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on Unemployment, Inequality and Poverty |
| By: | Jeff Biddle; Daniel S. Hamermesh |
| Abstract: | We demonstrate nearly steady trends from 1973-2023 in the U.S. in the timing of when people work for pay, away from evening and night hours toward “usual” daytime hours. The trend is related to changes in rising educational attainment, to increased real incomes, and the increased wage premium for undesirable work times—evenings and nights—that we document. The trend exists in all major industries except retail, in which changes in technology biased work away from daytime hours. The trend was accelerated by the sharp increase in telework that occurred after the Covid pandemic, an increase that was especially concentrated during daytime hours. While we observe the same phenomenon in France from 1966 to 2010, we do not in the U.K. from 1974-2015, arguably because of the very sharp decline in unionization in the U.K. and the changes in retailing. |
| JEL: | J22 J23 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34732 |
| By: | Milagros Onofri; Inés Berniell; Raquel Fernández; Azul Menduiña |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the sharp decline in fertility across Latin America using both period and cohort measures. Combining Vital Statistics, Census microdata, and UN population data, we decompose changes in fertility by age, education, and joint age–education groups. We show that the decline in period fertility between 2000 and 2022 is driven primarily by reductions in within-group birth rates rather than by changes in population composition, with the largest contributions coming from younger and less-educated women. Comparing the cohort born in the mid 1950s and the one born in the mid 1970s, we find that the decline in completed fertility reflects not only delayed childbearing but also substantial reductions in the average number of children per woman. This is driven primarily by lower fertility among mothers rather than by rising childlessness. Our findings provide new evidence on the nature of Latin America’s transition to below-replacement fertility and highlight several open questions for future research. |
| JEL: | J11 J13 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34749 |
| By: | Stansbury, Anna; Rodriguez, Kyra |
| Abstract: | Unlike gender or race, class background is rarely a focus of research on career progression, or of DEI efforts in elite occupations. Should it be? In this paper we document a large class gap in career progression in one occupation—U.S. tenure-track academia—using parental education to proxy for class background. First-generation college graduates are 10% less likely to be tenured at an R1, are tenured at institutions ranked 11% lower, earn 3% less, and report 5% lower job satisfaction, than their former Ph.D. classmates (from the same institution and field) with a parent with a non-Ph.D. graduate degree. Neither selection out of academia nor different preferences explain this gap; differential research productivity also plays little role. Instead, likely drivers are differences in cultural and social capital. We also find a class gap in career progression for Ph.D.s who work in industry, suggesting this phenomenon generalizes outside academia. (Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality Working Paper) |
| Date: | 2026–02–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:ugdjf_v1 |
| By: | Christopher Campos; Pablo Muñoz; Alonso Bucarey; Dante Contreras |
| Abstract: | This paper studies how college major choices shape earnings and fertility outcomes. Using administrative data that link students' preferences, random assignment to majors, and post-college outcomes, we estimate the causal pecuniary and non-pecuniary returns to different fields of study. We document substantial heterogeneity in these returns across majors and show that such variation helps explain gender gaps in labor market outcomes: women place greater weight on balancing career and family in their major choices, and these preference differences account for about 30% of the gender earnings gap among college graduates. Last, we use our causal estimates to evaluate the effects of counterfactual assignment rules that target representation gaps in settings with centralized assignment systems. We find that gender quotas in high-return fields can significantly reduce representation and earnings gaps with minimal impacts on efficiency and aggregate fertility. |
| JEL: | I20 I24 I26 J01 J16 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34736 |