Endogeneity in the Decision to Migrate: Changes in the Self-Selection of Puerto Rican Migrants before, during, and after the Great Recession
By Aasha Reddy
Migrants self-select on characteristics such as income. We use the U.S. Census’ ACS and PRCS to study changes in selection patterns of Puerto Rican migrants to the to the U.S. mainland (50 states) before, during, and after the Great Recession (2005 to 2016). We construct counterfactual income densities to compare incomes of Puerto Rican migrants to the mainland versus incomes of island residents under equivalent returns to skill. We examine where Puerto Rican migrants to the mainland tend to fall in the island’s income distribution and find that Puerto Rican migrants tend to come from the top 20% of the island’s income distribution. This pattern remained stable with little to no effect of the Great Recession on selectivity patterns.
Advisors: William Darity and Michelle Connolly | JEL Codes: J15, J61, O15
The Effects of Parental Division of Employment on Child Outcomes During Adulthood
By Meredith Parenti
This paper offers an empirical analysis of the effects of division of employment between parent figures on future outcomes of children. Using propensity score matching, this study extends upon previous research to offer an understanding of the joint role played by maternal employment and that of a present or non-present husband. Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Young Adults and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 are used to create and examine a comprehensive set of respondents’ backgrounds and labor outcomes. Relative to children from two parent homes with only working fathers, children from two parent homes with part-time working mothers and non-working fathers appear to have less positive labor outcomes. Conversely, children with full-time working mothers without spouses in the home have more positive labor outcomes. These findings demonstrate the mediation of each parent figure on the role of the other in determining outcomes and suggest maternal work is beneficial to children, or plays no significant role, unless a mother has to support not only her children, but also her husband through her employment.
Advisors: V. Joseph Hotz and Michelle Connolly | JEL Codes: J01, J12, J22
24K Magic: Evidence on Maternal Asset Ownership and Children’s Long Term Outcomes in Indonesia
By Maya Durvasula
Household resource allocation in response to economic shocks is of central importance for policy makers, especially given widely documented evidence of gender biases. In this paper, I exploit a
plausibly exogenous shock to maternal asset holdings in Indonesia to examine gender biases in resource allocation in the wake of the 1998 East Asian Financial Crisis. Using insights from
anthropology, I separate assets in the hands of women from those controlled by men and interpret findings in the context of a household decision-making framework that allows preferences of parents to differ. Taking household-specific heterogeneity into account with fixed effects, I find significant evidence of efforts to shield male children from the effects of the crisis in both contemporaneous educational attainment and longer-term labor market outcomes, a remarkable trend given minimal evidence of a pro-son bias in Indonesia prior to the crisis. Finally, inferring preferences from maternal resource allocation, I find suggestive evidence of an old age security motive in women’s investment decisions.
Advisor: Duncan Thomas | JEL Codes: D13, I0, J13, J16
The Effects of Religion and Patriarchal Norms on Female Labor Force Participation
by Chidinma Hannah Nnoromele
Abstract
This paper provides an empirical study of the influence of religion, religiosity, and patriarchal norms on female labor force participation across 40 countries. Using micro-level data from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) 2012: “Family and Changing Gender Roles IV and macro-level data from World Bank Group’s Women, Business, and the Law 2012 database, the study examines religious and patriarchal aspects that influence female labor force participation among working women, ages 15 to 64. The analysis supports the hypothesis that more religious and socially conservative women are less likely to have paid work. However, the analysis, which examines ten different religions, finds that the specific religion a woman practices, excluding the cultural religions (Judaism and Hinduism), does not influence female labor force participation when controlling for national and environmental cultural factors. This suggests that a country’s institutions, socio-political context, and geographic cultural heritage matter in the way that religiosity is expressed in women’s economic participation.
Professor Michael Munger, Faculty Advisor
Professor Michelle Connolly, Faculty Advisor
JEL Codes: J1, D19, J21, J22
The Decision to Marry of Cohabit and Economic Crises
By Jennifer Garand
This paper aims to investigate the relationship between peoples’ decisions to marry or cohabit and their economic circumstances – both personal, as measured by their employment status, and peripheral, as measured by the unemployment rate in their local county. This paper will look at the role economic factors, as well as demographic and personal factors, play in the decision of whether or not to marry, cohabit, or stay single.
Advisor: Marjorie McElroy, Michelle Connolly | JEL Codes: D1, J12, J16 | Tagged: Marriage, Unemployment, Demographics, Cohabitation
Tying the Knot: Links Between the Labor and Marriage Markets
By Shafiq Haris, Alexander Prezioso, Michael Temple, Logan Turner, Kevin Zipf, Elizabeth Di Giulio, and Joseph Ueland
This paper analyzes the impact of exogenous shifts in the labor market on the marriage market. The relationship between these two markets is complicated by their reverse causality. That is to say, labor market decisions play into marriage market decisions, and vice versa. In order to mitigate this simultaneous determination, this paper adopts and furthers a methodology utilized by Autor, Dorn and Hansen (2015). Henceforth referred to as ADH, the authors analyze the effects of trade on local labor markets between 1980 and 2007. All 722 commuting zones in the continental United States were evaluated with respect to their level of exposure to increasing competition from Chinese imports, and the share of jobs within the commuting zone considered “routine,” and thus susceptible to computerization and/or mechanization. The authors analyze the impact of these independent variables on labor force participation. This paper takes Autor, et al’s analysis one step further by using the routinization and trade variables as instruments through which we can observe the exogenous impact of the labor market on marital status shares. This paper progresses through two specifications before ultimately utilizing a Two–Stage Least Squares analysis with Autor et al’s instruments to isolate the impact of decadal changes in the labor market on decadal changes in male and female marital status shares. Analysis is performed on different age groups, as both the marriage and labor market are different for people of different ages. The first specification applies Autor, et. al’s right–hand side with marital status shares as dependent variables. The second specification adds labor market ratios, which relate male and female labor market status. The previously mentioned final specification offers easily interpreted results and is the most encompassing model. Overall, we find that the labor market affects the marriage market much like the current literature would suggest. For example, as male employment increases, the share of females never married decreases and the share of females married increases. This relationship is consistent with existing marriage market theory. However, the results suggest that the literature does not hold in the oldest age group in the data, as power dynamics in the marriage market shift. Our methodology and findings are unique, as we explore this field through a new lens. Future research can expand upon this by incorporating a dataset with information regarding cohabitation habits and consistent longitudinal variable measurements for controls.
Advisor: Marjorie McElroy | JEL Codes: J1, J12, J21 | Tagged: Employment, Marriage
The Implications of Population Aging for Economic Growth a Regional Comparative Study
By Paige Muggeridge
I use a reduced form regression model to determine the extent to which population aging accounts for economic growth in each of the nine regions of the world. Predominantly, I build upon the research of Bloom et al. (2010), which is central to formulating my regression equation. I separate the difference between each region’s average growth rate from the world average growth rate into demographic and non-demographic effects using the estimated coefficients. The results suggest that more economically developed regions have potentially benefited from population aging, while less economically developed regions have not.
Advisor: Craig Burnside | JEL Codes: J1, J14, | Tagged: Economic Growth, Economic Policy, Labor-force Participation, Life Expectancy, Population Aging, Retirement Age
The Effect of Minority History on Racial Disparities in the Mortgage Market: A Case Study of Durham and New Haven
By Jisoo Yoon
In the aftermath of the housing market crash, the concentration of subprime mortgage loans in minority neighborhoods is a current and long-standing issue. This study investigates the presence of racial disparities in mortgage markets by examining two cities with contrasting histories of African American and Hispanic establishment: Durham, North Carolina and New Haven, Connecticut. This study examines data by the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA), and distills the effect of minority legacy on the perception of racial risk by using econometric instruments to separate the behavior of national lenders and local lenders. The econometric methods allow national lenders to reflect objective risk measures and neighborhood race dynamics, while local lenders reflect subjective attitudes towards certain races. With its longer history of African American presence, Durham shows a positive attitude towards Black borrowers at the local level, while New Haven shows a more favorable attitude towards its Hispanic residents. Nonetheless, racial legacy also materializes as a negative factor in the form of increased residential segregation and spillover effects. Furthermore, a temporal variation analysis of pre- and post-mortgage market reform data affirms the disappearance of racial bias and continued presence of spillover risk in Durham.
Advisor: Christopher Timmins | JEL Codes: C01, G21, J15, R21, R23, R31 | Tagged: Econometrics, Mortgages, Economics of Minorities, Races, Census, Migration, Population, Neighborhood Characteristics, Housing Supply and Market
Security Without Equity? The Effect of Secure Communities on Racial Profiling by Police
By Jack Willoughby
Anecdotal and circumstantial evidence suggest that the implementation of Secure Communities, a federal program that allows police officers to more easily identify illegal immigrants, has increased racial bias by police. The goal of this analysis is to empirically evaluate the effect of Secure Communities on racial bias by police using motor vehicle stop and search data from the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation. This objective differs from most previous research, which has largely attempted to quantify racial profiling for a moment in time rather than looking at how an event influences racial profiling. I examine the effects of Secure Communities on police treatment of Hispanics vs. whites with an expanded difference-in-difference approach that looks at outcomes in motor vehicle search success rate, search rate conditional on a police stop, stop rate, and police action conditional on stop. Statistical analyses yield no evidence that the ratification of Secure Communities increased racial profiling against Hispanics by police. This finding is at odds with the anecdotal and circumstantial evidence that has led many to believe that the ratification of Secure Communities led to a widespread increase in racial profiling by police, a discrepancy that should caution policy makers about making decisions driven by stories and summary statistics.
Advisor: Frank Sloan | JEL Codes: J15, K14, K37, K42 | Tagged: Racial Policing, Bias, Immigration Law, Secure Communities
Undergraduate Education and the Gender Wage Gap: An Analysis of the Effects of College Experience and Gender on Income
By Kelsey Siman
Labor and education economists have long been interested in the link between undergraduate education and earnings. In addition, studies have addressed the connections between gender and college major and GPA, as well as between gender and income. This paper brings all of these together in order to show that college major choice does have a significant effect on earnings, and that this effect differs with gender and across majors. The results show that controlling for college major, ability measures, graduation year, and GPA can help to explain a majority of the gender pay gap. Finally, the thesis then utilizes the Oaxaca-Blinder Decomposition to break down the price and composition effect of undergraduate education on the gender pay gap.
Advisor: Arnaud Maurel, Kent Kimbrough | JEL Codes: A22, J16 | Tagged: College, Gender, Income
