Search Results
Discussion Paper
Leading, lagging, and left behind: identifying metropolitan leaders and labor market outcomes
From 1990 to 2010, the United States underwent significant changes in the makeup of the population and its educational attainment. During the period, bachelor's degree or higher attainment proportions rose significantly?7.9 percentage points?from 20.3 percent in 1990 to 28.2 percent in 2010. This growth happened unevenly, though. Of 283 metropolitan areas, only 78 were above the 7.9 percentage point increase, suggesting much more concentrated growth than would be expected if growth were experienced evenly. This paper documents the concentration of growth and examines four labor market ...
Discussion Paper
Leading, Lagging, and Left Behind: Identifying Metropolitan Leaders and Labor Market Outcomes
From 1990 to 2010, the United States underwent significant changes in the makeup of the population and its educational attainment. During the period, bachelor’s degree or higher attainment proportions rose significantly—7.9 percentage points—from 20.3 percent in 1990 to 28.2 percent in 2010. This growth happened unevenly, though. Of 283 metropolitan areas, only 78 were above the 7.9 percentage point increase, suggesting much more concentrated growth than would be expected if growth were experienced evenly. This paper documents the concentration of growth and examines four labor market ...
Working Paper
Will talent attraction and retention improve metropolitan labor markets?
Since the early 1990s, metropolitan entities and local governments have targeted incentives, policies, and investments with the goal of highly educated and skilled workers to locate in their communities. These efforts focus on attracting workers who hold a bachelor's degree or higher and have had a profound effect on the form and management of metropolitan areas, but there is not clear evidence that growth in bachelor's or higher degree attainment improves metropolitan labor market outcomes. I use an outcomes-based cluster-discriminant analysis to test whether or not metropolitan areas with ...
Report
Educational Attainment and Wage Growth in New England: Evidence from Four Decades of Administrative Wage Records
Per capita personal income in New England grew from $10,731 to $87,655 during the 1980–2024 period. This increase, the largest among all US census divisions, coincided with significant growth in educational attainment in the region. As of 2024, 53 percent of New England workers aged 25 to 64 held at least a bachelor’s degree, and 23 percent possessed advanced degrees, compared with national averages of 44 percent and 17 percent, respectively. This study provides new insights into the relationship between educational attainment and income growth in New England, examining both individual ...
Working Paper
Educational Attainment and the Evolution of Cumulative Earnings across 45 US Birth Cohorts
Educational attainment profoundly shapes cumulative earnings trends across US birth cohorts. Between the 1933 and 1977 cohorts, men with an advanced degree experienced rising earnings in both the early-career (ages 25 to 44) and late-career (ages 45 to 64) stages, while those with a sub-baccalaureate education―and college graduates outside the 1951–1965 cohorts―saw minimal earnings growth. Women experienced broad-based gains, with larger increases among those with a bachelor’s or advanced degree. For less educated men, extended work life represented the primary growth margin in the ...
Working Paper
Explaining Stagnation in the College Wage Premium
After growing substantially during the 1980s through the early 2000s, the college wage premium more recently has been largely unchanged, or stagnant. We extend the canonical production-function model of skill premiums to assess supply and demand contributions to the slowdown in college wage premium, using annual CPS ASEC data from the early 1960s through 2023. To account for the rising importance of women in the college educated workforce, we estimate a hybrid model that incorporates components that are disaggregated by age and gender. We also allow for non-linearities and changes over time ...
Journal Article
Decline in Number of Workers with “Some College” Is Boosting Healthcare Wage Inflation
Compared with the pre-pandemic period, the labor force contains about 1.5 million fewer individuals who have some post-secondary schooling but less than a bachelor’s degree. As a result, vacancies for jobs that require a post-secondary certificate or an associate degree remain elevated, especially in health-related fields. These shortages have contributed to higher wages in the fast-growing healthcare field and are unlikely to resolve quickly.
Journal Article
Educational Attainment of Immigrants at the National and Eighth District Levels
What role does the foreign-born population play in the economy? Educational attainment and earnings data shed light on potential contributions.
Journal Article
The Return on Investing in a College Education
Comparing higher education’s costs and benefits—tuition and greater future earnings, respectively—shows that the returns on investing in college can be high.
Journal Article
Patience and Credit Constraints in Education
The role of ability (a cognitive trait) and patience (a non-cognitive trait) for life outcomes, such as education, is well documented. Similarly, the impact of credit constraints on education decisions is the subject of a vast literature. I take stock of these strands of the literature and ask: how do patience and ability interact with a credit constraint in determining college attainment? I analyze a stylized model of the college decision where individuals are differentiated by their ability and their patience, which is represented by their discount factor. I introduce two different features ...