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Although the model I developed in the second chapter provides a good fit to the wealth distribution, it was not able to replicate the vast wealth held in the top 5 percentiles of the distribution. Thus, in the third chapter of my dissertation I generalize the income possibilities to include returns on entrepreneurial ventures. I construct and simulate a model where individuals choose between wage work and entrepreneurship. In combination with capitalist spirit preferences the possibility of high returns on entrepreneurial ventures allows the model to generate all of the skewness of the wealth distribution.

The final chapter of this dissertation focuses on the relationship between wealth accumulation and the decision to become an entrepreneur. Empirical studies find a positive relationship between being male, white, older, married, having more assets, and self-employment (see Dunn and Holtz-Eaken 2000). Yet, most theoretical research focuses on the importance of unobservable factors such as risk aversion, entrepreneurial ability and the desire to be one's own boss (see Evans and Jovanovic 1989). Not surprisingly, there exists little empirical evidence on how important these characteristics are in the decision to become an entrepreneur, in particular, whether they play major or minor roles relative to assets and wage opportunities. Further, there is no consensus on whether aspiring entrepreneurs are liquidity constrained (Gentry and Hubbard 2000; Hurst and Lusardi 2003). Using a panel of data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, I show that not only are liquidity constraints unlikely to be the major factor in the decision to become an entrepreneur, the characteristics pointed to in the theoretical literature are far more important for this decision.

In my second chapter I seek to test the hypothesis that suburban living environments lead to a higher body weight compared to central city environments. I use the geographic information from the confidential NLSY79 files in conjunction with census tract population density data for the years 1981 to 2004. The effect of population density on the body weight of individuals who move is estimated conditioning on individual and area level characteristics. The chapter concludes that the actual effect of population density on the weight of individuals is not as large as the public health literature would want people to believe, but it is neither as insignificant as the urban economic literature to date estimated.

In my last chapter I survey the literature on labor market effects of obesity and then estimate the effect of obesity on labor market outcomes in Germany. To date, only one study briefly considers the effects of weight on labor market outcomes in Germany. This chapter argues that, apart from individual earnings, other labor market outcomes in conjunction with additional data sheds more light on the relationship between weight and labor market outcomes in Germany. This chapter examines the relationship between body weight and labor market outcomes in Germany. While no definite conclusion is reached, this is the first study that attempts to study the relationship between body weight and labor market outcomes in Germany in this detail.

Objective: In this systematic review, we investigated which individual, social and urban factors, experienced in early childhood, contribute to the development of later anxiety and depression, behavioural problems, and internalising and externalising symptoms in youth.

Methods: Embase, MEDLINE, Scopus, and PsycInfo were searched on the 5th of January 2022. Three additional databases were retrieved from a mega-systematic review source that focused on the identification of both risk and protective indicators for the onset and maintenance of prospective depressive, anxiety and substance use disorders. A total of 46,450 records were identified and screened in ASReview, an AI-aided systematic review tool. We included studies with experimental, quasi-experimental, prospective and longitudinal study designs, while studies that focused on biological and genetical factors, were excluded.

Results: Twenty studies were included. The majority of studies explored individual-level risk factors (N = 16). Eleven studies also explored social risk factors and three studied urban risk factors. We found evidence for early predictors relating to later psychopathology measures (i.e., anxiety and depression, behavioural problems, and internalising and externalising symptoms) in childhood, adolescence and early adulthood. These were: parental psychopathology, exposure to parental physical and verbal violence and social and neighbourhood disadvantage.

Conclusions: Very young children are exposed to a complex mix of risk factors, which operate at different levels and influence children at different time points. The urban environment appears to have an effect on psychopathology but it is understudied compared to individual-level factors. Moreover, we need more research exploring the interaction between individual, social and urban factors.

Also: NTIS Report: PB2006101302

On-the-Job Training surveys the recent literature from both a theoretical and empirical perspective. The analysis of how individuals obtain and are paid for their skills is fundamental to labor economics. The basic idea of human capital theory is that workers and firms invest in workers' skills in order to increase their productivity, much as persons invest in financial or physical assets to earn income. Workers develop many skills through formal education not tied to an employer, but an important part of their skills are learned on the job. On-the-Job Training focuses on recent literature including empirical research using direct measures of training and theoretical papers inspired by findings from this empirical work. The authors presents a theoretical model showing that costs and returns to general human capital may be shared if training increases mobility costs, if there are constraints on lowering wages, or if there is uncertainty about the value of training at competing employers. This model analyzes the choice of the amount of training, emphasizing the influence of whether the employer can commit to training prior to employment. In addition, the model implies that firms will attempt to match low-turnover workers with training opportunities, which is supported by the empirical literature.

How individuals obtain their skills and how they are paid for the use of those skills are concepts that are fundamental to the field of labor economics. Productive skills are often referred to as "human capital." The basic idea of human-capital theory is that workers invest in their own skills in order to earn higher wages, much as persons invest in financial or physical assets to earn income. Although this idea goes back at least to Adam Smith, modern human-capital research was originated in the late 1950s by economists Theodore Schultz, Jacob Mincer, and Gary Becker. Their ideas, focusing on investments in and returns to education and training, have provided the theoretical and empirical basis for decades of ensuing research.

Much of the empirical research on the topic of human capital has analyzed the relationship between education and wages. This focus on education is due to the abundance of high-quality data sources with information on both education and wages. For example, analysts using cross-sectional data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) have found that individuals in the United States receive earnings that are approximately 10 percent higher for every additional year of schooling they have completed. Kenneth I. Wolpin's article on education in this special edition of the Monthly Labor Review shows that, over the 15-year period between ages 25 and 39, a male college graduate earns 80 percent more than a male high school graduate without any college, and a male high school graduate earns 57 percent more than a high school dropout.

However, empirical research on training—the other key component of human capital--has lagged research on the economics of education. The human-capital model yields straightforward predictions about the relations hip of on-the-job training to wages, wage growth, and job mobility; still, as will become clear, testing these predictions requires good longitudinal microdata.

Methods: Data are from the U.S. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 (N=6434). Group-based trajectory models are used to identify unemployment trajectories. Generalized linear models with a modified Bolck, Croon, and Hagenaars (BCH) correction are used to regress health on unemployment trajectory groups.

Results: We identified "Consistently Low (70%)," "Decreasing Mid-Career (18%)," and "Persistently High (12%)" unemployment trajectories. Experiencing Decreasing Mid-Career or Persistently High trajectories was associated with worse physical and mental health at age 50 than Consistently Low trajectories. Experiencing a Persistently High trajectory was associated with worse physical and mental health than a Decreasing Mid-Career trajectory.

Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Understanding the causes of current racial inequality is a subject of intense debate. A wide variety of explanations have been put forth, which range from genetics (Jensen, 1973; Rushton, 1995) to personal and institutional discrimination (Darity and Mason, 1998; Pager, 2007; Krieger and Sidney, 1996) to the cultural backwardness of minority groups (Reuter, 1945; Shukla, 1971). Renowned sociologist William Julius Wilson argues that a potent interaction between poverty and racial discrimination can explain current disparities (Wilson, 2010).

Decomposing the share of inequality attributable to these explanations is exceedingly difficult, as experiments (field, quasi-, or natural) or other means of credible identification are rarely available. Even in cases where experiments are used (i.e., audit studies), it is unclear precisely what is being measured (Heckman, 1998). The lack of success in convincingly identifying root causes of racial inequality has often reduced the debate to a competition of "name that residual" -- arbitrarily assigning identity to unexplained differences between racial groups in economic outcomes after accounting for a set of confounding factors. The residuals are often interpreted as "discrimination," "culture," "genetics," and so on. Gaining a better understanding of the root causes of racial inequality is of tremendous importance for social policy, and the purpose of this chapter.

A time-varying effect model was employed to display average level of education, home/parenting quality scores, and the odds of poverty as a function of maternal age at first birth, controlling for race/ethnicity and having the father in the child's household. We used data from a national longitudinal study of mothers who participated in the Child and Young Adult cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth.

Peak scores for all outcomes were observed around maternal age of 30 for all three initial models. Parenting and home quality gradually improved until late 20's when scores appeared to level out throughout the 30's. Highest grade completed increased until just after age 30 then dipped again around age 40. The odds of poverty decreased until about age 30 then leveled out. Controlling for father's presence in the household and race/ethnicity shifted all three selected effects.

Overall, earlier maternal age at first birth was associated with incrementally decreasing parenting and home quality, lower educational attainment, and greater likelihood of poverty status. The results highlight the problematic nature of utilizing categorical (e.g., teenage vs. non-teenage) age groups to predict maternal and child outcomes. In fact, results of this study suggest that optimal socioeconomic and parenting outcomes level out around age 30 for this nationally representative sample. Current trends in psychological, developmental, and economic research should consider curvilinear patterns of outcomes related to maternal age at first birth rather than relying on categorical comparisons of age groups.

Methods: Time-varying effect models were employed to examine educational attainment, home/parenting quality scores, and annual income as a function of age at first birth, controlling for race/ethnicity and presence of the father in the household during child ages 6–9.

Results: Peak scores for outcomes were observed around maternal age 30 in all three models. Parenting/home quality improved with maternal age at first birth until mothers reached the late 20’s, when scores appeared to level out. Highest grade completed increased until just after age 30. Total annual income increased considerably until about age 30 then leveled out, although the plateau may be due to reduced sample size at the most advanced maternal ages. Father presence in the household and race/ethnicity were associated with all three outcomes.

There is extensive literature on the processes that influence the occupational choices of workers. However, less attention is devoted to examining the rate at which workers move from one occupation to another. Fortunately, the availability of panel data sets makes it possible to measure the extent that workers shift jobs within the occupational distribution over time. This study explores recent trends in occupational mobility among full-time wage and salary workers in the United States as they move from young labor market entrants to their approach to mid-career. Our objective is to determine if their occupational mobility rates changed over time, and then to compare occupational mobility rates by gender.

The results of our analysis can provide an additional perspective on the recent increase in wage disparities between high- and low-income workers, an increase that has been well documented. In terms of equity, the recent increase in earnings inequality is generally viewed with concern among policymakers. However, several studies have suggested that an increase in labor-market mobility may actually counterbalance the growth in earnings inequality. This argument asserts that flexible labor markets provide ample opportunity for upward (and downward) mobility. Consequently, if an increase in the propensity of low-wage workers moves into higher-paying occupations, lifetime earnings inequality may be reduced in spite of increases in annual cross-sectional measures of labor-market inequality.

DO WOMEN AND MEN ENCOUNTER unequal employment prospects across occupations, given their personal characteristics? Empirical evidence presented in this article indicates that gender differences in occupational distributions remained stable during the 1990s at levels comparable to those of the 1980s. The multinomial logit model of occupational attainment set forth here also detected a significant shift of women across occupational categories if their characteristics are evaluated according to the men's occupational structure. These shifts did not change significantly throughout the 1990s and are similar to comparable estimates from the late 1970s and 1980s. A more detailed examination of the occupational shifts occupational distribution predicts a movement of women from white-collar to blue-collar jobs. This is unlikely, however, especially in light of recent literature on occupational employment patterns and choice by gender. Thus, U.S. women in their thirties and forties do not appear to encounter significant levels of involuntary segregation across broad occupational categories. Although gender differences in occupational attainment persist, they apparently result from voluntary choices of men and women and from long-term changes in labor markets, such as the simultaneous growth of white-collar occupations and women's labor force participation rates.

I found that 37% of all surveyed workers who had experienced one on-the-job accident reported at least one additional injury, but only 56% of all occupational injuries and illnesses resulted in workers' compensation claims. I estimated different count models to assess the effect of different individual worker and job characteristics on individual injury counts and workers' compensation claims counts.

Lower educational levels, less tenure, work in dangerous industries and unskilled occupations, and job demands are found to be important determinants of multiple on-the-job injuries. The most interesting results, however, refer to the role played by individuals' pre-injury characteristics: early exposure to dangerous jobs is among the main determinants of higher counts of occupational injuries later in life. Early health limitations are also significant predictors of recurrent workers' compensation claims. These results provide new evidence about the important role played by both the health and the socioeconomic status of young people as determinants of their future occupational injuries. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Our results highlight the concurrent and changing role played by individual, work, and environmental factors in explaining recurrent incidents. They show that risk tolerance affects recurrent injuries, although not in the direction that proponents of the concept of proneness would expect. Our measure of risk aversion shows that individuals who are somewhat more risk tolerant have fewer recurrent injuries than those who are risk averse. But the estimated relationship is U-shaped, not monotonic and, therefore, not easy to predict. At the same time, we find that individuals' "revealed risk preferences"--specific risky behavior--are related to higher injury probabilities. Demanding working conditions, measures of socioeconomic status, health, and safety problems experienced by workers during their youth remain among the most important factors explaining the phenomena of recurrent injuries. So our results contribute also to the important debate about the relationship between health and socioeconomic status.

The decision for adolescents and young adults to leave their parents and their home community is complex and difficult. This study of youth migration focuses on the geographical location to which urban and rural youth relocate upon exiting their parental household. Little is known about destination choices of youth, especially how they differ for youth from urban and rural areas. A multinomial logit model of migration destination choices that incorporates individual, household, and community level factors is estimated with data from the 1979 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Results indicate that while the local economy and labor market are important to the migration decision, the magnitudes of these effects are generally small. Noneconomic individual, household, and community factors play an important role in the migration process, as well. The magnitudes of noneconomic factor effects generally are greater for rural youth compared to urban youth. Copyright: 2003 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.

Within this challenging context the authors of this paper examine the support provided by nonresident parents (specifically fathers due to data limitations) to their children who live elsewhere. Specifically, we focus on how questions related to support provision are asked and what results are found. We examine eight separate data sets: six survey-based data sets, one a compilation of data from court records, and an extract of data from administrative records of a state public assistance program. The overriding objective of this paper is to gain a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of current data gathering approaches in this area. Our goal is to provide insights into ways we can improve our surveys in this important area of family demography.

While many studies use parental socioeconomic status and health to predict in part their children's future prospects, the first empirical chapter investigates the dynamic relationship of child health with maternal health and socioeconomic factors over time. Using a series of latent growth curve models, this study examines the association between trajectories--or intra-individual models of stability and change--of child activity limitations and trajectories of maternal limitations in work due to health, labor force participation and household poverty status. The second analytic chapter examines and accounts for potential methodological biases in the relationship of child health with maternal health and socioeconomic factors in three ways: autoregressive cross-lagged models that address the reciprocal relationship between child health and maternal outcomes, fixed effects analyses that control for individual characteristics that are constant over time to limit omitted variable bias, and a latent class analysis to address in part both omitted variable bias and measurement error. The third analytic chapter examines the concordance of mothers' and children's reports of children's general health status, the concurrent validity of both mothers' and children's reports of children's general health status, and whether the association between child and maternal health depends on who reports children's health status.

This dissertation unifies research on stratification in socioeconomic and health outcomes with the life course and stress process perspectives, by pushing traditional stratification research to take seriously the idea that individual lives are linked lives and applying unique methodological approaches that account for the linked lives of mothers and children at the point in the life course when the child lives at home.

When we evaluated the relationship between maternal/child intelligence and AFI, using a between-family design, we replicated earlier results; smart teens do appear to delay sex. In the within-family analyses, the relationship between intelligence and AFI vanishes for both maternal intelligence and child intelligence. The finding is robust across gender and age. These results suggest that the cause of the intelligence-AFI link is not intelligence per se, but rather differences between families (parental education, SES, etc.) that correlate with family-level (but not individual-level) intelligence.

This study differed from previous studies in that it is archival and longitudinal. The participants came from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, a nationally representative data base (NLSY79, 1997). The sample of the NLSY79 included 12,686 young adults first surveyed in 1979. These individuals are presently in their forties and have been surveyed for over twenty years. Participants' school and life experiences were recorded. The subsequent data allowed this researcher to study predictor variables most related to college entrance.

Multiple correlations and path analyses were utilized in this study. The correlations which were found to be statistically significant and accounted for the most variance included IQ and achievement scores positive correlation to college entrance. The direct paths that were statistically significant toward the achievement measure (i.e., Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery) included family poverty, race, locus of control orientation and higher self esteem. The achievement variable (i.e., ASVAB) accounted for the most variance with regard to participants staying in school and entering college. Results are discussed in terms of psycho-educational settings.

The second chapter aims to understand the relationship between mental health and labor market outcomes. We bound the impact depressive symptom severity has on both the probability of employment and on earnings.

The first chapter of my dissertation investigates the relationship between union coverage and work-related injuries. Trade unions play a central role in establishing a safe work place at the firm level. Union representatives ensure the implementation of safety standards set by the Occupational and Safety Health Administration (OSHA) and provide employees in bargaining units with education on job-specific risks. As a consequence, the injury rates of workers covered by union contracts may be expected to be lower than those of uncovered workers, given similar demographic and occupational characteristics. However, the work environment is not the sole determinant of injury rates. One additional factor is the worker's effort to avoid and minimize work-related hazards. When the personal accident-prevention activities cannot be monitored, the employee needs to face a correct system of incentives. If union representation fails to provide these incentives, covered workers may experience higher injury rates than uncovered employees. In analyzing this relationship, previous studies have failed to include controls for one or both of the following factors: (1) individual unobservable characteristics, and (2) firm-specific hazards. Using data from the NLSY79, the goal of the first chapter is to address these major limitations and provide an estimate of the effect of union coverage on the probability of nonfatal work-related injuries. The results of this chapter indicate that covered workers are about 50 percent more likely to suffer an occupational injury than similar uncovered workers. The direction of this estimate is then interpreted within a moral hazard framework, where union and nonunion workers face different incentives when they choose their level of accident-prevention activities.

The second chapter examines the economic consequences of a work-related injury. Injured workers may experience reductions in earnings for multiple reasons. First, injured workers may experience temporary or permanent decreases in work hours. Second, the wage of the worker may decrease because of lower post-injury productivity caused by any loss in general, specific or health human capital. This outcome is more likely to occur when the injured worker is forced to change firms, occupation or industry. In this setting, union coverage at the time of the injury may play an important role in reducing the size of the earnings losses. Unions provide protection against dismissal without just cause and may favor the assignment of an injured worker to a different job or work schedule within the same firm, therefore decreasing the probability of quitting. Using data from the NLSY79, this chapter applies a A standard version of the difference-in-difference methodology is used to investigate whether union coverage at the time of the injury is able to reduce the earnings losses caused by the injury. The findings indicate that union coverage is able to preserve workers' earnings in the year of the injury.

The third chapter investigates whether gender discrimination affects the earnings in the arts occupations. Female artists generally earn less than male artists who work in the same occupation. This gender earnings gap can be due to a combination of differences in individual characteristics (explained portion) and differences in the returns to endowments (unexplained portion). The latter have been often interpreted as an estimate of discrimination, although they could be the result of gender differences in unobservable skills. Using the Five Percent PUMS from the 2000 U.S. Census, a modified Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition technique (Yun, 2005) is applied to the gender wage gap for eleven arts occupations. The results of this chapter show that a significant unexplained pay gap, which could be attributed to discrimination, exists for female artists employed in full-time jobs. The explained portion of the gap indicates that women are often segregated into low-paying industries. A second type of decomposition (Fairlie, 2003) is then used to investigate the reasons of gender segregation across industries. These additional findings suggest that discriminatory hiring practices are likely to exist for some arts occupations.

Methods: We used a US nationally-representative sample of middle-aged adults from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youths 1979 and data from the Corruption in America Survey to estimate the associations between state-level illegal (private gains) corruption and legal (political gains) corruption in 2013 and individual-level risks of incident diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and depression between 2014 and 2016.

Results: Medium and higher levels of illegal corruption were associated with odds ratios (ORs) of 1.75 (95% CI 1.06-2.88) for incident diabetes and 1.70 (95% CI 1.15-2.51) for incident hypertension, respectively. Furthermore, a higher level of legal corruption was associated with ORs of 1.84 (95% CI 1.08-3.13) for diabetes and 1.58 (95% CI 1.05-2.38) for hypertension. No consistent associations were observed for obesity or depression.

Conclusions: Our findings suggest that higher levels of corruption contribute to increased risks of developing diabetes and hypertension. Investing resources into fighting corruption may be means to reduce the national burden of cardiovascular disease.

Methods: We drew data on cardiovascular disease risk factors from middle-aged Americans in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youths 1979 and on hate crimes from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports. Employing multivariable logistic regression, we estimated the associations between changes in state/county-level all and group-specific hate crime rates from 2000 to 2006 and incident individual-level diabetes, hypertension, obesity and depressive symptoms from 2008 to 2016. All models controlled for individual-level sociodemographic factors and financial strain, county-level and state-level changes in the total crime rate, the percentage of non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic/Latino residents, and median household income, as well as state-level changes in the percentage of residents aged 65 years or older and the unemployment rate.

Results: 1-SD increases in state-level all and race/ethnicity-based hate crime rates were associated with 20% (OR 1.20, 95% CI 1.05 to 1.35) and 15% higher odds (OR 1.15, 95% CI 1.01 to 1.31) of incident diabetes, respectively. At the county level, a 1-SD increase in the all hate crime rate was linked to 8% higher odds (OR 1.08, 95% CI 1.00 to 1.16) of obesity, while a 1-SD increase in the race/ethnicity-based hate crime rate was associated with 8% higher odds (OR 1.08, 95% CI 1.01 to 1.15) of obesity and 9% higher odds (OR 1.09, 95% CI 1.02 to 1.17) of hypertension. We found no significant associations for depressive symptoms, and no interactions between race/ethnicity-based hate crime rates and individual-level race/ethnicity.

Using data from the ongoing biennial National Longitudinal Survey on Youth surveys, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were applied to empirically define parental monitoring using measures encompassing multiple facets of the construct. Parental monitoring was ultimately operationalized using a second-order confirmatory factor model, with four first-order factors (i.e. parental school involvement, communication, time involvement, rules/decision-making) supporting the definition of a 'set of correlated parenting behaviors' (Dishion & McMahon, 1998). Consistent with a transactional conceptual framework (Wills & Dishion, 2004), path analysis examined the direct and indirect longitudinal associations between parental monitoring, child disclosure, parental knowledge, and alcohol involvement among children and young adults.

Findings indicated that parental monitoring was a significant protective factor for females across a number of alcohol use measures, both directly and indirectly via child disclosure, maternal knowledge, and early alcohol initiation in the case of subsequent heavier alcohol use. In males, higher monitoring levels in middle childhood protected against alcohol-problem use in young adulthood. Child disclosure reduced the odds of binge drinking in females, controlling for negative peer pressure and maternal alcohol use.

Through proper monitoring practices, parents play an important role in reducing both short-term and long-term alcohol involvement in youth, particularly among females. Proper monitoring could help buffer the observed independent effect of negative peer pressure in early childhood on later youth alcohol use. Child disclosure was an important mediator that warrants further attention. The study provides further support for parenting influences on youth alcohol use and will help guide existing family-focused evidence-based programs aimed at reducing youth substance use and misuse.

Current and long-term FSP participation are positively and significantly related to obesity and BMI for low-income women in models with individual fixed effects. The estimates suggest that benefits from the FSP do not have the same relationship to obesity and BMI as cash income or as other benefits provided by the government. Current FSP participation is associated with approximately a 9.2% increase in the predicted probability of obesity and five years of FSP participation in the previous five years is associated with approximately a 19.4% increase in the predicted probability of obesity for low-income women. The relationship between FSP participation and BMI, although statistically significant, is considerably smaller in percentage terms. Current FSP participation is associated with approximately a 0.7% increase in predicted BMI and five years of FSP participation in the previous five years is associated with approximately a 2.8% increase in predicted BMI for low-income women. Current and long-term FSP participation are not significantly related to obesity for low-income married men in models with individual fixed effects. However, long-term FSP participation is positively and significantly related to BMI. Five years of FSP participation in the previous five years is associated with approximately a 3.3% increase in predicted BMI for low-income married men.

METHODS: I combined individual-level data on adults from the 1998 through 2004 survey years of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 with zip code-level data on the neighborhood food environment. I estimated ordinary least squares models of obesity, body mass index (BMI), and change in BMI.

RESULTS: For residents of urban areas, the neighborhood density of small grocery stores was positively and significantly related to obesity and BMI. For individuals who moved from a rural area to an urban area over a 2-year period, changes in neighborhood supermarket density, small grocery store density, and full-service restaurant density were significantly related to the change in BMI over that period.

CONCLUSIONS: Residents of urban neighborhoods with a higher concentration of small grocery stores may be more likely to patronize these stores and consume more calories because small grocery stores tend to offer more unhealthy food options than healthy food options. Moving to an urban area may expose movers to a wider variety of food options that may influence calorie consumption.

For residents of urban areas, the neighborhood density per square mile of small grocery stores was positively and significantly related to obesity and BMI, but the neighborhood densities of other types of food retail and food service establishments were not significantly related to weight status. For residents of rural areas there were no significant relationships between neighborhood establishment densities and weight status. The results of the empirical analyses are consistent with the hypothesis that an increase in the neighborhood density of small grocery stores in urban leads to increased calorie consumption for neighborhood residents.

Little evidence exists on the relationship between working hours and future wage growth. In the first chapter I examine this relationship and show a well-defined convexity: the positive effect of hours is stronger at high levels of labor supply. A four-wave panel survey of men and women who registered to take the GMAT between June 1990 and March 1991 is used to show that this relationship is especially strong for young professional workers, but it is also present in the more broadly representative 1979 cohort of the NLSY. As the underlying mechanism for this empirical regularity, I propose a job-ladder model in which workers differ in their preferences for leisure. The findings can be used to account for up to half of the gender gap in wage growth.

The second chapter links a worker's propensity to change jobs to the educational choices she makes. A model of the choice of graduate management program type based on job search theory predicts that more mobile workers are more likely to enroll in a full-time Master of Business Administration program. The chapter also adds to the literature on employer-provided general training; the model predicts that employers are more likely to provide tuition assistance to workers who find quits costly. I use the survey of GMAT registrants to show that these predictions hold true empirically.

In the third chapter I focus on the effect of student debt on marriage and fertility. Using the GMAT Registrant Survey, I find that higher amounts of business school loans decrease the probability of observing marriage or births, particularly for men. Other sources of financing like employer-provided tuition assistance do not have such an effect. I also show evidence that expectations about fertility do not influence observed student debt.

How well can parents insure their children's future? This paper aims at answering this question by studying the link between income shocks and parental investments in children in terms of time and goods. The paper presents three main contributions: (1) it estimates the degree of response to income shocks in families with young children, without imposing an a priori insurance setup; (2) it analyzes empirically the mechanism behind the degree of insurance found, in particular, the role of wealth and public transfers, and heterogeneity in responses to shocks by education and family structure; (3) finally, it proposes a useful way to use common information in the NLSY79 and the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX) and the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) to combine these three data sets and construct a panel of income, expenditures and time use. I use local business cycles as exogenous variation to families' resources. These are an unpredictable component of county unemployment rate, which I obtain after removing year and county effects from the time-series of county unemployment rate. I find that (1) families only partially insure against income shocks, but expenditures in education of children respond less to shocks than household consumption, as parents try to shield them against shocks because investments may be complements across children's life-cycle; (2) income elasticity of investments in terms of time is larger in families with young children than in families where there are only school-age children, because at early ages there is a larger substitutability between different uses of time; and (3) better off families use savings to buffer against shocks whereas poor families resort on public transfers.

In the second chapter entitled "Self-esteem, Educational Attainment and Wages: A Question of Selection," I use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 again to explore the relationship between self-esteem and wages found in the first chapter more closely. I find that self-esteem partially estimates selection into higher levels of education. Conditional on this selection, the remaining direct effects of self-esteem on wages are negligible. This evidence suggests that self-esteem affects wages indirectly through educational attainment.

We use data from the NLSY79 in order to compute institutional pathways (defined by educational and occupational status) of 9200 high school graduates. Optimal Matching Analysis and Cluster Analysis generated a typology of life course pathways. Our results show that both ascribed characteristics and students’ high school characteristics and resources are predictors of post-high school pathways.

One group which is typically discussed in regards to its lack of health insurance is the young adult segment of the population. For the age group 18-26, 32% lack health insurance (Holahan and Kenney, Timely Analysis of Immediate Health Policy Issue, 2008). For the entire non-elderly population, the uninsured rate is closer to 18%. In addition, although this age group constitutes only 18% of the adult population, it makes up over 28% of the uninsured (Holahan and Kenney, Timely Analysis of Immediate Health Policy Issue, 2008). Because of this, the young adult segment of the population is the ideal group to use in an analysis of the determinants of health insurance coverage.

Several studies have been conducted on health insurance coverage (Markowitz, Gold, and Rice, Medical Care, 1991; Newacheck, et al., Pediatrics, 1999; Callahan and Cooper, Pediatrics, 2005; Gruber, Journal of Economic Literature, 2008; Levine, McKnight, and Heep, NBER Working Paper, 2009; and Gius, International Journal of Applied Economics, 2010). Most of these studies used descriptive statistics and correlation analyses to ascertain the extent of the uninsured. Few looked at the determinants of health insurance coverage, and even fewer examined the insurance coverage rates of young adults.

The purpose of the present study is to determine the factors that affect the health insurance coverage of young adults. This study will use as its data set the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), a data set that has not been used in prior studies on health insurance coverage.