Search Results

Author: Loughran, David S.
Resulting in 12 citations.
1. Asch, Beth J.
Buck, Christopher
Klerman, Jacob Alex
Kleykamp, Meredith
Loughran, David S.
Military Enlistment of Hispanic Youth: Obstacles and Opportunities
RAND Report MG-773-OSD, RAND National Defense Research Institute, 2009.
Also: www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2009/RAND_MG773.pdf
Cohort(s): NLSY79, NLSY97
Publisher: RAND
Keyword(s): Fertility; Health Factors; High School Completion/Graduates; High School Diploma; Language Problems; Military Enlistment; Military Recruitment; Military Service; Obesity; Substance Use; Test Scores/Test theory/IRT

Also available in HTML format: http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG773.html

An implicit goal of Congress, the Department of Defense, and the armed services is that diversity in the armed services should approximate diversity in the general population. A key aspect of that diversity is the representation of Hispanics. Although polls of Hispanic youth show a strong propensity to serve in the military, Hispanics are nevertheless underrepresented among military recruits. The authors discuss the major characteristics that disproportionately disqualify Hispanic youth and explore the following questions: If recruiting standards were relaxed, what would be the effect on military performance? What actions could be taken to increase Hispanic enlistments? Finally, they examine several approaches to increasing enlistments -- increasing the number of Hispanic youth who are eligible and would meet the military's entry standards, increasing interest and recruiting more intensively among the qualified Hispanic population, and targeting recruiting toward less-qualified Hispanics.

Hispanics are a growing segment of the youth population, yet they have historically been underrepresented among military recruits. A widely cited reason is Hispanics’ below-average rate of graduation from high school, combined with the services’ preference for recruits with high school diplomas. But other, less studied, factors may also contribute. Such factors might include lack of language proficiency as reflected in aptitude test scores; fertility choices; health factors, such as obesity; and involvement in risky activities, such as the use of illegal drugs. These factors, to the extent they are present in the Hispanic population, could adversely affect the services’ ability to meet their enlistment standards.

Our project, “Hispanic Youth in the U.S. and the Factors Affecting Their Enlistment,” analyzed the factors that lead to the underrepresentation of Hispanic youth among military enlistments. To help policymakers evaluate the feasibility of improving Hispanic enlistments by recruiting more intensively from among the population that is qualified for service and the implications of recruiting Hispanics who are less qualified, we also analyzed both the nonmilitary opportunities available to qualified Hispanic youth and the consequences of recruiting less-qualified Hispanic youth.

Bibliography Citation
Asch, Beth J., Christopher Buck, Jacob Alex Klerman, Meredith Kleykamp and David S. Loughran. "Military Enlistment of Hispanic Youth: Obstacles and Opportunities." RAND Report MG-773-OSD, RAND National Defense Research Institute, 2009.
2. Augustyn, Megan
Kamerdze, Amy
Loughran, David S.
Untangling the Heterogeneity in the Marriage Effect
Presented: Chicago IL, American Society of Criminology Annual Meeting, November 2012
Cohort(s): NLSY97
Publisher: American Society of Criminology
Keyword(s): Crime; Heterogeneity; Life Course; Marriage

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

Using a life course framework as a guide, much of the recent work on desistance from crime has examined the positive effect of marriage on the decrease and/or cessation of criminal activity. Rare, though, is the examination of the heterogeneity in the effect of marriage on criminal involvement. This is unfortunate because prior work may overstate or understate the beneficial effect of marriage during the life course. This study is one attempt to fill this void in literature. Specifically, this investigation will use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to investigate whether or not there is heterogeneity in the marriage effect across propensity, age, gender and race. In addition, it will help to clarify theory by examining the true robustness of the social bond in question.
Bibliography Citation
Augustyn, Megan, Amy Kamerdze and David S. Loughran. "Untangling the Heterogeneity in the Marriage Effect." Presented: Chicago IL, American Society of Criminology Annual Meeting, November 2012.
3. Datar, Ashlesha
Kilburn, M. Rebecca
Loughran, David S.
Endowments and Parental Investments in Infancy and Early Childhood
Demography 47,1 (February 2010): 145-162.
Also: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/demography/v047/47.1.datar.pdf
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Birthweight; Child Health; Human Capital; Infants; Mothers, Health; Parental Influences; Parents, Behavior; Pre-natal Care/Exposure; Pre/post Natal Behavior; Pre/post Natal Health Care; Preschool Children; Siblings

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

This article tests whether parents reinforce or compensate for child endowments. We estimate how the difference in birth weight across siblings impacts specific parental investments: breast-feeding, well-baby visits, immunizations, and preschool attendance. Our results indicate that normal-birthweight children are 5%–11% more likely to receive early childhood parental investments than their low-birth-weight siblings. Moreover, the presence of additional low-birth-weight siblings in the household increases the likelihood of investments such as well-baby visits and immunizations for normal-birth-weight children. These results suggest that parental investments in early childhood tend to reinforce endowment differences.
Bibliography Citation
Datar, Ashlesha, M. Rebecca Kilburn and David S. Loughran. "Endowments and Parental Investments in Infancy and Early Childhood." Demography 47,1 (February 2010): 145-162.
4. Datar, Ashlesha
Kilburn, M. Rebecca
Loughran, David S.
Health Endowments and Parental Investments in Infancy and Early Childhood
Working Paper WR-367, RAND Labor and Population Working Paper Series, Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, CA, March 2006.
Also: http://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/2006/RAND_WR367.pdf
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79
Publisher: RAND
Keyword(s): Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Birthweight; Breastfeeding; Family Characteristics; Head Start; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Pre-natal Care/Exposure; Preschool Children; Siblings

This paper tests whether parents reinforce or compensate for child endowments. We employ birth weight as a proxy for endowments and estimate how the difference in birth weight across siblings impacts specific parental investments, including breastfeeding initiation and duration, well-baby visits, immunizations, preschool attendance, and kindergarten entry age. We also examine whether parental investment in a child is impacted by her siblings' endowments. Our results indicate that heavier birth weight children receive higher levels of most parental investment than their lower birth weight siblings suggesting that parental investments in infancy and early childhood reinforce differences in endowments. In one exception, we find weak evidence that lower birth weight children enter kindergarten slightly later than their normal birth weight siblings, which could be interpreted as a compensating parental investment. Presence of a low birth weight sibling in the household increases the likelihood of investments such as well-baby visits and immunizations.

We use data from the NLSY-C, which contains detailed information about the children born to female respondents of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79). We first restrict our sample to mothers with at least two children surveyed between 1986-2000 with birth weight information available for at least one child. Next, we only keep children for whom there is information on at least one of the parental investments examined in the paper. This reduces the sample to 10,000 children born to 3,660 mothers.

We exploit four key features of the NLSY-C for the purposes of this paper. First, the NLSY-C collects data on all children born to NLSY79 mothers, which allows us to examine intrafamily resource allocation decisions. Second, the NLSY-C collects data on birth weight for all surveyed children. The third key feature of the NLSY-C is that it collects information on a number of health and educational investments that parents make in their children starting in infancy and early childhood. Finally, the availability of information regarding maternal and family characteristics, and prenatal investments at the time of each sibling's birth is a unique feature of these data and allows us to control for such differences across siblings.

Our analyses consider the following investments:
(1) Initiation and duration (weeks) of breastfeeding
(2) Whether the child was taken for a well-baby visit in the first year after birth
(3) Whether the child received all doses of DPT and oral polio vaccines
(4) Whether the child attended preschool (including Head Start)
(5) Kindergarten entrance age (KEA) in months, and whether the child was held back
from entering kindergarten even after he or she was eligible

Bibliography Citation
Datar, Ashlesha, M. Rebecca Kilburn and David S. Loughran. "Health Endowments and Parental Investments in Infancy and Early Childhood." Working Paper WR-367, RAND Labor and Population Working Paper Series, Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, CA, March 2006.
5. Kilburn, M. Rebecca
Loughran, David S.
Parental Investment and Later Outcomes Among Low Birthweight Children
Presented: Minneapolis, MN, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, May 2003
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Birthweight; Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME); Modeling, Fixed Effects; Pairs (also see Siblings); Siblings; Test Scores/Test theory/IRT

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

Our paper has three principle objectives. Our first objective is to clarify how the omission of family and individual-level endowments can confound estimates of both the short and long-run consequences of low birthweight. In formal models, we highlight how various empirical strategies control for specific endowments and the effects these controls are likely to have on parameter estimates. We also develop methods for decomposing birthweight effects into family and individual-level components. These exercises will allow us to more precisely interpret the results of our empirical analyses to follow as well as those in the current literature.

We then expand upon the results in Boardman, et al. (2002), who examined only test scores, to include other health and behavioral outcomes available in the NLSY Child Sample. Our models will explore patterns of results using a variety of specifications, including OLS, mother fixed-effects, mother-sibling fixed effects, and IV strategies. The research pays careful attention to the source of variation in birthweight and outcomes across sibling pairs and considers how family income and other common environmental influences affect the relationship between birthweight and later outcomes. In addition, we experiment with a variety of measures of low birthweight including categorical and continuous measures and indices combining birthweight and prematurity.

Bibliography Citation
Kilburn, M. Rebecca and David S. Loughran. "Parental Investment and Later Outcomes Among Low Birthweight Children." Presented: Minneapolis, MN, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, May 2003.
6. Loughran, David S.
Datar, Ashlesha
Kilburn, M. Rebecca
Interaction of Birth Weight, Gestation, and Parental Investment in the Production of Cognitive Development
Presented: Boston, MA, Population Association of America Meetings, April 2004
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Birthweight; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); School Entry/Readiness; Siblings

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

Low birthweight is correlated with a variety of poor health and cognitive outcomes at both younger and older ages. In this paper, we estimate models of children's achievement scores as a function of birth weight using data from the NLSY Child sample. Data on siblings permit us to control for family-level heterogeneity and test how the effect of birth weight on achievement scores varies with age and grade attainment. We also pay careful attention to how parameters estimates vary across different measures of birthweight and gestational age. Additionally, we investigate whether parental investment in the form of delayed kindergarten entrance compensates for the negative effect of low birthweight on subsequent achievement scores.
Bibliography Citation
Loughran, David S., Ashlesha Datar and M. Rebecca Kilburn. "Interaction of Birth Weight, Gestation, and Parental Investment in the Production of Cognitive Development." Presented: Boston, MA, Population Association of America Meetings, April 2004.
7. Loughran, David S.
Datar, Ashlesha
Kilburn, M. Rebecca
Interactive Effect of Birth Weight and Common Parental Investment on Child Test Scores
Working PaperWR-404, RAND Labor and Population Working Paper Series, Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, CA, July 2006
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79
Publisher: RAND
Keyword(s): Birthweight; Family Models; Family Size; Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME); Maternal Employment; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); School Entry/Readiness; School Progress; Siblings; Test Scores/Test theory/IRT; Variables, Instrumental

The theoretical and empirical literature on intrahousehold resource allocation focuses on whether child-specific parental investments reinforce or compensate for a child's initial endowments. However, many parental investments, like housing and neighborhood quality and family structure, are shared wholly or in part among all children in a household. The empirical results of this paper imply that these common parental investments are more beneficial to relatively poorly endowed siblings, where birth weight proxies for endowments. This is especially true in relatively high-SES families.

Since we cannot comprehensively account for common parental investments with specific variables available in nationally representative data sets, like the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-Child file (NLSY-C), nor can we directly measure endowments, we employ an indirect approach in this paper to assess whether common parental investment reinforces or compensates for endowments. This approach compares estimates of the impact of birth weight, which we treat as an observed correlate of endowments, on child test scores derived from empirical specifications that employ between-family and within-family variation in our data.

Bibliography Citation
Loughran, David S., Ashlesha Datar and M. Rebecca Kilburn. "Interactive Effect of Birth Weight and Common Parental Investment on Child Test Scores." Working PaperWR-404, RAND Labor and Population Working Paper Series, Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, CA, July 2006.
8. Loughran, David S.
Datar, Ashlesha
Kilburn, M. Rebecca
Interactive Effect of Birth Weight and Parental Investment on Child Test Scores
Working Paper No. WR-168, RAND, June 2004.
Also: http://www.rand.org/publications/WR/WR168/WR168.pdf
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79
Publisher: RAND
Keyword(s): Birthweight; Family Models; Family Size; Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME); Maternal Employment; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); School Progress

This paper explores how observed and unobserved parental investments compensate for low birth weight. Controlling for family fixed effects, which encompass unobserved parental investment, we find birth weight positively correlates with math and reading scores and these estimates are considerably larger in magnitude than estimates derived from models that do not control for family fixed effects. Additionally, we examine how three specific parental investments -- kindergarten entrance age, maternal labor supply, and family size -- interact with birth weight in models of child test scores. Of these investments, only smaller family size conveys particular advantage to low birth weight children.
Bibliography Citation
Loughran, David S., Ashlesha Datar and M. Rebecca Kilburn. "Interactive Effect of Birth Weight and Parental Investment on Child Test Scores." Working Paper No. WR-168, RAND, June 2004.
9. Loughran, David S.
Datar, Ashlesha
Kilburn, M. Rebecca
The Response of Household Parental Investment to Child Endowments
RAND Working Paper Series No. WR-404-1, RAND, April 2008.
Also: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=999821
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79
Publisher: RAND
Keyword(s): Birthweight; Family Models; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Motor and Social Development (MSD); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT)

The theoretical and empirical literature on parental investment focuses on whether child-specific parental investments reinforce or compensate for a child's initial endowments. However, many parental investments, such as neighborhood quality and family size and structure, are shared wholly or in part among all children in a household. The empirical results of this paper imply that such household parental investments compensate for low endowments, as proxied by low birth weight.
Bibliography Citation
Loughran, David S., Ashlesha Datar and M. Rebecca Kilburn. "The Response of Household Parental Investment to Child Endowments." RAND Working Paper Series No. WR-404-1, RAND, April 2008.
10. Loughran, David S.
Zissimopoulos, Julie M.
Are There Gains to Delaying Marriage? The Effect of Age at First Marriage on Career Development and Wages
Working Paper No. WR-207, RAND, November 2004.
Also: http://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/2004/RAND_WR207.pdf
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: RAND
Keyword(s): Age at First Marriage; Career Patterns; Marriage; Wages

Age at first marriage has risen dramatically since the mid-1960s among a wide spectrum of the U.S. population. Researchers have considered many possible explanations for this trend. Few, though, have asked why individuals should want to delay marriage in the first place. One possibility is that early marriage inhibits the career development of one or both individuals in a marriage. We test this hypothesis using data from the NLSY79. Using panel data methods that exploit longitudinal variation in wages and marriage timing, we estimate that delaying marriage increases hourly wages of women by nearly four percent for each year they delay. Marriage timing has no impact on the wages of men. We find that delaying marriage may have costs as well. All else equal, women who delay marriage marry spouses with lower wages.
Bibliography Citation
Loughran, David S. and Julie M. Zissimopoulos. "Are There Gains to Delaying Marriage? The Effect of Age at First Marriage on Career Development and Wages." Working Paper No. WR-207, RAND, November 2004.
11. Loughran, David S.
Zissimopoulos, Julie M.
Why Wait? The Effect of Marriage and Childbearing on the Wage Growth of Men and Women
Working Paper WR-482, RAND Labor and Population, RAND Corportation, Santa Monica, CA, March 2008.
Also: http://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/2008/RAND_WR482-1.pdf
Cohort(s): NLSY79, Young Men, Young Women
Publisher: RAND
Keyword(s): Childbearing; Marriage; Wage Growth; Wages, Men; Wages, Women

We use data from the earlier and later cohorts of the NLSY to estimate the effect of marriage and childbearing on wages. Our estimates imply that marriage lowers female wages by between two and four percent in the year of marriage. Marriage also lowers the wage growth of men and women by about two and four percentage points, respectively. A first birth lowers female wages by between two and three percent, but has no effect on wage growth. Male wages are unaffected by childbearing. These findings suggest that early marriage and childbearing can lead to substantial decreases in lifetime earnings.
Bibliography Citation
Loughran, David S. and Julie M. Zissimopoulos. "Why Wait? The Effect of Marriage and Childbearing on the Wage Growth of Men and Women." Working Paper WR-482, RAND Labor and Population, RAND Corportation, Santa Monica, CA, March 2008.
12. Loughran, David S.
Zissimopoulos, Julie M.
Why Wait? The Effect of Marriage and Childbearing on the Wages of Men and Women
Journal of Human Resources 44,2 (Spring 2009): 326-349.
Also: http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/44/2/326.abstract
Cohort(s): NLSY79, Young Men, Young Women
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Keyword(s): Child Care; Children; Domestic Violence; Earnings; Family Structure; Marital Dissolution; Marriage; Wage Differentials; Wage Levels

We use data from the earlier and later cohorts of the NLSY to estimate the effect of marriage and childbearing on wages. Our estimates imply that marriage lowers female wages 2-4 percent in the year of marriage. Marriage also lowers the wage growth of men and women by about two and four percentage points, respectively. A first birth lowers female wages 2-3 percent, but has no effect on wage growth. Male wages are unaffected by childbearing. These findings suggest that early marriage and childbearing can lead to substantial decreases in lifetime earnings.
Bibliography Citation
Loughran, David S. and Julie M. Zissimopoulos. "Why Wait? The Effect of Marriage and Childbearing on the Wages of Men and Women." Journal of Human Resources 44,2 (Spring 2009): 326-349.