Matching Items (4)
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- All Subjects: Labor Economics
- Creators: Dillon, Eleanor
- Creators: Herrendorf, Berthold
Description
A growing number of jobs in the US require a college degree or technical education, and the wage difference between jobs requiring a high school diploma and a college education has increased to over $17,000 per year. Enrollment levels in postsecondary education have been rising for at least the past decade, and this paper attempts to tease out how much of the increasing enrollment is due to changes in the demand by companies for workers. A Bartik Instrument, which is a measure of local area labor demand, for each county in the US was constructed from 2007 to 2014, and using multivariate linear regression the effect of changing labor demand on local postsecondary education enrollment rates was examined. A small positive effect was found, but the effect size in relation to the total change in enrollment levels was diminutive. From the start to the end of the recession (2007 to 2010), Bartik Instrument calculated unemployment increased from 5.3% nationally to 8.2%. This level of labor demand contraction would lead to a 0.42% increase in enrollment between 2008 and 2011. The true enrollment increase over this period was 7.6%, so the model calculated 5.5% of the enrollment increase was based on the changes in labor demand.
ContributorsHerder, Daniel Steven (Author) / Dillon, Eleanor (Thesis director) / Schoellman, Todd (Committee member) / Economics Program in CLAS (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
A recession at the time of high school graduation could place multiple and competing pressures on a student deciding between entering the labor force and going to college. A recession may lower opportunity costs, increasing college enrollment and depressing the college wage premium; a downturn may also restrict enrollment to only those with sufficient family resources to pay for it. In the event that either of these illustrations holds true, recessions would seem to result in an adverse, exogenous welfare impact. This paper examines the extent to which recessions at the time of high school graduation affect students' likelihood of enrolling in college and then looks at the long-term earnings effects these early-life recessions carry. I first describe the choice between entering a volatile labor market and enrolling in higher education that faces 18-year-old high school graduates during a recession. For my analysis, I use data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to study the effects recessions have on high school graduates' decision-making. I then develop a model using these same data to compare the college wage premiums for individuals treated and untreated by a recession at the time of high school graduation. I find that recessions result in an economically significant uptick in college enrollment. However, the college wage premium for those who enroll in a recession is not statistically different from that witnessed by enrollees in better economic climates. Nonetheless, those young people who enter college during a recession may witness an economically appreciable earnings premium over and above the typical college premium. I conclude by exploring the significance of these findings and reflect on their seemingly contradictory implications.
ContributorsFischer, Brett (Author) / Dillon, Eleanor (Thesis director) / Wiswall, Matthew (Committee member) / Veramendi, Gregory (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
Are heterogeneous labor market outcomes a product of markets efficiently allocating resources or the result of structural market failures which should be corrected through well-crafted policy? In order to address this fundamental question in modern economics, we must first understand the forces which shape individuals' earnings, employment, and occupational choices. This collection of essays provides new evidence to support several novel channels which influence labor markets. First, I evaluate the connection between technological change and labor market outcomes by bringing new data and methods to study the mechanization of American agriculture in the early 20th century. Using an instrumental variables estimation strategy, I find that exogenous increases in exposure to technological change generated occupational displacement for incumbent laborers, increased income inequality, and had important impacts on intergenerational mobility for the children of affected workers. Additionally, I investigate the connection between low-opportunity neighborhoods and public housing residents' labor market outcomes. Leveraging quasi-random variation in neighborhood quality due to a public housing demolition, I find that residents' wages increased after moving to higher-opportunity neighborhoods and that more intense supportive services improved post-move employment. Taken together, these essays provide new evidence that both large-scale factors like new technologies and local factors like neighborhood quality contribute to heterogeneity in labor market outcomes both historically and up to the present day.
ContributorsFrench, Jacob (Author) / Zafar, Basit (Thesis advisor) / Aucejo, Esteban (Thesis advisor) / Silverman, Daniel (Committee member) / Herrendorf, Berthold (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
This dissertation consists of three essays on the task approach to labor markets. In the first chapter, I document that since 2000 the polarization of wages in the U.S. labor market stopped, as the wages of non-routine manual occupations fell in relative and absolute terms. I analyze the end of wage polarization through the lens of a dynamic general equilibrium model with occupation-biased technical change, human capital accumulation, and occupational mobility. I show that wage polarization ended because workers in non-routine manual occupations had lower initial human capital and lower human capital accumulation over time, and because after 2000 mobility across occupations fell, which magnified the differences in human capital accumulation across occupations. The second chapter estimates the effect of the import competition from China on the intensity of tasks performed by workers within U.S. manufacturing establishments between 2002 and 2017. I measure the changes in the intensity of these tasks by linking information on occupational employment from the Occupational Employment Statistics to the occupational characteristics from the Occupational Information Network (O*NET). I find that this “China shock” led establishments to significantly decrease the intensity of cognitive and interpersonal tasks, and to increase the intensity of manual and routine tasks. These estimations are consistent with US establishments reallocating employment to become more similar to their Chinese competitors and have important implications for the design of public policies. The third chapter explores the importance of changes in the intensity of tasks performed by workers to explain the evolution of wages. Despite changes in the workplace, the literature is based on the questionable assumption that the intensity of tasks remains constant over time. I harmonize and compare over time the intensity of non-routine cognitive, non-routine manual, interpersonal, and routine tasks in the Dictionary of Occupation Title (DOT) and the O*NET. I find the new fact that a sizable part of wage changes is due to increases in the return and the intensity of cognitive tasks. I show that this fact has implications for three well-documented wage trends during the last decades: wage polarization, increasing college premium, decreasing gender-wage gap.
ContributorsGarcia-Couto, Santiago (Author) / Herrendorf, Berthold (Thesis advisor) / Ventura, Gustavo (Committee member) / Ferraro, Domenico (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021