Search Results

Methods: We analyze the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79; N = 3992) using mixed-mode Latent Class Analysis with eight childbearing variables (e.g., age at first birth, parity, birth spacing, and mistimed births) to identify how childbearing biographies are associated with midlife health, adjusting for key covariates--including socioeconomic status (SES) and relationship history.

Results: We identify six childbearing biographies: (1) early compressed, (2) staggered, (3) extended high parity, (4) later, (5) married planned, and (6) childfree. Childbearing biographies are strongly associated with physical health but not mental health, with differences primarily explained by SES.

Methods: We use sequence analysis with hierarchical cluster method and estimate regression models using the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 3,231) to examine how timing and patterning of births by wantedness are associated with changes in physical and mental health from ages 40 to 50.

Results: We identify 7 clusters of childbearing sequences. Of those 7 clusters, respondents with sequences characterized by wanted births in their 20s and 30s had the smallest declines in health in mid-life, whereas respondents with sequences with mainly unwanted births at any age or with mainly mistimed births beginning in adolescence had the greatest health declines. Adjusting for social and economic variables accounted for some, but not all, health differences across childbearing clusters.

Discussion: This project demonstrates the need for comprehensive life course perspectives on long-term health implications of birth wantedness and timing, recognizing diversity within and between individuals.

Black Americans who have spent time in jail or prison are 65% more likely to die prematurely, even if it's been years since their incarceration, according to an analysis of data from a decades-long federal study.

However, jail time did not appear to have any meaningful impact on the long-term health of white former inmates, researchers recently reported in the journal JAMA Network Open.

[Media report based on journal article: Bovell-Ammon, Benjamin J., Ziming Xuan, Michael K. Paasche-Orlow and Marc R. LaRochelle. "Association of Incarceration With Mortality by Race From a National Longitudinal Cohort Study." JAMA Network Open 4,12 (December 2021): DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.33083]

In the final empirical chapter, I take an instrumental variables approach in estimating the causal returns to attending a selective institution. These estimates build upon prior findings in a few key manners. First, the breadth of data available in the NLSY79 permits the analysis of total family income and total family wealth, in addition to hourly wages or annual earnings. Also, the most recent waves of the NLSY79 report data on respondents through the age of 45, spanning an age range in which the measurement of SES is least susceptible to error. Findings from this chapter show that, in comparison to attending a less selective college, accessing a selective four-year institution leads to a greater likelihood of completing a bachelor's degree and attaining an advanced degree, higher hourly wages, and greater total family income and family net worth.

Results. The patterning of risk exposures from birth to age 8 was found to predict the initial level of average academic achievement and antisocial behavior at age 8, and the rate of change in average academic achievement and antisocial behavior over time between ages 8 to 14. Gender and race/ethnicity were found to influence both the patterning of childhood risks and the growth parameters of the development trajectories of academic and behavioral competence in early adolescence. Results for the influence of latent risk class membership and trajectories of competence on adolescent psychological well-being were inconclusive.

They also looked at data from Texas Higher Education Opportunity Projects and used the University of Texas at Austin to examine the impact on minorities' admissions. "If we want to reach a state where we don't need affirmative action, we need to confront and understand the mechanism restricting minorities the opportunity, and the SAT is one of them," says Alon. If universities implement the suggested policy, he says, they will still enroll a diverse student population without compromising academic quality.

The first chapter provides the first evidence of the effect of a U.S. paid maternity leave policy on the long-run outcomes of children. I exploit variation in access to paid leave that was created by long-standing state differences in short-term disability insurance coverage and the staggered enactment of laws that banned discrimination against pregnant workers in the 1960s and 1970s. While the availability of these benefits sparked a substantial expansion of leave-taking by new mothers, it also came with a cost. I find the enactment of paid leave led to shifts in labor supply and demand that decreased wages and family income among women of child-bearing age. In addition, the first generation of children born to mothers with access to maternity leave benefits were 1.9 percent less likely to attend college and 3.1 percent less likely to earn a four-year college degree.

Chapter 2 examines the labor-market consequences of a broad expansion of access to paid maternity benefits. The theoretical implications of maternity leave policies are ambiguous, with the potential for positive effects that stem from greater attachment to the labor force among mothers but also negative effects that could result from shifts in relative labor demand. I show that the enactment of maternity benefits through STDI slowed the convergence of the gender wage ratio by 31 percent between 1975 and 1985. I also provide evidence that this effect was driven in large part by apparent substitution of men for women into high-profile professional and management positions.

First, drawing from literature in economics and sociology, I propose a dynamic, life course model of indebtedness that proposes three mechanisms that drive differentiation in household indebtedness: institutional context (period), social heterogeneity, and patterned disadvantage, or structural risk. Second, I use multilevel logistic regressions to explore the association between the hypothesized mechanisms and the likelihood of holding non-collateralized debt. While experiencing negative life course risks increases the likelihood of holding debt, I find that occupying positions of structural disadvantage--being black, being in poverty--decreases the likelihood of holding debt, while having advantages--higher education, being married, holding assets--increases the likelihood of holding debt, pointing to distinct differences in who can access debt to buffer life course shocks and who cannot. Examining the interrelationships between debts and assets further underscores the tenuous economic well-being of the disadvantaged. I find that those most likely to experience negative life events are both less likely to have financial assets with which to buffer these events and more likely to experience constrained access to on-collateralized debt.

Third, I employ multilevel linear regressions to examine the association between the proposed mechanisms and three unique indicators of debt burden. I find that many of the standard coefficients included in models of net worth are not significant predictors of the level of non-collateralized, non-revolving debt, suggesting that we know much more about the correlates of income and wealth than we do household debt. Rather, variation in debt burden may be better understood by heterogeneity in non-economic variables. To better estimate this heterogeneity, I utilize latent class regression models to estimate the early life course trajectories of debt burden for the NLSY79 cohort. I find four distinct trajectories of indebtedness, with varying consequences for later life financial outcomes. Overall, I conclude that household debt is nuanced and contextually contingent and can add to our understanding of long-term stratification processes when studied as a unique indicator of inequality.

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at Columbia University and at the Institute for Research on Poverty conference in Madison, WI. An earlier version was presented at seminars at Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Harris School of Public Policy (Chicago), UCLA, UCSD, Columbia University, University of Toulouse, University of Bergen, and a conference at the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank.

Chapter one: Smoking, birth weight, and child development: Evidence from the NLSY79. One important justification for higher cigarette taxes is that pregnant smokers harm their children through in utero exposure. This paper investigates the impact of smoking while pregnant on subsequent child development, using the NLSY79 Mother-Child data, which allows for between-sibling comparisons. In utero exposure is related to an increase in behavioral problems among children and adolescents, but has no effect on intelligence. Targeted smoking cessation interventions may be cost-effective on the basis of nicotine's effects on child and adolescent development, though the optimal cigarette tax based on this justification is very small.

Chapter two: An empirical analysis of "acting white" (with Roland Fryer). There is a debate among social scientists regarding the prevalence of an insidious peer effect commonly referred to as "acting white". Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health which allows one to construct an objective measure of a student's popularity, we demonstrate that there are large racial differences in the relationship between popularity and academic achievement, which we label "acting white". The patterns in the data appear most consistent with a signaling model in which investments in education are thought to be indicative of an individual's opportunity costs of group loyalty.

Chapter three: The political response to recent changes in U.S. wage inequality. While there has been much work on the causes behind recent changes in the wage structure, it is unclear to what extent voters and politicians have agitated for political reforms in response to increasing inequality. This paper investigates House and Senate voting records and House Election results to examine the political response to wage inequality. The results suggest that inequality is related to turnover in the House, leading to a slightly greater number of Democrats on net. Voting records show that inequality leads to polarization by party, with Democrats voting more liberally and Republicans voting more conservatively. The results are consistent with models in which relative position in the income distribution matters, and where the "bite" of inequality hurts the bottom more than the top.

Almost 1 out of 3 white women in the U.S. are obese and data on white women born in 1960-1964 from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) show that, at age 30, obese women have completed almost 1 fewer school grade, are less likely to participate in the labor market, and if they work they have wages that are lower by 17%; they are more likely never to have been married and, if they are married, their spouses have incomes that are lower by 27%.

I interpret these facts taking into account that (a) body mass may affect labor- and marriage-market opportunities; (b) behavioral factors, potentially influenced by schooling attainment and family income, play a key role in the accumulation of body weight; and (c) women may be heterogeneous in terms of their propensity to gain weight on the one hand and labor- and marriage-market endowments on the other hand.

To this end, I specify and estimate a dynamic model in which (a) wage and spousal income offers, as well as the arrival probability of marriage offers, depend on body mass; and (b) from the time they leave school, women make decisions about their labor market participation, marital status, and body mass to maximize lifetime expected utility. Their utility function represents preferences over consumption, leisure, marital status, and body mass, where preferences over body mass capture the psychic costs of keeping the balance between energy intake and energy expenditure. Such preferences depend on recent fertility history, consumption, and schooling attainment; reflecting the role played by family background factors in the accumulation of body weight, they also depend on unobserved permanent characteristics, as do wage and spousal income offers. The model is estimated by the method of simulated maximum likelihood using a pa nel dataset on the body mass, labor market, marriag e market, and fertility histories of white women born in 1960-1964 from the NLSY79.

My results can be summarized as follows. In line with results on schooling attainment and labor market outcomes, I find that unobserved permanent characteristics play quite an important role also in the determination of body mass outcomes, explaining 16% of the cross-sectional variation in obesity at age 30. Furthermore, these characteristics are important in accounting for the observed relationship between body mass on the one hand and wages and spousal incomes on the other hand: the type of women who are most likely to become obese receive wage and spousal income offers that are lower by respectively 53% and 29%.

In itself, obesity has negative consequences in the marriage market, but not in the labor market: the odds ratio of receiving a marriage offer declines by 15% for obese women, who also receive spousal income offers that are lower by 7%. Without such marriage market incentives, the prevalence rate of obesity at age 30 would be higher by 21%.

More than 10% of women in my sample are already overweight when they leave school. In the concluding counterfactual experiment I address the following question: how effective in preventing adult obesity would be policies aimed at eliminating excess weight at the time of school leaving? I find that the prevalence rate of obesity would be persistently lower, even though initially overweight women are intrinsically much more inclined to gain weight than the average.

Using NLSY79 data from 1990-2000, this paper employs an endogenous switching regression model to analyze wages of day and night shift workers and shift choice. The model is estimated using both the Lee two-step method and maximum likelihood. Two measures of local economic conditions, the local unemployment rate and the state leading index, are used. The models provide evidence that shift differentials and local economic conditions significantly impact shift choice. Of the two local economic condition variables used in the analysis, the leading index is a stronger predictor of shift choice. This paper develops a new method of analyzing the impact of the interaction between the shift differential and local economic conditions on shift choice, providing limited evidence that compensating differentials for night shift work may be lower when local economies are weak. The calculated interaction effects are small. Estimated wage premiums for night shift work are negative, and are approximately half of day wages in the 1990 cross-section. Estimated wage differentials for night shift work are smaller in pooled cross-section analysis, ranging from roughly 2% to 11% below day wages. Analyzing cross-sections over time indicates that shift differentials were below day wages throughout most of the 1990's but in 2000, night wages were approximately 7-11% higher than day wages. Overall, the results provide evidence that individuals take both the size of the wage premium and local labor market conditions into account when selecting working hours.

The first chapter of my dissertation, "Does Affirmative Action Help or Hurt the Production of Black Lawyers?," considers whether affirmative action actually harms the production of black lawyers in the U.S. Affirmative action has been a controversial policy since its inception in the 1960's as it relates to both the labor market and the education system. The central question focuses on how affirmative action affects minorities, specifically in law schools and in the production of black lawyers. Using a detailed survey of law students conducted by the Law School Admissions Council (LSAC) from 1991 to 1996, I examine whether affirmative action caused black law students to be mismatched to the wrong school and whether mismatch reduced the number of black lawyers in the U.S. According to the mismatch hypothesis, students would have obtained better outcomes if they were not mismatched and had attended a lower-level school that more closely matched their ability level. Opponents of affirmative action believe that mismatch is one of the direct consequences of the policy (Wilkens, 2005). I present evidence that mismatch caused at least a 5.5 percent reduction in the number of black lawyers, but as Rothstein and Yoon (2006) conclude, this effect may be more negative.

The second chapter of my dissertation, "Decoding the GED Signal: The Role of Non-Cognitive Ability and Measurement Error," considers the role of non-cognitive ability in explaining the low and negative returns to a GED credential. Bowles, Gintis, and Osborne (2001) have shown that non-cognitive ability actually explains much more of the wage variation than cognitive ability. It is clear that abilities besides intelligence are rewarded in the labor market, but identifying clear measures of non-cognitive ability and considering its effect on education and labor market outcomes are relatively new questions in economics (Heckman and Rubinstein, 2001). I find that GED recipients do have lower non-cognitive abilities and that it explains their relatively low economic returns. However, the observable measures of non-cognitive ability are at best proxies for unobserved ability, so I utilize instrumental variables and a latent variable model to consider the effect of measurement error.

The third chapter of my dissertation, "The Effect of Unilateral Divorce Laws on Incentives to Invest in Children and the Behavioral Outcomes of Children," utilizes state-variation in unilateral divorce laws to consider the law's effect on family investment on an important type of marriage-specific capital; children. I also consider how a reduction in family investment in "marriage-specific capital" impacts children by examining their behavioral and labor market outcomes using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) and the NELS data sets. Unilateral divorce laws were passed in many states primarily in the 1960's and 1970's. The policy provides an exogenous shock that may affect divorce rates, household bargaining, and children's future outcomes. Previous research has primarily focused on two specific issues: the impact of these laws on divorce rates using Census data and the implications of divorce laws on bargaining power within the household. This chapter focuses on the latter question.

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A number of methodological innovations are incorporated into this dissertation. First, multilevel modeling is used in conjunction with the partial adjustment model to estimate career dynamics. Unlike cross-sectional analyses that simply compare individuals' achievement at a given point in time, this dissertation illustrates career trajectories by gender and race, and also demonstrates how career dynamics differ across demographic groups. Next, instead of studying a general mobility process, this dissertation decomposes job mobility by distinguishing types of mobility. Two sets of distinctions were made: the direction of job mobility (i.e., upward, downward, or horizontal) and the reasons for job mobility (i.e., voluntary or involuntary).

The results, in general, were consistent with my hypotheses. Whites still have better opportunities to advance in their careers compared to Hispanics and blacks. Blacks have the weakest momentum in terms of building their careers; moreover, they are also at the bottom of the occupational prestige hierarchy. Also, job mobility was triggered by individual characteristics, job characteristics, and macroeconomic factors. The effects of job characteristics and macroeconomic indicators are further differentiated after the types of mobility and the reasons for leaving jobs are specified. The impact of mergers and acquisitions on job mobility is rarely evaluated in the job mobility literature. The results in this research, though, show that mergers and acquisition do increase workers' risks of being fired or experiencing "programs end" because of the disappearance of jobs. Overall, the findings support the general impression that American business are downsizing.

The development of self-control, or the ability to manage one's behavior to comply with normative behavioral expectations, is generally recognized as a significant factor in preventing antisocial behavior and crime. Although extensive research has focused on the link between an individual's self-control and involvement in crime and/or problem behaviors, much less research has identified and examined the potential sources of an individual's self-control. The current study considers the school context as a potential resource for the development of self-control. One source of data was the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), which was a multistage, stratified cluster sample of 12,686 individuals between the ages of 14 and 21 in 1979. Since 1979, yearly interviews have been conducted with the sample to examine experiences when the youth s completed high school and entered the workforce. The second source of data was the NLSY Child-Mother, which was a separate biennial data collection that began in 1986. It included detailed assessments of each child born to the females in the original NLSY data cohort. The two surveys provided information on the following variables related to the cultivation of self-control: poor parental supervision, parental discipline, neighborhood socialization, and school socialization. The behavioral measures of self-control were based on an individual's total score on portions of the Behavioral Problem Index measured when individuals were age 10. The study found that although school socialization was a significant contributor to self-control in less disadvantaged neighborhoods, it failed to enhance self-control in more disadvantaged neighborhoods. [NCJRS]

Americans whose first job was in travel went on to earn a maximum average salary of $82,400 by the time they were 50 years old--higher than workers whose first jobs were in manufacturing, health care and most other industries.

The travel industry is one of the top 10 largest employers of middle-class wage earners in the U.S.

Of the 6.1 million Americans working part time while pursuing higher education in 2018, more than half were employed in travel-related industries.

Among workers who began their careers in the travel industry, nearly one-third (32%) eventually earned at least a bachelor's degree.

The second chapter is the first attempt to study the long-term effects of Medicaid on children's health outcomes by looking at the effects of the same Medicaid expansions that took place in the later 1980s and early 1990s. These expansions significantly increased the percentage of pregnant women and children eligible for Medicaid but did so at very differential rates across the states. The substantial variation in Medicaid eligibility thresholds by state, and year, and the age of the child provide the identifying variation for the analysis. By using restricted access data, containing state of birth and state of residence of children, I match children to the Medicaid eligibility rules in their year of birth and currently. The results suggest that the expansions were effective in improving the health of children from low-income families in the long run. Increased Medicaid eligibility at birth is associated with better health outcomes in the future. But interestingly eligibility at older ages (conditional on eligibility at birth) is not.

The third chapter examines the effects of using friends, relatives and acquaintances in job search on current and future wages and job tenure of individuals using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) data. Individuals who use contacts may differ from those that don't. For example, both females and African-Americans are less likely to use contacts in job search in the US. This paper uses switching regression models to deal simultaneously with an endogenous selection issue in contact's choice and the existence of two different regimes of wage and job tenure determination. Econometric estimates provide evidence for the existence of a selection effect on the choice of informal contacts and, after correcting the selection bias, using contacts has a positive effect on both wages and job tenure. The paper also explores whether some types of contacts result in greater wages and longer tenures. Gains from using informal contacts are largest for those that use male contacts of an older generation, rather than female or younger contacts.

Recent Findings: There does not appear to be a consistent definition or measurement method for FF intake, which may limit attempts to synthesize findings. However, we did analyze results based on these varying measurements and found consistent results. While FF consumption is very common across all respondents, it is more frequent among those who are younger, Black, and male. FF consumption varies by income, with middle-income and wealthier people consuming more. Although increasingly common worldwide, FF consumption appears to vary based upon cultural norms. Immigrants may show FF intake more in line with the norms of their country of origin than their new environment. Employed individuals appear to consume more FF. This is especially true among highly educated women. Job-related factors, such as the type of work and a higher number of hours worked, are associated with higher FF consumption. Longitudinal studies have noted that increased FF intake predicts increased BMI and adiposity, predisposing those to lifestyle-derived illnesses.

Summary: Young Black men tend to consume the greatest amount of FF, even when they have university degrees and well-paying jobs. Sociodemographic factors, such as gender, education, employment, and race/ethnicity often interact and indicate greater specificity is needed into how FF consumption fits into lived context.

Methods: We utilize over 35 years of prospective panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth from the United States (1979–2015).

Results: Our findings suggest that decreases in religious attendance between adolescence and adulthood (from high to low, and high to moderate attendance) were associated with elevated cardiovascular-related risk for those abused as children. Neither stable high attendance nor increases in attendance buffered against the impact of childhood abuse on cardiovascular-related problems.

The first essay studies the determinants of wage differences between predominantly female jobs and predominantly male jobs. In particular, I estimate the effects of the changes in proportion of men in an occupation on wage growth for workers who quit jobs and for those laid off. These estimates account for the fixed individual heterogeneity and job match specific error component, and they provide either an upper or lower bound on the true wage premium associated with working in predominantly male jobs. The estimated wage premium is in the range of 16-19 percent for women and 12-16 percent for men. The proportion male effect for quits is smaller than that for layoffs for both women and men, which implies that the wage premium overcompensates for the non-wage characteristics.

In the second essay, I analyze equilibrium search models in which jobs vary in terms of salary and hours of work. Jobs are heterogeneous in productivity, and the model is set up so that jobs with larger marginal productivity of an additional hour require more hours. In one version of the model, an employer offers two packages to workers. Simulated data match the empirical results in the first essay when: (1) women are more averse to work hours than men and (2) the likelihood of receiving an offer that workers cannot refuse to accept is higher for women than men. In the other version of the model, an employer offers a single package that accounts for the gender differences in preference. I develop an algorithm which solves for the equilibrium job distribution and show that employers raise the hour requirements when they discriminate against women.

The third essay uses an insider model of equilibrium unemployment to show that severance pay affects the jointly rational separation decisions of an employer and a worker. In particular, severance pay raises the equilibrium market tightness which is documented in a number of empirical studies.

Methods: Using year-by-year education data for 7,501 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 participants, ages 14-48 (262,535 person-years of education data), we applied sequence analysis and a clustering algorithm to identify educational trajectory groups, incorporating both type and timing to credential. Linear regression models, adjusted for early-life confounders, evaluated relationships between educational trajectories and mental health component scores (MCS) from the 12-item short form instrument at age 50. We evaluated effect modification by race, gender, and race by gender.

An entrepreneur is defined as a person whose main occupation in the labor market is on a self-employed basis or who is the owner-director of an incorporated business. Farmers are excluded from the sample.5 Furthermore, we exclude \hobby" entrepreneurs from the sample by using a lower boundary of 300 hours per year worked as an entrepreneur. An employee is defined as a person whose main occupation is a salaried job. The education level of both groups is measured in years of completed schooling, with a maximum of 20.

However, as we demonstrate in this paper, the effect of formal schooling, one of the most prominent manifestations of human capital, on entrepreneur performance has not yet been consistently measured, due to shortcomings in the empirical strategies applied so far. We discuss these shortcomings as well as some potential solutions that we borrow from the technically more sophisticated literature on the returns to education for employees. Then, we will discuss two recent applications of such more advanced empirical strategies to consistently estimate the causal and distinct effect of formal education on entrepreneurial income. The first study, by Van der Sluis, Van Praag and Van Witteloostuijn (2004) (VVW hereafter) pertains to the US. It compares the rate of return to education for entrepreneurs to the rate of return for employees. The second study, by Parker and Van Praag (2004) (PvP hereafter) pertains to Europe (The Netherlands). It isolates the causal effect of education from the inter-related effect of capital constraints on the entrepreneur's perf ormance. The final sections of this paper will discuss the results from those recent studies, and provide conclusions and policy implications.

This research study reports mixed results. Education and organization tenure were both found to positively influence the likelihood to return to work after childbirth. The availability of maternity leave was determined to have a negative influence on the likelihood to change employers. By examining human capital variables, family-friendly policies and female labor force participation after childbirth, this research study sought to provide insight into the diffusion and adoption of HR innovations and their impact on a woman's decision-making process after childbirth. The results of the study raised many issues to be addressed in future research.

Background: Previous research indicates that penalties only persist into mid‐life for mothers with three or more children without distinguishing by race. The timing and age range in which parenthood wage gaps occur for fathers and mothers of different racial backgrounds are unknown. We develop a theoretical framework based on the gender‐ and race‐specific interplay between labor market dynamics and family demographics over the life course to derive hypotheses.

Method: Age‐specific parenthood wage gaps from ages 20-40 are estimated using 1979 and 1997 National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth data and fixed effects models.

Results: Only White women with three or more children suffer large and persistent adjusted motherhood penalties up to age 40. For Black and Hispanic mothers, penalties are concentrated in a brief age range of 5-10 years around age 30 and then attenuate irrespective of the number of children. Adjusted fatherhood premiums only occur for White men and are confined to brief periods in early adulthood, suggesting that they result from complex selection effects into education, employment, and fatherhood.

Methods: We use data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) and fixed effects regression models with interactions between age and each family demographic process to estimate age-specific associations between these processes and the probability of in-work poverty.

Results: In-work poverty is a common phenomenon across the life courses of our study cohort: 20% of individuals are at risk of in-work poverty at every age. However, the risk generally decreases for men and increases for women across the life course. Leaving the parental home, entering parenthood, and separation increase, while marriage decreases the risk of in-work poverty. While the associations between marital statuses and in-work poverty are stable over the life course, the associations between parental home leaving and fertility with in-work poverty vary by age.

In their article in this issue of JMF, Belsky and Eggebeen examine the effects of early and extensive maternal employment on four-to-six-year-old children, using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) data set. They conclude that extensive employment during the first two years is associated with increased behavioral maladjustment in children, with problems particularly manifested in terms of children's extreme noncompliance. Belsky and Eggebeen further argue that this effect is general and pervasive--that is, it is not moderated by children's gender, race, or social class. These are strong arguments, and it is the purpose of this critique to address the accuracy and adequacy of these conclusions.

Before beginning what [the author sees] as significant flaws in analyses and interpretations, the article's strengths [are] highlighted...

The second chapter draws on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 cohort to investigate how men's and women's economic trajectories influence the transition to marriage among cohabitors. I find that growth in earnings and increased schooling hastens the transition to marriage, whereas a loss in earnings or employment encourages separation. The relationship between economic status and marriage varies little across gender and parental status, though the associations are more consistent among men and especially, fathers. The results of this study provide further evidence that having limited economic resources presents a significant barrier to marriage.

It is the first time social scientists have produced evidence that large numbers of men might be victims of gender-related income disparities. The study raises the provocative possibility that a substantial part of the widely discussed gap in income between men and women who do the same work is really a gap between men with a traditional outlook and everyone else.

The first chapter uniquely documents the emerging role of education in the well known decline in U.S. male working hours. An insignificant hours difference between high school and college graduates becomes a highly significant 2 hours/week advantage for college graduates within a generation. This growing college hours premium is confirmed in alternate data over a longer time period. Moreover, the growing premium exists throughout the distribution and is not generated by the tails. The increasing premium persists across a wide variety of robustness checks and presents as a widespread phenomenon. The emerging college hours premium increases the overall college earnings premium despite recent trends in the college wage premium.

The second chapter uniquely shows that the returns to drinking in social jobs exceed those in non-social jobs. While workers’ social skills yield higher returns in social jobs, controlling for these skills does not change the returns to drinking. This suggests a return beyond sorting on measured social skills. The higher returns in social jobs remain when including individual fixed effects and in a series of robustness exercises. The findings fit the hypothesis that drinking assists the formation of social capital in social jobs. The social capital associated with drinking represents both general and specific capital with a higher return to each in social jobs.

The third chapter examines the relationship between education and the changes to occupational sorting in the US. I show a college degree is associated with sorting into all high skill occupations, but is less associated with sorting into high social skill occupations within one generation. I uniquely show that when considering the importance in skills in job sorting, the relationship between both social and math skills determines sorting for the latter generation.

The first chapter analyzes the effects on high school graduation and other academic outcomes of academic requirements for participation in high school athletics. I use a simple conceptual framework to illustrate the possible effects of the requirement and derive testable predictions. Then, I combine data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) with data on the rules to test the model's predictions. I find that requiring athletes to pass one additional course increased the overall likelihood of graduation among boys by two percentage points but did not affect female students, who at the time had limited access to interscholastic competition.

The second chapter (with Josefina Posadas) examines the role of grandparents' child-care provision on mothers' labor market participation. Using the NLSY79 and data from eleven European countries (SHARE), we find significant differences in characteristics of families who rely on this form of child care. Both ordinary least squares and instrumental variables estimates show that the availability of grandparents' care is linked to an increase in the probability of female labor force participation.

The third chapter (with Xavier Giné and Mónica Martínez-Bravo) studies the labor supply of Indian boat-owners. It uses daily data on labor force participation and the value of catches to test whether the response of labor supply to increases in wages and income is better explained by the conventional framework of inter-temporal substitution or by reference-dependent preferences. This chapter shows that boat-owners' labor participation depends not only on their expected earnings, but also on their recent earnings, supporting income-reference-dependent preferences models. However, the response to changes in recent income is small relative to the response to changes in expected earn ings. Furthermore, the results imply that short-term labor supply models should include recent earnings conditional and recent effort as control variables. Since recent earnings are positively correlated with expected earnings and negatively related to the probability of participation, omitting this variable yields downward-biased elasticity estimates.

An investigation of gender differences in occupational attainment of prime-age U.S. workers reveals that such differences do exist, especially among women, but apparently are the results of voluntary choices and long-term changes in the labor market

In Chapter 2 we look at how labor market conditions at different points during the tenure of individuals with firms are correlated with current earnings. Using data on individuals from the German Socioeconomic Panel for the period 1985 to 1994, we find that both the contemporaneous unemployment rate and prior values of the unemployment rate are significantly correlated with current earnings, contrary to results for the American labor market. Whereas local unemployment rates determine levels of earnings, national rates influence contemporaneous variations in earnings. We interpret this result as evidence that German unions do in fact bargain over wages and employment, but that models of individualistic contracts, such as the implicit contract model, may explain some of the observed wage drift and longer term wage movements reasonably well. Furthermore, we explore the heterogeneity of contracts over a variety of worker and job characteristics. In particular, we find evidence that contracts differ across firm we and workers type.

Formal on-the-job training and its impact on the sectoral mobility of workers is the subject of Chapters 3 and 4. In Chapter 3, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), we re-examine the effect of formal on-the-job training on mobility patterns of young American workers. Confirming previous studies, we find a positive and statistically significant impact of formal on-the-job training on tenure with the employer providing the training. However, expected duration net of the time spent in the training program is generally not significantly increased. We proceed to document and analyze intra-sectoral and cross-sectoral mobility patterns in order to infer whether training provides firm-specific, industry-specific, or general human capital. The econometric analysis rejects a sequential model of job separation in favor of a competing risks specification. We find significant evidence for the industry-specificity of training. The probability of sectoral mobility upon job separation decreases with training received in the current industry, whether with the last employer or previous employers, and employment attachment increases with on-the-job training.

Finally, Chapter 4 studies mobility patterns of German workers in fight of a model of sector-specific human capital. Furthermore, I employ and describe little-used data on continuous on-the-job training occurring after apprenticeships. Results are presented describing the incidence and duration of continuous training. Continuous training is quite common, despite the high incidence of apprenticeships which precedes this part of a worker's career. Most previous studies have only distinguished between firm-specific and general human capital, generally concluding that training was general. Inconsistent with those conclusions, I show that German men are more likely to find a job within the same sector if they have received continuous training in that sector. These results are similar to results obtained for young U.S. workers, and suggest that sector-specific capital is an important feature of very different labor markets. Furthermore, the results suggest that the observed effect of training on mobility is sensitive to the state of the business cycle. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Methods: Baseline was set at 1994, when individuals were ages 29-37. The MSM incorporated measurements of alcohol consumption in 1994, 2002, and 2006, baseline and time-varying covariates, and repeated measurements with the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale-Short Form (CES-D-SF). A total of 5,667 eligible participants provided valid data at baseline, 3,593 of whom provided valid outcome data. The authors used all observed data to predict CES-D-SF means and rates of probable depression for hypothetical trajectories of consistent alcohol consumption.

Results: The results approximated J-curve relationships. Specifically, both consistent occasional and consistent moderate drinkers were predicted to have reduced CES-D-SF scores and rates of probable depression at age 50 compared with consistent abstainers (CES-D-SF scores: b=−0.84, 95% CI=−1.47, −0.11; probable depression: odds ratio=0.58, 95% CI=0.36, 0.88 for consistent occasional drinkers vs. abstainers; CES-D-SF scores: b=−1.08, 95% CI=−1.88, −0.20; probable depression: odds ratio=0.59, 95% CI=0.26, 1.13 for consistent moderate drinkers vs. consistent abstainers). Consistent above-guideline drinkers were predicted to have slightly increased risk compared with consistent abstainers, but this was not significant. In sex-stratified analyses, results were similar for females and males.

In this letter, we show that the average growth curves of all four groups can be summarized using one equation with a single parameter. We then use that equation to put the BMIs of adults measured at different ages on a common, age-adjusted scale. Finally, we illustrate how age-adjusted BMIs can be used in epidemiology.

A method is provided here that overcomes the lack of data for body composition. The clinical information available in the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1988-94 (NHANES III) is used to estimate body composition for the survey participants in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY 1979). The inclusion of estimated body composition in the estimated wage equation shows that the effect of lean body mass on the wage rate is positive while the effect of body fat is negative.

Estimated body composition is then used to examine the role of physical differences in the gender wage gap. The decomposition of the gender wage gap shows that most of the previously unexplained differences in wages between men and women can be attributed to the gender differences in body composition. The explanatory power of estimated body composition rises significantly with occupational physical strength requirements. This result suggests that estimated body composition is capturing occupational requirements previously omitted from the past studies.

The findings presented in this dissertation indicate that body composition plays an important, though previously unidentified, role on wage determination. It is clear that capital investments in body composition yield economic dividends by impacting hourly wages of workers. Empirical studies that do not address differences in body composition risk obtaining biased results. Future public health policies should take into consideration the combined but opposite effects of body fat and lean body mass. It is not body size alone, but the compositional makeup of the human body, that public health policies may need to address.

Our work addresses an important limitation of the current literature on the economics of obesity. Previous research relied on body weight or BMI for measuring obesity despite the growing agreement in the medical literature that they represent misleading measures of obesity because of their inability to distinguish between body fat and fat-free body mass. Body composition measures used in this paper represent significant improvements over the previously used measures because they allow for the effects of fat and fat free components of body composition to be separately identified. Our work also contributes to the growing literature on the role of non-cognitive characteristics on wage determination.

I draw on U.S. Census Data, the Uniform Crime Reports, and individual level data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to examine how industrial and labor market characteristics of areas can influence aggregate rates of crime and how the employment experiences of individuals can effect individual levels of participation in criminal behavior. This multi-level approach allows for the examination of individual and contextual-level causal mechanisms in the employment/crime relationship.

At the aggregate level this research goes beyond much of the current literature by treating industrial composition, not labor force participation as the exogenous variable in aggregate models of work and crime. Industrial composition is shown to influence labor force participation, social organization, and residential segregation. All of these factors influence crime rates. This approach begins to address the role of labor market stratification, as well as de-industrialization in understanding the relationship between work and crime.

At the individual-level I use subjective indicators of job quality to determine whether investments in employment can deter individuals from criminal behavior. The findings suggest an interpretation of the relationship between work and crime that is supportive of the age-graded social control theory proposed by Sampson and Laub (1990). The results also suggest that the industrial and labor market contexts of counties have a significant effect on individual criminal behavior above and beyond the influence of individual employment. Collectively, these findings offer strong support to the labor market stratification and crime perspective. This approach combines social control theory, social disorganization theory, and the routine activities and crime perspective to understand the role of individuals and communities in the relationship between work and crime.