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Working Paper
Place-Based Labor Market Inequality
This paper presents an overview of how various labor market indicators differ across geography. While many indicators are often discussed in terms of national aggregates, such discussions obscure the large degree of variation that exists across localities. We primarily use counties as a geographic unit, and document both structural differences that persist over time as well as differences in the past two business cycles. The racial composition of communities plays a large role in explaining geographic differences in labor market indicators, in some cases even more so than income. We ...
Working Paper
Suitability of a County-Level Income Definition for Analysis of Lower-Income Communities
This paper examines the costs and benefits of using a straightforward county-level income definition in the classification and study of lower-income communities. A definition based on population-weighted distribution of county-level median household incomes does a good job of identifying the most economically disadvantaged communities across a wide range of indicators. We show robustness to the use of different thresholds, levels of geography, and cost-of-living adjustments.
Working Paper
Decomposing Recent Employment Gains Among Disabled Workers
We use the longitudinal component of the Current Population Survey to compare transition rates into and out of disability and employment prior to and after the onset of the pandemic. We find that one-third of the increased employment rate among disabled people is due to the excess incidence of disability seen following the pandemic, while the other two-thirds is attributable to higher participation among people whose disabilities were unrelated to the pandemic. Further, we find evidence that these increases are concentrated in occupations with higher rates of telework.
Working Paper
Local Labor Market Tightness and Job Quality: Evidence from Job Changers
Using novel data from the Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking, we examine how labor market tightness affects workers’ job quality. We estimate that a 10 percent increase in job vacancies not only increases the probability of changing jobs, it yields an 11–18 percent increase in the (unconditional) probability of switching to a better job overall, and one with greater pay and benefits, interest in the work, and advancement opportunities. Because tight labor markets improve both worker pay and job amenities in roughly the same proportion, their benefits to workers are ...
Working Paper
The Flight to Affordability: Effects of Pandemic Rent Increases on Renters By Geography
In the pandemic era, people moved from high-density, expensive areas to more affordable areas, putting upward pressure on local housing prices. We examine the geographic distribution of rent growth during this time and its effects on renters. We use administrative new lease data from RealPage and household-level data on rent and income from the American Community Survey. We analyze rents and incomes using Public Use Microdata Areas grouped in two ways: by prepandemic rent levels and by pre-pandemic rent-to-income ratios. Rents grew more in areas with lower pre-pandemic rents but not in areas ...
Working Paper
Losing insurance and psychiatric hospitalizations
We study the effect of losing insurance on psychiatric – mental health disorder (MHD) and substance use disorder (SUD) – hospital-based care. Psychiatric disorders cost the U.S. over $1T each year and hospitalizations provide important and valuable care for patients with these disorders. We use variation in public insurance coverage (Medicaid) eligibility offered by a large-scale and unexpected disenrollment in the state of Tennessee in 2005 that lead to 190,000 individuals losing their insurance. Medicaid enrollees are at elevated risk for psychiatric disorders. Following the ...
Working Paper
College Networks and Re-employment of Displaced Workers
We provide the first evidence on the role of college networks in the re-employment of displaced workers. An extensive literature examines the consequences of layoffs, but the factors which facilitate re-employment are relatively under-studied. Using administrative data and a cross-cohort design, we find that network connections with actively-hiring employers increase the re-employment rate. This result is driven by re-employment at contact’s firms suggesting that a stronger network does not improve worker quality more broadly. These results suggest that college has the potential to improve ...
Working Paper
Affording Degree Completion: An Experimental Study of Completion Grants at Accessible Public Universities
To improve college affordability and graduation rates, universities are increasingly allocating “completion grants” to students who are nearing the finish line but facing financial challenges. Using an experimental design and common program model across 11 broad-access public universities in ten states, we assessed the impact of a completion grants averaging $1,200 distributed among more than 14,000 students. We find that, despite university expectations that most students were near completion, only two-thirds of students eligible to receive a completion grant graduated within the ...
Working Paper
Institution, Major, and Firm-Specific Premia: Evidence from Administrative Data
We examine how a student's field of degree and institution attended contribute to the labor market outcomes of young graduates. Administrative panel data that combines student transcripts with matched employer-employee records allow us to provide the first decomposition of premia into individual and firm-specific components. We find that both major and institutional premia are more strongly related to the firm-specific component of wages than the individual-specific component of wages. On average, a student's major is a more important predictor of future wages than the selectivity of the ...
Working Paper
Navigating Higher Education Insurance: An Experimental Study on Demand and Adverse Selection
We conduct a survey-based experiment with 2,776 students at a non-profit university to analyze income insurance demand in education financing. We offered students a hypothetical choice: either a federal loan with income-driven repayment or an income-share agreement (ISA), with randomized framingof downside protections. Emphasizing income insurance increased ISA uptake by 43%. We observe that students are responsive to changes in contract terms and possible student loan cancellation, which is evidence of preference adjustment or adverse selection. Our results indicate that framing specific ...