policy-evaluation outcomes, complementing the inherently incomplete picture provided by more traditional outcomes. We call on researchers to carefully and thoughtfully collect (a variety of) SWB measures in their online, lab, and field experiments. Such a joint, decentralized effort would also mean that over time, SWB data get explored, accumulated, and, hopefully, better understood. |
| JEL: | C83 C90 D90 I31 |
| Date: | 2025–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33847 |
| By: | Joan Costa-i-Font; Anna Nicinska; Melcior Rossello Roig |
| Abstract: | We compare inequality and social mobility trends in European countries exposed to Soviet Communist (SC) regimes with those not exposed, using similar welfare mea-sures. We draw upon a rich retrospective dataset that collects relevant welfare measures across regimes, including information on living space and self-reported health, and relevant inequality and mobility indices for ordinal and categorical data. Our results suggest evidence of comparable welfare inequality trends in countries exposed to SC and those unexposed. Although individuals exposed to SC enjoyed higher levels of social mobility, differences in inequality across countries exposed to different regimes were negligible. A plausible explanation lies in the countervailing role of the welfare state in countries not exposed to SC and the inefficiency of the bureaucratic allocation of private goods aimed at reducing inequality in countries exposed to SC. |
| Keywords: | Inequality, welfare, living space, self-reported health, health inequality, education; social mobility, Soviet Communism, bureaucracies, European Communist Regimes |
| JEL: | I14 H53 I13 I38 N34 P20 P29 P36 P46 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11916 |
| By: | David Card (University of California, Berkeley); Francesco Devicienti (University of Torino and Collegio Carlo Alberto); Mariacristina Rossi (COVIP); Andrea Weber (Central European University) |
| Abstract: | The gender wage gap rises with experience. To what extent do firm policies mediate this rise? We use administrative data from Italy to identify workers’ first jobs and compute wage growth over the next 5 years. We then decompose the contribution of first employers to the rise in the gender wage gap, taking account of maternity events affecting a third of female entrants. We find that idiosyncratic firm effects explain 20% of the variation in early career wage growth, and that the sorting of women to slower-growth firms accounts for a fifth of the gender growth gap. Women who have a child within 5 years of entering work have particularly slow wage growth, reflecting a maternity effect that is magnified by the excess sorting of mothers-to-be to slower-growth firms. Many entrants change jobs within their first 5 years and we find that the male-female difference in early career wage growth arises from gaps for both movers and stayers. The firm components in wage growth for stayers and movers are highly correlated, and contribute similar sorting penalties for women who stay or leave. |
| Keywords: | Gender gaps; Firm effects; Maternity; Matched Employer-Employee Data |
| JEL: | J00 J23 J24 J31 J38 J58 L13 |
| Date: | 2025–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:2510 |
| By: | David G. Blanchflower; Bruce Sacerdote |
| Abstract: | We study the determinants of poor mental health among students at an elite private institution. Survey measures of well-being have declined significantly over the last decade for both high school students and those of college age. This is an international phenomenon that appears to have started in the US around 2013 and that was not caused by but was exacerbated by COVID and the associated lockdowns. We focus on elite and non-elite institutions and examine Dartmouth as a special case. Dartmouth ranks well compared to other institutions. However, around a quarter of Dartmouth students (26%) report they suffer from moderate to severe depression and 22% that they suffer from moderate, to severe, anxiety and 10% say they contemplated suicide. Student’s wellbeing appears to be impacted negatively by stress over finances. We find broad patterns in the data, that ill-being is higher among females, those who engage in little exercise, have low GPAs, are not athletes nor in academic clubs nor religious organizations, reside in fraternity housing or are on financial aid. |
| JEL: | I20 I3 |
| Date: | 2025–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33742 |
| By: | Xiao Ma (Peking University); Alejandro Nakab (Universidad Torcuato Di Tella); Camila Navajas-Ahumada (Universidad Torcuato Di Tella); Daniela Vidart (University of Connecticut) |
| Abstract: | Women experience slower wage growth than men over their lifetimes, a gap often attributed to the “motherhood wage penalty, ” as childbearing reduces earnings. This paper links this penalty to differences in human capital using a pseudo-event study of first childbirth in Europe to document a “mother-hood training penalty.” Before parenthood, full-time male and female work-ers exhibit similar on-the-job training trends, but their trajectories diverge afterward. In the first 1–3 years of parenthood, women are 17%–22% less likely to train, compared to a 3%–8% decline for men. Additional evidence suggests this gap reflects employers’ lower willingness to finance training for mothers. |
| Keywords: | On-the-Job Training, Human Capital Accumulation, Lifecycle Wage Growth, Gender Gaps |
| JEL: | J24 J16 M53 |
| Date: | 2025–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uct:uconnp:2025-04 |
| By: | Autor, David H (Massachusetts Institute of Technology); Dorn, David; Hanson, Gordon H.; Jones, Maggie R.; Setzler, Bradley |
| Abstract: | This chapter analyzes the distinct adjustment paths of U.S. labor markets (places) and U.S. workers (people) to increased Chinese import competition during the 2000s. Using comprehensive register data for 2000–2019, we document that employment levels more than fully rebound in trade-exposed places after 2010, while employment-to-population ratios remain depressed and manufacturing employment further atrophies. The adjustment of places to trade shocks is generational: affected areas recover primarily by adding workers to non-manufacturing who were below working age when the shock occurred. Entrants are disproportionately native-born Hispanics, foreign-born immigrants, women, and the college-educated, who find employment in relatively low-wage service sectors such as medical services, education, retail, and hospitality. Using the panel structure of the employer-employee data, we decompose changes in the employment composition of places into trade-induced shifts in the gross flows of people across sectors, locations, and non-employment status. Contrary to standard models, trade shocks reduce geographic mobility, with both in- and out-migration remaining depressed through 2019. The employment recovery stems almost entirely from young adults and foreign-born immigrants taking their first U.S. jobs in affected areas, with minimal contributions from cross-sector transitions of former manufacturing workers. Although worker inflows into non-manufacturing more than fully offset manufacturing employment losses in trade-exposed locations after 2010, incumbent workers neither fully recover earnings losses nor predominantly exit the labor market, but rather age in place as communities undergo rapid demographic and industrial transitions. (Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality Working Paper) |
| Date: | 2025–05–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:7rfae_v1 |