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Working Paper
Even one is too much: the economic consequences of being a smoker
It is well known that smoking leads to lower wages. However, the mechanism of this negative relationship is not well understood. This analysis includes a decomposition of the wage gap between smokers and nonsmokers, with a variety of definitions of smoking status designed to reflect differences in smoking intensity. This paper finds that nearly two-thirds of the 24 percent selectivity-corrected smoking/nonsmoking wage differential derives from differences in characteristics between smokers and nonsmokers. These results suggest that it is not differences in productivity that drive the smoking ...
Working Paper
Wage Determination in Social Occupations: The Role of Individual Social Capital
We make use of predicted social and civic activities (social capital) to account for selection into "social" occupations. Individual selection accounts for more than the total difference in wages observed between social and nonsocial occupations. The role that individual social capital plays in selecting into these occupations and the importance of selection in explaining wage differences across occupations is similar for both men and women. We make use of restricted data from the 2000 decennial census and the 2000 Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey. Individual social capital is ...
Journal Article
The National Fund for Workforce Solutions: The Impact and Challenges of Its Workforce Partnership Model
The recent economic recession and equally anemic recovery have dramatically changed the job outlook for low-wage workers and disadvantaged youth in America. In addition, the Great Recession has accelerated the long-term trend toward requiring workers to have a higher skill set to obtain jobs that pay family-supporting wages. The recession also highlighted the fact that workers need both sector- and firm-specific skills as well as connections to employers in order to obtain jobs that pay reasonable wages. However, as middle-skill jobs (e.g., welders, paralegals, radiology technicians, and ...
Working Paper
Impact of first-birth career interruption on earnings: evidence from administrative data
This paper uses unique administrative data to expand the understanding of the role women's intermittency decisions play in the determination of their wages. We demonstrate that treating intermittency as exogenous significantly overstates its impact. The intermittency penalty also increases in the education level of the woman. The penalty for a woman with a high school degree with an average amount of intermittency during six years after giving birth to her first child is roughly half the penalty for a college graduate. We also demonstrate the value of using an index to capture multiple ...