Search Results

Author: Hotz, V. Joseph
Resulting in 31 citations.
1. Ahituv, Avner
Hotz, V. Joseph
Philipson, Tomas
The Responsiveness of the Demand for Condoms to the Local Prevalence of AIDS
Journal of Human Resources 31,4 (Fall 1996): 869-897.
Also: http://www.jstor.org/stable/146150
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Keyword(s): Contraception; Epidemiology; Residence; Sexual Activity; Sexual Behavior

This paper investigates the degree to which the local prevalence of AIDS increases the demand for disease-preventing methods of contraception among young adults. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY-1979), we find substantial evidence that the use of condoms was quite responsive to the prevalence of AIDS in one's state of residence and this responsiveness has been increasing over time. We present both cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence estimating that a 1 percent increase in the prevalence of AIDS increases the propensity to use a condom significantly and up to 50 percent for the most prevalence-responsive groups. Our findings tend support to the existence of a self-limiting incentive effect of epidemics--an effect that tends to be ignored in epidemiological theories of the spread of infectious diseases. [Copyright Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System 1996]
Bibliography Citation
Ahituv, Avner, V. Joseph Hotz and Tomas Philipson. "The Responsiveness of the Demand for Condoms to the Local Prevalence of AIDS." Journal of Human Resources 31,4 (Fall 1996): 869-897.
2. Ashworth, Jared
Hotz, V. Joseph
Maurel, Arnaud
Ransom, Tyler
Changes across Cohorts in Wage Returns to Schooling and Early Work Experiences
NBER Working Paper No. 24160, National Bureau of Economic Research, December 2017.
Also: http://www.nber.org/papers/w24160
Cohort(s): NLSY79, NLSY97
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Keyword(s): Educational Attainment; Educational Returns; Wages; Work Experience

This paper investigates the wage returns to schooling and actual early work experiences, and how these returns have changed over the past twenty years. Using the NLSY surveys, we develop and estimate a dynamic model of the joint schooling and work decisions that young men make in early adulthood, and quantify how they affect wages using a generalized Mincerian specification. Our results highlight the need to account for dynamic selection and changes in composition when analyzing changes in wage returns. In particular, we find that ignoring the selectivity of accumulated work experiences results in overstatement of the returns to education.
Bibliography Citation
Ashworth, Jared, V. Joseph Hotz, Arnaud Maurel and Tyler Ransom. "Changes across Cohorts in Wage Returns to Schooling and Early Work Experiences." NBER Working Paper No. 24160, National Bureau of Economic Research, December 2017.
3. Ashworth, Jared
Hotz, V. Joseph
Maurel, Arnaud
Ransom, Tyler
Changes across Cohorts in Wage Returns to Schooling and Early Work Experiences
Journal of Labor Economics published online (24 September 2020): DOI: 10.1086/711851.
Also: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/711851
Cohort(s): NLSY79, NLSY97
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Keyword(s): Educational Attainment; Educational Returns; Wages; Work Experience

This paper investigates the wage returns to schooling and actual early work experiences, and how these returns have changed over the past twenty years. Using the NLSY surveys, we develop and estimate a dynamic model of the joint schooling and work decisions that young men make in early adulthood, and quantify how they affect wages using a generalized Mincerian specification. Our results highlight the need to account for dynamic selection and changes in composition when analyzing changes in wage returns. In particular, we find that ignoring the selectivity of accumulated work experiences results in overstatement of the returns to education.
Bibliography Citation
Ashworth, Jared, V. Joseph Hotz, Arnaud Maurel and Tyler Ransom. "Changes across Cohorts in Wage Returns to Schooling and Early Work Experiences." Journal of Labor Economics published online (24 September 2020): DOI: 10.1086/711851.
4. Bacolod, Marigee Ponla
Hotz, V. Joseph
Cohort Changes in the Transition from School to Work: Evidence from Three NLS Surveys
Economics of Education Review 25,4 (August 2006): 351-373.
Also: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775706000240
Cohort(s): NLSY79, Young Men, Young Women
Publisher: Elsevier
Keyword(s): Educational Attainment; Endogeneity; Family Background and Culture; Hispanics; Skills; Transition, School to Work; Wage Growth; Wages

This study examines the changes in the school-to-work transition of young adults in the United States over the latter part of the twentieth century. Their transition is portrayed using data from National Longitudinal Surveys of Young Women, Young Men, and Youth 1979. In general, we find that indicators of educational attainment, working while in school and non-school related work increased across cohorts for almost all racial/ethnic and gender groups. This was especially true for young women. Furthermore, various indicators of personal and family backgrounds changed in ways consistent with an improvement across cohorts in the preparation of young men and women for their attainment of schooling and work experience and their success in the labor market. The one exception to this general picture of improvement across cohorts was Hispanic men, who experienced a notable decline in educational attainment and in a variety of personal and family background characteristics. With respect to hourly wage rates, we find that wages over the ages 16 through 27 declined across cohorts. However, the rate of growth of wages with age, particularly over adult ages, increased across cohorts, except Hispanic men. Our findings highlight the need for accounting for the endogeneity and selectivity of early skill acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR; Copyright 2006 Elsevier]
Bibliography Citation
Bacolod, Marigee Ponla and V. Joseph Hotz. "Cohort Changes in the Transition from School to Work: Evidence from Three NLS Surveys." Economics of Education Review 25,4 (August 2006): 351-373.
5. Bacolod, Marigee Ponla
Hotz, V. Joseph
Cohort Changes in the Transition from School to Work: What Changed and What Consequences Did It Have for Wages?
Presented: New York, NY, Russell Sage Foundation Conference on "School-to-Work Transitions and School-to-Work Programs", May 2004.
Also: http://www.econ.ucla.edu/hotz/working_papers/cohort.pdf
Cohort(s): NLSY79, Young Men, Young Women
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
Keyword(s): Gender Differences; Hispanics; Racial Differences; Schooling; Transition, School to Work; Wages

This study examines the changes in the school-to-work transition in the United States over the latter part of the twentieth century and their consequences for the wages of young adults. In particular, we document the various types of work and schooling experiences acquired by youth who came to adulthood in the U.S. during the late 1960s, 1970s, and through the 1980s. We pay particular attention to how the differences across cohorts in these transitions vary by gender and race/ethnicity and how these differences affected their subsequent wage attainment. Evidence is evaluated using data from National Longitudinal Surveys of Young Women, Young Men, and Youth 1979.

In general, we find that indicators of educational attainment, working while in school and non-school related work increased across cohorts for almost all racial/ethnic and gender groups. This was especially true for young women. Furthermore, various indicators of personal and family backgrounds changed in ways consistent with an improvement across cohorts in the preparation of young men and women for their attainment of schooling and work experience and their success in the labor market. The one exception to this general picture of improvement across cohorts was Hispanic men, who experienced a notable decline in educational attainment, the acquisition of full time work early in their adult lives and in a variety of personal and family background characteristics.

Bibliography Citation
Bacolod, Marigee Ponla and V. Joseph Hotz. "Cohort Changes in the Transition from School to Work: What Changed and What Consequences Did It Have for Wages?" Presented: New York, NY, Russell Sage Foundation Conference on "School-to-Work Transitions and School-to-Work Programs", May 2004.
6. Currie, Janet
Hotz, V. Joseph
Accidents Will Happen? Unintentional Childhood Injuries and the Effects of Child Care Regulations
Journal of Health Economics 23,1 (January 2004): 25-60.
Also: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167629603001012
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: Elsevier
Keyword(s): Accidents; Child Care; Child Health; Injuries; Mortality

Accidents are the leading cause of death and injury among children in the United States, far surpassing diseases as a health threat. We examine the effects of child care regulation on rates of accidental injury using both micro data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, and Vital Statistics mortality records. Estimates from both data sources suggest that requiring day care center directors to have more education reduces the incidence of unintentional injuries. An auxiliary analysis of the choice of child care mode confirms that these regulations are binding and that higher educational requirements tend to crowd some children out of care, as do regulations requiring frequent inspections of child care facilities and lower pupil-teacher ratios. Thus, regulation creates winners and losers: Some children benefit from safer environments, while those who are squeezed out of the regulated sector are placed at higher risk of injury. [Copyright 2004 Elsevier]
Bibliography Citation
Currie, Janet and V. Joseph Hotz. "Accidents Will Happen? Unintentional Childhood Injuries and the Effects of Child Care Regulations." Journal of Health Economics 23,1 (January 2004): 25-60.
7. Currie, Janet
Hotz, V. Joseph
Accidents Will Happen? Unintentional Injury, Maternal Employment, and Child Care Policy
NBER Working Paper No. 8090, National Bureau of Economic Research, January 2001.
Also: http://papers.nber.org/papers/W8090.pdf
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Keyword(s): Accidents; Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Child Care; Child Health; Children, Well-Being; Injuries; Maternal Employment; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Modeling, Mixed Effects; Mortality; Racial Differences

In western countries, accidents are the leading cause of death and injury among children, far surpassing diseases as a health threat. We examine the effect of maternal employment and child care policy on rates of accidental injury using both micro data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) and Vital Statistics records. We find that the effects of maternal employment on unintentional injuries to children vary by demographic group, with the effects being positive for blacks and negative for whites in models that control for child-specific fixed effects. Estimates from both individual-level NLSY and Vital Statistics data suggest that the effects of maternal employment may be mediated by child care regulations. Most notably, requiring training beyond high school for caregivers reduces the incidence of both fatal and non-fatal accidents. Other types of regulation have mixed effects on unintentional injuries, suggesting that child care regulations create winners and losers. In particular, while some children may benefit from safer environments, others that appear to be squeezed out of the more expensive regulated sector and are placed at higher risks of injury.
Bibliography Citation
Currie, Janet and V. Joseph Hotz. "Accidents Will Happen? Unintentional Injury, Maternal Employment, and Child Care Policy." NBER Working Paper No. 8090, National Bureau of Economic Research, January 2001.
8. Hao, Lingxin
Hotz, V. Joseph
Jin, Ginger Zhe
Games Daughters and Parents Play: Teenage Childbearing, Parental Reputation, and Strategic Transfers
NBER Working Paper No. W7670, National Bureau of Economic Research, April 2000.
Also: http://papers.nber.org/papers/W7670
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Keyword(s): Adolescent Fertility; Childbearing, Adolescent; Family Models; Family Studies; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Parent-Child Relationship/Closeness; Parental Influences; Siblings; Teenagers; Transfers, Family; Transfers, Financial; Transfers, Parental

In this paper, we examine the empirical implications of reputation formation using a game-theoretic model of intra-familial interactions. We consider parental reputation in repeated two-stage games in which daughters' decision to have a child as a teenager and the willingness of parents to continue to house and support their daughters given their decisions. Drawing on the work of Milgrom and Roberts (1982) and Kreps and Wilson (1982) on reputation in repeated games, we show that parents have, under certain conditions, the incentive to penalize teenage (and typically out-of-wedlock) childbearing of older daughters, in order to get the younger daughters to avoid teenage childbearing. The two key empirical implications of this model is that the likelihood of teenage childbearing and parental transfers to a daughter who had a teen birth will decrease with the number of the daughter's sisters at risk. We test these two implications, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 Cohort (NLSY79), exploiting the availability of repeated observations on young women (daughters) and of observations on multiple daughters (sisters) available in this data. Controlling for daughter- and family-specific fixed effects, we find evidence of differential parental financial transfer responses to teenage childbearing by the number of the daughter's sisters and brothers at risk.
Bibliography Citation
Hao, Lingxin, V. Joseph Hotz and Ginger Zhe Jin. "Games Daughters and Parents Play: Teenage Childbearing, Parental Reputation, and Strategic Transfers." NBER Working Paper No. W7670, National Bureau of Economic Research, April 2000.
9. Hao, Lingxin
Hotz, V. Joseph
Jin, Ginger Zhe
Games Daughters and Parents Play: Teenage Childbearing, Parental Reputation, and Strategic Transfers
JCPR Working Paper 167, Joint Center for Poverty Research, Northwestern University/University of Chicago, April 2000.
Also: http://www.northwestern.edu/ipr/jcpr/workingpapers/wpfiles/Family_Games_3-28-00_Draft.pdf
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Joint Center for Poverty Research
Keyword(s): Adolescent Fertility; Childbearing, Adolescent; Family Models; Family Studies; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Siblings; Transfers, Family; Transfers, Financial; Transfers, Parental

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

In this paper, we examine the empirical implications of reputation formation using a game-theoretic model of intra-familial interactions. We consider parental reputation in repeated two-stage games in which daughters' decision to have a child as a teenager and the willingness of parents to continue to house and support their daughters given their decisions. Drawing on the work of Milgrom and Roberts (1982) and Kreps and Wilson (1982) on reputation in repeated games, we show that parents have, under certain conditions, the incentive to penalize teenage (and typically out-of-wedlock) childbearing of older daughters, in order to get the younger daughters to avoid teenage childbearing. The two key empirical implications of this model is that the likelihood of teenage childbearing and parental transfers to a daughter who had a teen birth will decrease with the number of the daughter's sisters at risk. We test these two implications, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 Cohort (NLSY79), exploiting the availability of repeated observations on young women (daughters) and of observations on multiple daughters (sisters) available in this data. Controlling for daughter- and family-specific fixed effects, we find evidence of differential parental financial transfer responses to teenage childbearing by the number of the daughter's sisters and brothers at risk.
Bibliography Citation
Hao, Lingxin, V. Joseph Hotz and Ginger Zhe Jin. "Games Daughters and Parents Play: Teenage Childbearing, Parental Reputation, and Strategic Transfers." JCPR Working Paper 167, Joint Center for Poverty Research, Northwestern University/University of Chicago, April 2000.
10. Hao, Lingxin
Hotz, V. Joseph
Jin, Ginger Zhe
Games Daughters and Parents Play: Teenage Childbearing, Parental Reputation, and Strategic Transfers
CCPR-05-00, On-Line Working Paper Series, California Center for Population Research, University of California - Los Angeles, November 2000.
Also: http://www.ccpr.ucla.edu/ccprwpseries/ccpr_005_00.pdf
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: California Center for Population Research (CCPR)
Keyword(s): Adolescent Fertility; Childbearing, Adolescent; Family Models; Family Studies; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Siblings; Sisters; Transfers, Family; Transfers, Parental

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

In this paper, we examine the empirical implications of reputation formation using a game-theoretic model of intra-familial interactions. We consider parental reputation in repeated two-stage games in which daughters' decision to have a child as a teenager and the willingness of parents to continue to house and support their daughters given their decisions. Drawing on the work of Milgrom and Roberts (1982) and Kreps and Wilson (1982) on reputation in repeated games, we show that parents have, under certain conditions, the incentive to penalize teenage (and typically out-of-wedlock) childbearing of older daughters, in order to get the younger daughters to avoid teenage childbearing. The two key empirical implications of this model is that the likelihood of teenage childbearing and parental transfers to a daughter who had a teen birth will decrease with the number of the daughter's sisters at risk. We test these two implications, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 Cohort (NLSY79), exploiting the availability of repeated observations on young women (daughters) and of observations on multiple daughters (sisters) available in this data. Controlling for daughter- and family-specific fixed effects, we find evidence of differential parental financial transfer responses to teenage childbearing by the number of the daughter's sisters and brothers at risk.
Bibliography Citation
Hao, Lingxin, V. Joseph Hotz and Ginger Zhe Jin. "Games Daughters and Parents Play: Teenage Childbearing, Parental Reputation, and Strategic Transfers." CCPR-05-00, On-Line Working Paper Series, California Center for Population Research, University of California - Los Angeles, November 2000.
11. Hao, Lingxin
Hotz, V. Joseph
Jin, Ginger Zhe
Games Parents and Adolescents Play: Risky Behaviors, Parental Reputation, and Strategic Transfers
Working Paper, Department of Sociology, Johns Hopkins University, January 2005
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Department of Sociology, Johns Hopkins University
Keyword(s): Adolescent Fertility; Childbearing, Adolescent; Family Resources; School Dropouts; Siblings; Transfers, Family; Transfers, Parental

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

This paper examines reputation formation in intra-familial interactions. We consider parental reputation in a repeated two-stage game in which adolescents decide whether to give a teen birth or drop out of high school, and given adolescent decisions, the parent decides whether to house and support his children beyond age 18. Drawing on the work of Milgrom and Roberts (1982) and Kreps and Wilson (1982), we show that the parent has, under certain conditions, the incentive to penalize older children for their teenage risky behaviors in order to dissuade the younger children from the same risky behaviors. The model generates two empirical implications: the likelihood of teen risky behaviors and parental transfers to a child who engaged in teen risky behaviors will decrease with the number of remaining children at risk. We test these two implications, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 Cohort (NLSY79). Exploiting the availability of repeated observations on individual respondents and of observations on multiple siblings, we find evidence in favor of both predictions.
Bibliography Citation
Hao, Lingxin, V. Joseph Hotz and Ginger Zhe Jin. "Games Parents and Adolescents Play: Risky Behaviors, Parental Reputation, and Strategic Transfers." Working Paper, Department of Sociology, Johns Hopkins University, January 2005.
12. Hao, Lingxin
Hotz, V. Joseph
Jin, Ginger Zhe
Games Parents and Adolescents Play: Risky Behaviors, Parental Reputation, and Strategic Transfers
NBER Working Paper No. 11872, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2005.
Also: http://www.nber.org/papers/w11872.pdf
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Keyword(s): Adolescent Fertility; Behavior; Childbearing, Adolescent; Demography; Family Models; Family Studies; High School Dropouts; Siblings

This paper examines reputation formation in intra-familial interactions. We consider parental reputation in a repeated two-stage game in which adolescents decide whether to give a teen birth or drop out of high school, and given adolescent decisions, the parent decides whether to house and support his children beyond age 18. Drawing on the work of Milgrom and Roberts (1982) and Kreps and Wilson (1982), we show that the parent has, under certain conditions, the incentive to penalize older children for their teenage risky behaviors in order to dissuade the younger children from the same risky behaviors. The model generates two empirical implications: the likelihood of teen risky behaviors and parental transfers to a child who engaged in teen risky behaviors will decrease with the number of remaining children at risk. We test these two implications, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 Cohort (NLSY79). Exploiting the availability of repeated observations on individual respondents and of observations on multiple siblings, we find evidence in favor of both predictions.
Bibliography Citation
Hao, Lingxin, V. Joseph Hotz and Ginger Zhe Jin. "Games Parents and Adolescents Play: Risky Behaviors, Parental Reputation, and Strategic Transfers." NBER Working Paper No. 11872, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2005.
13. Hao, Lingxin
Hotz, V. Joseph
Jin, Ginger Zhe
Games Parents and Adolescents Play: Risky Behaviour, Parental Reputation and Strategic Transfers
Economic Journal 118,528 (April 2008): 515-555.
Also: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0297.2008.02132.x/abstract
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Royal Economic Society (RES)
Keyword(s): Adolescent Fertility; Childbearing, Adolescent; Family Resources; Risk-Taking; School Dropouts; Siblings; Transfers, Family; Transfers, Parental

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

This article examines parental reputation formation in intra-familial interactions. In a repeated two stage game, children decide whether to drop out of high school or daughters decide whether to have births as teens and parents then decide whether to provide support to their children beyond age 18. Drawing on Milgrom and Roberts (1982) and Kreps and Wilson (1982), we show that, under certain conditions, parents have the incentive to penalise older children for their adolescent risk-taking behaviour in order to dissuade their younger children from such behaviour when reaching adolescence. We find evidence in favour of this parental reputation model.
Bibliography Citation
Hao, Lingxin, V. Joseph Hotz and Ginger Zhe Jin. "Games Parents and Adolescents Play: Risky Behaviour, Parental Reputation and Strategic Transfers." Economic Journal 118,528 (April 2008): 515-555.
14. Hao, Lingxin
Hotz, V. Joseph
Jin, Ginger Zhe
Games That Families Play: Parental Reputation, Transfers and Teen Childbearing
Presented: New York, NY, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, March 1999
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Adolescent Fertility; Childbearing, Adolescent; Family Studies; Siblings; Transfers, Family; Transfers, Parental

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

This paper considers a model of a two-stage non-cooperative game. In this game, daughters decide whether to have an early birth and parents decide whether to provide or withhold resources (transfers) to them, but there is conflict between parents and daughters over teenage childbearing. Using data from the NLSY, we show that parents have an incentive to act strategically by differentially treating the childbearing behavior of older versus young daughters in an attempt to prevent teenage childbearing of younger daughters. The number of remaining younger daughters who are under 19 when parents make decision of transfer reduces the probability of transfers to the daughter in question, conditional on the teenage childbearing status of that daughter. We also show that such a relationship is weaker for black families than white families.
Bibliography Citation
Hao, Lingxin, V. Joseph Hotz and Ginger Zhe Jin. "Games That Families Play: Parental Reputation, Transfers and Teen Childbearing." Presented: New York, NY, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, March 1999.
15. Hao, Lingxin
Hotz, V. Joseph
Jin, Ginger Zhe
Pantano, Juan
Parental Learning and Teenagers' Risky Behavior
Presented: Detroit, MI, Population Association of America Meetings, April-May 2009
Cohort(s): NLSY79, NLSY79 Young Adult
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Adolescent Behavior; Alcohol Use; Drug Use; Parenting Skills/Styles; Peers/Peer influence/Peer relations; Risk-Taking; Smoking (see Cigarette Use)

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

It is well documented that teenagers engage in risky behaviors at high rates. Usually these behaviors occur without parental consent and teens invest resources to preclude parents from knowing whether and to what extent they engage in such behaviors. This may give rise to parental incentives to learn about their children by paying close attention to observable "signals" of the underlying risky behavior. Moreover, parents can set up parenting rules which are contingent upon the realization of these signals in an effort to control the behavior of their children. We explore a game theoretic model of parent-child interactions and propose an empirical strategy to identify the equilibrium reaction functions that determine teenagers' risky behavior and parenting rules. In preliminary work, we estimate approximations to these reaction functions using data on teens' risky behavior and stringency of parental rules from the National Longitudinal Survey - Young Adults (NLS-YA).
Bibliography Citation
Hao, Lingxin, V. Joseph Hotz, Ginger Zhe Jin and Juan Pantano. "Parental Learning and Teenagers' Risky Behavior." Presented: Detroit, MI, Population Association of America Meetings, April-May 2009.
16. Hotz, V. Joseph
McElroy, Susan Williams
Sanders, Seth G.
Costs and Consequences of Teenage Childbearing for Mothers
In: Kids Having Kids: A Robin Hood Foundation Special Report on the Costs of Adolescent Childbearing. R. Maynard, ed., New York: Robin Hood Foundation, 1996: 55-90.
Also: http://harrisschool.uchicago.edu/about/publications/working-papers/pdf/wp_95_2.pdf
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: The Robin Hood Foundation
Keyword(s): Adolescent Fertility; Age at First Birth; Aid for Families with Dependent Children (AFDC); Childbearing, Adolescent; Earnings; GED/General Educational Diploma/General Equivalency Degree/General Educational Development; High School Completion/Graduates; High School Diploma; High School Dropouts; Maternal Employment; State Welfare; Welfare

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Final Draft: March 22, 1995. Not for citation or quotation without the permission of authors. In this Chapter,we examine the effects of the failure of teen mothers to delay their childbearing on their subsequent behavior and socioeconomic attainment We estimate these causal effects by exploiting an innovative evaluation design in which women who first become pregnant as teenagers but who experience a miscarriage are used to form a control group with which to compare women who have their first births as teens. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we find that many of the claims concerning the adverse consequences of the failure of teen mothers to delay their childbearing are not supported by the data. Over her early adult life, a teen mother is no more likely to participate in government sponsored welfare programs than if she had delayed her childbearing until she was an adult. Early childbearing does not appear to seriously reduce the labor market earnings of teen mothers relative to what these women would have attained if they had postponed their childbearing. If anything, teen mothers tend to earn more relative to comparable women who postpone their childbearing. On average, the households of teen mothers are no more likely to experience significant losses in the earnings of spouses than if they had delayed their childbearing. At the same time, we do find that early childbearing has some adverse consequences for teen mothers. In particular: Early childbearing significantly reduces the likelihood that teen mothers ever will obtain a high school diploma While teen mothers do have a higher probability of obtaining a general equivalence degree (GED), existing evidence indicates this credential simply is not comparable to a high school diploma in today s labor market. Women who fail to delay their childbearing until they reach adulthood are likely to spend substantially more of their lives as single mothers. This is especially true for women who begin their childbearing prior to age 16. Women who start their childbearing early are found to have from one-half to one additional child over their lifetimes Presumably, having more children places greater strains on a teen mother s time and financial resources. Finally, we investigate the extent to which teen childbearing and the failure to postpone births among teen mothers result in higher costs to government. We investigate what women who first became teen mothers in United States in 1993 would be expected to cost government in their greater use of the AFDC, Food Stamp and Medicaid programs and through losses in taxes they would pay. We find that: This group can expect to receive between $11.9 and $19.9 billion in public assistance benefits over their lifetimes. This amounts to between $72,624 and $121,360 per teen mother.
Bibliography Citation
Hotz, V. Joseph, Susan Williams McElroy and Seth G. Sanders. "Costs and Consequences of Teenage Childbearing for Mothers" In: Kids Having Kids: A Robin Hood Foundation Special Report on the Costs of Adolescent Childbearing. R. Maynard, ed., New York: Robin Hood Foundation, 1996: 55-90.
17. Hotz, V. Joseph
McElroy, Susan Williams
Sanders, Seth G.
Costs and Consequences of Teenage Childbearing for Mothers and the Government
Chicago Policy Review 1,1 (Fall 1996).
Also: http://harrisschool.uchicago.edu/about/publications/working-papers/pdf/wp_95_1.pdf
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago
Keyword(s): Adolescent Fertility; Fertility; Methods/Methodology; Welfare

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Reduction of teenage pregnancy rates is believed to translate into smaller AFDC caseloads and lower costs. This is one rationale states have used to institute "family cap" laws that block additional aid for women who become pregnant while receiving public benefits. Though the federal welfare bill does not contain a family cap provision, it does contain incentives for states to reduce rates of illegitimacy. Research has not proven conclusively that reducing illegitimacy and teenage childbearing will reduce costs to the taxpayer. This article examines teenage mothers and finds no significant effect on their earnings over time. Extending this analysis to apply to the probability that these mothers would require public aid, the authors cast doubt on any substantial savings in social costs from decreases in rates of teenage childbearing.
Bibliography Citation
Hotz, V. Joseph, Susan Williams McElroy and Seth G. Sanders. "Costs and Consequences of Teenage Childbearing for Mothers and the Government." Chicago Policy Review 1,1 (Fall 1996).
18. Hotz, V. Joseph
McElroy, Susan Williams
Sanders, Seth G.
Teenage Childbearing and Its Life Cycle Consequences
Journal of Human Resources 40,3 (Summer 2005): 683-715.
Also: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4129557
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Keyword(s): Childbearing, Adolescent; Earnings; Socioeconomic Status (SES); Variables, Instrumental

We exploit a "natural experiment" associated with human reproduction to identify the causal effect of teen childbearing on the socioeconomic attainment of teen mothers. We exploit the fact that some women who become pregnant experience a miscarriage and do not have a live birth. Using miscarriages as an instrumental variable, we estimate the effect of teen mothers not delaying their childbearing on their subsequent attainment. We find that many of the negative consequences of teenage childbearing are much smaller than those found in previous studies. For most outcomes, the adverse consequences of early childbearing are short-lived. Finally, for annual hours of work and earnings, we find that a teen mother would have lower levels of each at older ages if they had delayed their childbearing.
Bibliography Citation
Hotz, V. Joseph, Susan Williams McElroy and Seth G. Sanders. "Teenage Childbearing and Its Life Cycle Consequences." Journal of Human Resources 40,3 (Summer 2005): 683-715.
19. Hotz, V. Joseph
McElroy, Susan Williams
Sanders, Seth G.
Teenage Childbearing and Its Life Cycle Consequences: Exploiting a Natural Experiment
JCPR Working Paper 157, Joint Center for Poverty Research, Northwestern University/University of Chicago, August 1999.
Also: http://www.northwestern.edu/ipr/jcpr/workingpapers/wpfiles/HOTZ_WPoriginal2-7-2000.pdf
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Joint Center for Poverty Research
Keyword(s): Abortion; Adolescent Fertility; Childbearing, Adolescent; Educational Attainment; Family Structure; Fertility; Labor Market Outcomes; Labor Supply; Life Cycle Research; Mothers, Adolescent; Parents, Single; Poverty; Variables, Instrumental

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

In this paper, we exploit a "natural experiment" associated with human reproduction to identify the effect of teen childbearing on subsequent educational attainment, family structure, labor market outcomes, and financial self-sufficiency. In particular, we exploit the fact that a substantial fraction of women who become pregnant experience a miscarriage (spontaneous abortion) and thus do not have a birth. If miscarriages were purely random and if miscarriages were the only way, other than by live births, that a pregnancy ended, then women who had a miscarriage as a teen would constitute an ideal control group with which to contrast teenage mothers. Exploiting this natural experiment, we devise an Instrumental Variables (IV) estimators for the consequences of teen mothers not delaying their childbearing, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 (NLSY79). Our major finding is that many of the negative consequences of not delaying childbearing until adulthood are much smaller than has been estimated in previous studies. While we do find adverse consequences of teenage childbearing immediately following a teen mother's first birth, these negative consequences appear short-lived. By the time a teen mother reaches her late twenties, she appears to have only slightly more children, is only slightly more likely to be a single mother, and has no lower levels of educational attainment than if she had delayed her childbearing to adulthood. In fact, by this age teen mothers appear to be better off in some aspects of their lives. Teenage childbearing appears to raise levels of labor supply, accumulated work experience, and labor market earnings, and appears to reduce the chances of living in poverty and participating in the associated social welfare programs. These estimated effects imply that the cost of teenage childbearing to U.S. taxpayers is negligible. In particular, our estimates imply that the widely held view that teenage childbearing imposes a substantial cost on government is an artifact of the failure to appropriately account for preexisting socioeconomic differences between teen mothers and other women when estimating the causal effects of early childbearing. While teen mothers are very likely to live in poverty and experience other forms of adversity, our results imply that little of this would be changed just by getting teen mothers to delay their childbearing into adulthood.
Bibliography Citation
Hotz, V. Joseph, Susan Williams McElroy and Seth G. Sanders. "Teenage Childbearing and Its Life Cycle Consequences: Exploiting a Natural Experiment." JCPR Working Paper 157, Joint Center for Poverty Research, Northwestern University/University of Chicago, August 1999.
20. Hotz, V. Joseph
McElroy, Susan Williams
Sanders, Seth G.
Teenage Childbearing and Its Life Cycle Consequences: Exploiting a Natural Experiment
Working Paper, Department of Economics, University of California - Los Angeles, July 2004.
Also: http://www.econ.ucla.edu/hotz/working_papers/teen.pdf
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Department of Economics, University of California, Los Angeles
Keyword(s): Adolescent Fertility; Childbearing, Adolescent; Family Resources; School Dropouts; Variables, Instrumental

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

We exploit a "natural experiment" associated with human reproduction to identify the causal effect of teen childbearing on the socioeconomic attainment of teen mothers. We exploit the fact that some women who become pregnant experience a miscarriage and do not have a live birth. Using miscarriages an instrumental variable, we estimate the effect of teen mothers not delaying their childbearing on their subsequent attainment. We find that many of the negative consequences of teenage childbearing are much smaller than those found in previous studies. For most outcomes, the adverse consequences of early childbearing are short-lived. Finally, for annual hours of work and earnings, we find that a teen mother would have lower levels of each at older ages if they had delayed their childbearing.
Bibliography Citation
Hotz, V. Joseph, Susan Williams McElroy and Seth G. Sanders. "Teenage Childbearing and Its Life Cycle Consequences: Exploiting a Natural Experiment." Working Paper, Department of Economics, University of California - Los Angeles, July 2004.
21. Hotz, V. Joseph
McElroy, Susan Williams
Sanders, Seth G.
The Impacts of Teenage Childbearing on Mothers and the Consequences of those Impacts for Government
Working Paper 95-10, Population Research Center, NORC-University of Chicago, Chicago IL, July 1996
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79
Publisher: National Opinion Research Center - NORC
Keyword(s): Childbearing, Adolescent; Fertility; Mothers, Adolescent; Socioeconomic Factors; Teenagers

In this chapter, we examine the effects of early childbearing on the subsequent behavior and socioeconomic attainment of teen mothers. To obtain reliable estimates of these effects, we use an innovative evaluation design in which teenage women who miscarried become a control group for comparison with teenage women who gave birth. Applying this design, we are able to sort out confounding factors that have led to common beliefs about the negative effects of teenage childbearing on the life prospects of the mothers and attempt to estimate the following set of causal effects: If young women who are "at risk" of becoming teen mothers are somehow convinced to delay their childbearing by two years, how substantially would their life prospects be improved and how much would this affect what the government spends overall on these woomen.
Bibliography Citation
Hotz, V. Joseph, Susan Williams McElroy and Seth G. Sanders. "The Impacts of Teenage Childbearing on Mothers and the Consequences of those Impacts for Government." Working Paper 95-10, Population Research Center, NORC-University of Chicago, Chicago IL, July 1996.
22. Hotz, V. Joseph
McElroy, Susan Williams
Sanders, Seth G.
The Impacts of Teenage Childbearing on the Mothers and the Consequences of those Impacts for Government
In: Kids Having Kids: Economic Costs and Social Consequences of Teen Pregnancy. R.A. Maynard, ed. Washington, DC: The Urban Institute Press, 1997: pp. 55-90
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
Keyword(s): Age at First Birth; Aid for Families with Dependent Children (AFDC); Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Childbearing; Childbearing, Adolescent; GED/General Educational Diploma/General Equivalency Degree/General Educational Development; High School Completion/Graduates; Marriage; Mothers, Behavior; Socioeconomic Factors; Welfare

There is growing concern in the United States about the number of children born to teen mothers and the proportion of these births that occur out of wedlock. A decade ago, the National Research Council concluded that "adolescent pregnancy and childbearing are matters of substantial national concern" (Hayes 1987, p. ii) and President Bill Clinton, in his 1995 State of the Union Message, asserted that teenage pregnancy is "our most serious social problem." Part of the concern centers around the plight of teen mothers. The everyday hardships of teen motherhood come into public consciousness through media attention to and the prevalence of teen childbearing throughout the United States. Furthermore, there is a strong statistical association between the age at which a woman has her first child and her subsequent socioeconomic well-being. For example, one finds that women who have a baby in their teens are subsequently less likely to complete school, less likely to marry (and thus have a par enting partner), less likely to participate in the labor force, likely to earn less in their jobs, and more likely to rely on various forms of public assistance than are women who do not give birth in adolescence.
Bibliography Citation
Hotz, V. Joseph, Susan Williams McElroy and Seth G. Sanders. "The Impacts of Teenage Childbearing on the Mothers and the Consequences of those Impacts for Government" In: Kids Having Kids: Economic Costs and Social Consequences of Teen Pregnancy. R.A. Maynard, ed. Washington, DC: The Urban Institute Press, 1997: pp. 55-90
23. Hotz, V. Joseph
Pantano, Juan
Parenting, Birth Order and School Achievement (Revised as Strategic Parenting, Birth Order and School Achievement , February 2011).
Presented: New Orleans, LA, Population Association of America (PAA) 2008 Annual Meeting, April 17-19, 2008
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Academic Development; Achievement; Birth Order; Discipline; School Progress; Schooling; Television Viewing

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Interest on the effects of birth order on human capital accumulation has recently re-emerged. The debate about its existence seems to be settled, but identification of the main mechanisms remains somewhat elusive. While the latest research aims at rediscovering dilution theory, we advance complementary economic hypothesis regarding the causal mechanism underlying birth order effects in education. In particular, we entertain theories of differential discipline in which those who are born later face more lenient disciplinary environments. In such context, the later born will be likely to exert lower school effort, thus reaching lower achievement levels. We provide robust empirical evidence on substantial attenuation of TV viewing restrictions for those with higher birth order (born later). We speculate this may arise a) as a result of parental reputation dynamics and/or b) because of the changing relative cost of alternative punishment technologies available to parents.
Bibliography Citation
Hotz, V. Joseph and Juan Pantano. "Parenting, Birth Order and School Achievement (Revised as Strategic Parenting, Birth Order and School Achievement , February 2011)." Presented: New Orleans, LA, Population Association of America (PAA) 2008 Annual Meeting, April 17-19, 2008.
24. Hotz, V. Joseph
Pantano, Juan
Strategic Parenting, Birth Order and School Performance
NBER Working Paper No. 19542, National Bureau of Economic Research, October 2013 (Revised Jan 2015).
Also: IZA Discussion Paper No. 7680. Forthcoming in Journal of Population Economics.
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Keyword(s): Academic Development; Achievement; Birth Order; Child School Survey 1994-1995; Child Self-Administered Supplement (CSAS); Discipline; Family Size; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Parent Supervision/Monitoring; Parent-Child Interaction; Parental Influences; Parental Investments; Parenting Skills/Styles; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT); School Progress; Schooling; Siblings; Television Viewing

Fueled by new evidence, there has been renewed interest about the effects of birth order on human capital accumulation. The underlying causal mechanisms for such effects remain unsettled. We consider a model in which parents impose more stringent disciplinary environments in response to their earlier-born children�s poor performance in school in order to deter such outcomes for their later-born offspring. We provide robust empirical evidence that school performance of children in the NLSY-C declines with birth order as does the stringency of their parents' disciplinary restrictions. And, when asked how they will respond if a child brought home bad grades, parents state that they would be less likely to punish their later-born children. Taken together, these patterns are consistent with a reputation model of strategic parenting.
Bibliography Citation
Hotz, V. Joseph and Juan Pantano. "Strategic Parenting, Birth Order and School Performance." NBER Working Paper No. 19542, National Bureau of Economic Research, October 2013 (Revised Jan 2015).
25. Hotz, V. Joseph
Pantano, Juan
Strategic Parenting, Birth Order, and School Performance
Journal of Population Economics 28,4 (October 2015): 911-936.
Also: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00148-015-0542-3
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79
Publisher: Springer
Keyword(s): Academic Development; Achievement; Birth Order; Child School Survey 1994-1995; Child Self-Administered Supplement (CSAS); Discipline; Family Size; Parent Supervision/Monitoring; Parent-Child Interaction; Parental Influences; Parental Investments; Parenting Skills/Styles; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT); School Progress; Schooling; Television Viewing

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Fueled by new evidence, there has been renewed interest about the effects of birth order on human capital accumulation. The underlying causal mechanisms for such effects remain unsettled. We consider a model in which parents impose more stringent disciplinary environments in response to their earlier-born children's poor performance in school in order to deter such outcomes for their later-born offspring. We provide robust empirical evidence that school performance of children in the National Longitudinal Study Children (NLSY-C) declines with birth order as does the stringency of their parents' disciplinary restrictions. When asked how they will respond if a child brought home bad grades, parents state that they would be less likely to punish their later-born children. Taken together, these patterns are consistent with a reputation model of strategic parenting.
Bibliography Citation
Hotz, V. Joseph and Juan Pantano. "Strategic Parenting, Birth Order, and School Performance." Journal of Population Economics 28,4 (October 2015): 911-936.
26. Hotz, V. Joseph
Sanders, Seth G.
McElroy, Susan Williams
Teenage Childbearing and Its Life Cycle Consequences: Exploiting a Natural Experiment
NBER Working Paper No. W7397, National Bureau of Economic Research, October 1999.
Also: http://papers.nber.org/papers/W7397
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Keyword(s): Abortion; Adolescent Fertility; Childbearing, Adolescent; Educational Attainment; Family Structure; Fertility; Labor Market Outcomes; Labor Supply; Life Cycle Research; Mothers, Adolescent; Parents, Single; Poverty; Socioeconomic Factors; Variables, Instrumental

In this paper, we exploit a 'natural experiment' associated with human reproduction to identify the effect of teen childbearing on subsequent educational attainment, family structure, labor market outcomes and financial self-sufficiency. In particular, we exploit the fact that a substantial fraction of women who become pregnant experience a miscarriage (spontaneous abortion) and thus do not have a birth. If miscarriages were purely random and if miscarriages were the only way, other than by live births, that a pregnancy ended, then women, who had a miscarriage as a teen, would constitute an ideal control group with which to contrast teenage mothers. Exploiting this natural experiment, we devise an Instrumental Variables (IV) estimators for the consequences of teen mothers not delaying their childbearing, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 (NLSY79). Our major finding is that many of the negative consequences of not delaying childbearing until adulthood are much smaller than has been estimated in previous studies. While we do find adverse consequences of teenage childbearing immediately following a teen mother's first birth, these negative consequences appear short-lived. By the time a teen mother reaches her late twenties, she appears to have only slightly more children, is only slightly more likely to be single mother, and has no lower levels of educational attainment than if she had delayed her childbearing to adulthood. In fact, by this age teen mothers appear to be better off in some aspects of their lives. Teenage childbearing appears to raise levels of labor supply, accumulated work experience and labor market earnings and appears to reduce the chances of living in poverty and participating in the associated social welfare programs. These estimated effects imply that the cost of teenage childbearing to U.S. taxpayers is negligible. In particular, our estimates imply that the widely held view that teenage childbearing imposes a substantial cost on government is an artifact of the failure to appropriately account for pre-existing socioeconomic differences between teen mothers and other women when estimating the causal effects of early childbearing. While teen mothers are very likely to live in poverty and experience other forms of adversity, our results imply that little of this would be changed just by getting teen mothers to delay their childbearing into adulthood.
Bibliography Citation
Hotz, V. Joseph, Seth G. Sanders and Susan Williams McElroy. "Teenage Childbearing and Its Life Cycle Consequences: Exploiting a Natural Experiment." NBER Working Paper No. W7397, National Bureau of Economic Research, October 1999.
27. Hotz, V. Joseph
Scholz, John Karl
Measuring Employment and Income for Low-Income Populations with Administrative and Survey Data
In: Studies of Welfare Populations. M. Ver Ploeg et al., eds. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2001.
Also: Discussion Paper No. 1224-01. Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin - Madison, February 2001.
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: National Academy Press
Keyword(s): Current Population Survey (CPS) / CPS-Fertility Supplement; Employment; Income; Income Level; Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID); Skills; Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP); Unemployment Insurance; Wages; Welfare

We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of income and employment data in national surveys, in unemployment insurance (UI) wage records, and in tax returns. The CPS, SIPP, NLS, and PSID surveys provide valuable information on the behavior of the low-income population. They have broad and fairly accurate measures of income for national samples, and their focus on families as the unit of analysis and their ease of access greatly enhance their value. The value of these data sets for evaluating welfare reform is severely limited, however. With the devolution of responsibility for TANF, the CPS and SIPP sampling frames and sample sizes mean that, at best, they can be only supplementary data sources for understanding the effects of welfare reform at the state and local levels. The apparent decline in program coverage in the CPS is also worrisome. UI data are available at the state level and can be matched to individuals in existing samples at relatively low cost. It is straightforward to do follow-up analyses on income and employment for workers who remain in the state, and UI data are timely. However, earnings are available only for individuals, while changes in family composition upon exit from welfare have been shown to have a large bearing on economic well-being. UI data do not allow us to track these changes. There also appears to be a substantial problem with some workers being classified as independent contractors and hence not entering the UI system. Overall gaps in coverage appear to be at least 13 percent and may be significantly higher. Even when wages are reported, there is some evidence that they are understated by a significant amount. We also present evidence on the degree to which tax data can be used to understand the incomes and employment of low-skilled workers. The paper concludes with brief recommendations for future research that might help fill some of the gaps we have identified.
Bibliography Citation
Hotz, V. Joseph and John Karl Scholz. "Measuring Employment and Income for Low-Income Populations with Administrative and Survey Data" In: Studies of Welfare Populations. M. Ver Ploeg et al., eds. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2001.
28. Hotz, V. Joseph
Xu, Lixin Colin
Tienda, Marta
Ahituv, Avner
Are There Returns to the Wages of Young Men from Working While in School?
JCPR Working Paper 101, Joint Center for Poverty Research, Northwestern University/University of Chicago, July 1999.
Also: http://www.jcpr.org/wp/WPprofile.cfm?ID=101
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Joint Center for Poverty Research
Keyword(s): Heterogeneity; High School; Schooling; Selectivity Bias/Selection Bias; Wage Growth; Wages, Young Men; Work Experience

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

This paper examines the impacts of work experience acquired while youth were in high school (and college) on young men's wage rates during the 1980s and 1990s. Previous studies have found evidence of sizeable and persistent rates of return to working while enrolled in school, especially high school, on subsequent wage growth. Such findings may represent causal effects of having acquired work experience while still enrolled in school, but they may also be the result of failure to fully account for individual differences in young adults' capacities to acquire such skills and be productive in the work force later in life. We reexamine the robustness of previous attempts to control for unobserved heterogeneity and selectivity. We explore more general methods for dealing with dynamic forms of selection by explicitly modeling the educational and work choices of young men from age 13 through their late twenties. Using data on young men from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, (NLSY79), we find that the estimated returns to working while in high school or college are dramatically diminished in magnitude and statistical significance when one uses these dynamic selection methods. As such, our results indicate a decided lack of robustness to the inference about the effects of working while in school that has been drawn from previous work.
Bibliography Citation
Hotz, V. Joseph, Lixin Colin Xu, Marta Tienda and Avner Ahituv. "Are There Returns to the Wages of Young Men from Working While in School?" JCPR Working Paper 101, Joint Center for Poverty Research, Northwestern University/University of Chicago, July 1999.
29. Hotz, V. Joseph
Xu, Lixin Colin
Tienda, Marta
Ahituv, Avner
Are There Returns to the Wages of Young Men from Working While in School?
NBER Working Paper No. 7289, National Bureau of Economic Research, August 1999.
Also: http://papers.nber.org/papers/W7289
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Keyword(s): Heterogeneity; High School; Schooling; Selectivity Bias/Selection Bias; Wage Growth; Wages, Young Men; Work Experience

This paper examines the impacts of work experience acquired while youth were in high school (and college) on young men's wage rates during the 1980s and 1990s. Previous studies have found evidence of sizeable and persistent rates of return to working while enrolled in school, especially high school, on subsequent wage growth. Such findings may represent causal effects of having acquired work experience while still enrolled in school, but they may also be the result of failure to fully account for individual differences in young adults' capacities to acquire such skills and be productive in the work force later in life. We re-examine the robustness of previous attempts to control for unobserved heterogeneity and selectivity. We explore more general methods for dealing with dynamic forms of selection by explicitly modeling the educational and work choices of young men from age 13 through their late twenties. Using data on young men from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79), we find that the estimated returns to working while in high school or college are dramatically diminished in magnitude and statistical significance when one uses these dynamic selection methods. As such, our results indicate a decided lack of robustness to the inference about the effects of working while in school that has been drawn from previous work.
Bibliography Citation
Hotz, V. Joseph, Lixin Colin Xu, Marta Tienda and Avner Ahituv. "Are There Returns to the Wages of Young Men from Working While in School?" NBER Working Paper No. 7289, National Bureau of Economic Research, August 1999.
30. Hotz, V. Joseph
Xu, Lixin Colin
Tienda, Marta
Ahituv, Avner
Are There Returns to the Wages of Young Men from Working While in School?
Review of Economics and Statistics 84,2 (May 2002): 221-236.
Also: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3211773
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Keyword(s): Height; High School; Part-Time Work; Wage Rates; Wages, Youth; Work Experience

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

This paper examines the effects of work experience acquired while youth were in high school (and college) on young men's wage rates. Previous studies have found sizeable and persistent rates of return to working while enrolled in school, especially high school, on subsequent wage growth. The extent to which these estimates represent causal effects by assessing the robustness of prior findings to controls for unobserved heterogeneity and sample selectivity are evaluated. More-general econometric methods for dealing with the dynamic of selection and apply them to data on young men from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) are explored. It is found that the estimated returns to working while in high school or college are dramatically diminished in magnitude and are not statistically significant when one applies dynamic selection methods.
Bibliography Citation
Hotz, V. Joseph, Lixin Colin Xu, Marta Tienda and Avner Ahituv. "Are There Returns to the Wages of Young Men from Working While in School?" Review of Economics and Statistics 84,2 (May 2002): 221-236.
31. Tienda, Marta
Hotz, V. Joseph
Ahituv, Avner
Frost, Michelle Bellessa
Employment and Wage Prospects of Black, White, and Hispanic Women
In: Human Resource Economics and Public Policy: Essays in Honor of Vernon M. Briggs, Jr. C.J. Whalen, ed. Kalamazoo, MI: W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 2010: 129-160
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research
Keyword(s): Employment, Youth; Endogeneity; Ethnic Differences; Ethnic Groups; Geocoded Data; Hispanic Studies; Human Capital; Life Cycle Research; Minorities; Motherhood; Racial Differences; Schooling; Transition, School to Work; Wages

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

This chapter addresses several questions about young women's employment and wage prospects in the context of the school-to-work transition.
Bibliography Citation
Tienda, Marta, V. Joseph Hotz, Avner Ahituv and Michelle Bellessa Frost. "Employment and Wage Prospects of Black, White, and Hispanic Women" In: Human Resource Economics and Public Policy: Essays in Honor of Vernon M. Briggs, Jr. C.J. Whalen, ed. Kalamazoo, MI: W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 2010: 129-160