women work and divorce in this paper the author presents evidence that adds support to the economic approach to divorce and shows that the divorce rate is significantly and substantially affected by the earning ability of women in market work data are drawn from the u s farm sector after a brief overview of the economic theory of divorce and its relevance to the farm sector data sources and regression specifications are discussed excerpt

evaluating welfare reform in the united states this paper reviews the economic literature on welfare reform over the 1990s a brief summary of the policy changes is followed by a discussion of the methodological techniques that analyze the effects of these changes on outcomes the paper then critically reviews the econometric and experimental literature on caseload changes labor force changes poverty and income changes and family formation changes a growing body of evidence suggests that recent policy changes have influenced economic behavior and well being one particular set of new style welfare programs seems to show especially promising results with significantly increased work and earnings and reduced poverty

evaluating program evaluations new evidence on commonly used nonexperimental methods in this paper we follow previous research by using experimental data to assess the two nonexperimental evaluation approaches our data are from a series of social experiments conducted in several states during the 1980s to evaluate programs aimed at helping welfare recipients find jobs we simulate the two nonexperimental approaches by creating comparison groups from the true control groups and by comparing the resultant nonexperimental estimates of program effects with experimentally derived estimates of program effects although experimental data are required to provide an assessment of the nonexperimental approaches they are not required to create the comparison groups in practice thus our results have direct implications for choosing a nonexperimental evaluation strategy when an experiment is not feasible the remainder of this paper is organized as follows section i describes the social experiments and the various comparison groups created for the analysis section ii discusses the methods used to generate and assess the nonexperimental estimates section iii presents the empirical results and section iv offers some conclusions excerpt

unobserved variables and the elusive added worker effect consistent with recent empirical work this study finds no evidence of the added worker effect among married couples in the u s it is hypothesized that unobserved variables may be obscuring this added worker behavior this hypothesis is rejected the labor supply behavior of married women is influenced by the permanent and not the transitory nature of their spouses unemployment wives with frequently unemployed husbands have lower reservation wages yet apart from their measured human capital these same women face persistently lower wage rates and higher unemployment propensities in the labor market as a result married women with unemployed spouses are no more likely to be in the labor force and are actually less likely to be employed than observationally equivalent married women with employed spouses copyright 1991 by the london school of economics and political science

accounting for the decline in afdc caseloads welfare reform or the economy we use state level monthly panel data to assess the relative contributions of the macroeconomy and welfare reform in accounting for the 1993 96 decline in aid to families with dependent children afdc caseloads our results suggest that the decline in per capita afdc caseloads is attributable largely to the economic conditions in states and not to waivers from federal welfare policies nationwide we attribute 66 percent of the decline to the macroeconomy however we do find substantial heterogeneity in the impact and timing of alternative waivers on afdc caseloads states with waivers impacting parental responsibilities experienced greater caseload declines than states with waivers that made work more attractive overall our model predicts that had it not been for the influence of economic factors welfare reform would not have led to any decrease in aggregate caseloads

the added worker effect the term added worker effect usually refers to a temporary increase in the labor supply of married women whose husbands have become unemployed this paper presents a new approach to the empirical study of the added worker effect which emphasizes the role of employment uncertainty and credit constraints in generating short run participation and employment patterns the estimates are based on employment transition probabilities rather than static measures of labor supply and are used in a dynamic simulation of changes in the employment and participation rates of wives following an exogenous increase in unemployment among their husbands the results show a small but significant added worker effect at least for white families and suggest that the apparent disagreement among previous studies may stem from different approaches to measuring responses to a transitory event such as an unemployment spell

on the effectiveness of exchange rate interventions in emerging markets we analyze the effectiveness of exchange rate interventions for a panel of 18 emerging market economies during the period 2003 2011 using an error correction model approach we find that on average intervention is effective in moving the real exchange rate in the desired direction controlling for deviations from the equilibrium and short term changes in fundamentals and global financial variables our results are robust to different samples and estimation methods we find little evidence of asymmetries in the effect of sales and purchases but some evidence of more effective interventions for large deviations from the equilibrium we also explore differences across countries according to the possible transmission channels and nature of some global shocks

off farm work decisions of husbands and wives joint decision making theoretical and econometric models are developed to examine joint wage labor participation and hours decisions of a husband and wife in farm households the econometric model is multiple equation and recursive the specification of the off farm labor supply equation of the husband wife depends on whether his her wife husband does or does not work off the farm and this structure is endogenous the model is fitted to data for iowa farm households the main conclusion is that the off farm labor supply equation of a married individual differs significantly depending on whether his or her spouse also works for a wage copyright 1989 by mit press

the effect of income taxation on labor supply in the united states the effect of income taxation on the labor supply of prime age married men and women in the united states is examined using econometric methods similar to those used in the influential work of jerry hausman male labor supply is found to be relatively invariant to the net wage and virtual income in all specifications estimated the estimated impact of taxation on the labor supply of married women depends critically on the method used to estimate the labor supply function estimated net wage and virtual income elasticities are considerably larger when data on nonparticipants are included than when the estimation is conducted conditional on hours being greater than zero

consumer demand and household production the relationship between fertility and child mortality forces which link biological and behavioral factors to infant mortality and fertility in the united states are examined estimates can be arrived at if all of the important types of behavior affecting infant survival prices and income constraints facing households are diligently gathered using equations to determine the relationship between a family health endowment index in conjunction with a childs health information about optimal prenatal and postnatal behavior can be estimated and observed this estimate which is strongly a factor of parental and environmental health related factors attempts to characterize the biological effects of parents behavior on birthweight gestation and the rate of fetal growth another estimate presented is one which establishes a link between biological effects of birth order on infant mortality in this analysis factors such as medical care during pregnancy mothers rate of smoking mothers age duration of breastfeeding mothers race and childs sex were included household socioeconomic and health data were also estimated in order to understand state and county ability to provide adequate health facilities for pre and postnatal maternal care in particular results suggest that child mortality declines in developed countries and that mothers seek prenatal medical care in early stages of their pregnancy when risk is anticipated further study of the differential pattern of black and white fertility behavior in regard to seeking medical care is warranted

an economic model of cohabitation and divorce abstract the positive correlation between the rates of cohabitation and divorce has long been established this paper seeks to determine the direction of causation between these two variables a simultaneous equations model is specified with cohabitation and divorce rates as endogenous variables and using data aggregated to the state level for 1990 this procedure suggests that the divorce rate is a significant factor in explaining variations across states in the cohabitation rate and that the divorce rate is itself influenced by cohabitation behavior this finding strengthens the results put forth by various economic and sociological single equation studies this synthesis of information and data provided by sociologists with economic theory and methodology suggests further research in modelling demographic variables as joint outcomes of the same process

uncertain infant mortality learning and life cycle fertility this article examines the links between infant mortality and fertility in an environment with unobserved heterogeneity in infant mortality risk across mothers in such an environment replacement behavior i e the fertility response to an experienced child death might be influenced by mothers learning about a family specific component of infant mortality risk i explicitly introduce learning by mothers in a dynamic stochastic model of life cycle marital fertility and i estimate the model s structural parameters using malaysian panel data the framework is used to estimate replacement rates and to correct for birth selectivity in the estimation of the relationship between infant mortality risk and health inputs

interpreting a correlation between market structure and performance certain types of controlled experiments may enable causal inferences to be made about the relationship between two variables other types of experiments can be used to deal with the not completely unrelated notions of consistency in estimation exogeneity of variables and with temporal ordering generally however causal interpretations of a relationship are simply imposed on the data by appeal to an underlying theory in this paper we shall examine the theoretical basis of profits concentration correlations arguing that such correlations cannot be given a causal interpretation of the conventional kind running from structure to performance section iii 1 lest this conclusion seem to undermine the basis for anti trust policy we shall also argue that such erroneous causal interpretations are unnecessary in making a case for intervention based on structure although they do direct attention towards inappropriate targets profits concentration regressions play a role it will be argued mainly in the derivation of intervention rules section iii while the causal interpretation of co efficients is our primary concern here there is also a sense in which correlations can be interpreted as measuring the known but unobserved parameters of a model imposed on the data and we shall close section iv with a few remarks on this second issue

industrial change and wage inequality evidence from the steel industry the empirical analysis in this paper which draws on current population survey data indicates that structural decline in the steel industry during the 1980s markedly affected the distribution of wages both in the industry and in steel producing communities the steelworker wage distribution experienced both a drop in the mean and an increase in the variance becoming very similar to the distribution of wages in other durable goods manufacturing industries declines in steel employment substantially increased wage inequality in steel producing communities even among workers not employed in steel

exchange rate undervaluation and economic growth diaz alejandro 1965 revisited abstract to understand the growth effects of currency undervaluation we estimate its impact on the different components of gdp we find that for developing countries undervaluation does not affect the tradable sector but does lead to greater domestic savings and investment as well as employment

women s labor market reactions to family disruptions shadow price varies over time it is shown that the change in a woman s labor supply is related to the deviation of the husband s actual work hours from the expected amount the estimation indicates that the largest response to the loss of husband s income occurs with a divorce or separation smaller effects are noted for widowhood husband s unexpected unemployment or health change m x easuring reactions of a married woman s labor supply to shocks to her household presents a research problem that is best addressed in a dynamic framework but recent empirical research on this topic has been conducted in a static environment in this study a dynamic model which allows for uncertainty is developed and empirically implemented with the goal of measuring the labor force response of a woman to changes in her husband s contribution to household earnings the model suggests a simple form to quantify the size of an unexpected shock to the household this shock resulting from changes in her marital status a worsening of her husband s health or her husband becoming unemployed the basic behavioral assumption is that a woman forms expectations of her husband s likely contribution to household income based on their prior experiences and she then reacts to the particular circumstances encountered in a given year in an uncertain world shocks almost always occur where a shock is defined as the difference between

the impact of wages and unemployment on youth enrollment and labor supply various aspects of the school enrollment labor supply decision have been examined in earlier studies including those of bowen and finegan 1969 cohen rea and lerman 1970 duncan 1965 katz 1973 korbel 1966 and lerman 1972 although these authors were aware of the joint nature of the school work decision typically they used an ordinary least squares ols framework with dichotomous dependent variables to analyze enrollment conditional on the labor supply decision or labor supply conditional on enrollment several more recent studies such as antos and mellow 1978 stephenson 1978 and ehrenberg and marcus forthcoming use multinomial logit to analyze the joint determination of labor supply and enrollment mallar 1976 uses a bivariate probit model to deal with the simultaneous relation between school and work but none of these studies considers both the wage offers and job availability there is still available no single set of estimates which considers the roles of both job availability and the wage on the joint enrollment labor supply decision consider what the interrelation between wages and job availability implies for estimation of the labor force participation school enrollment decision to the extent that downwardly rigid wages prevent the youth labor market from clearing one would expect both wages and job availability to influence labor supply if one of these measures is not included in explaining labor supply the coefficient estimated for the other measure may for reasons well known be biased for example if the wage is omitted but the unemployment variable included and if wages and unemployment are negatively correlated then the magnitude of the coefficient of the unemployment variable will be increased it is also unclear on a priori grounds how job availability affects school enrollment on the one hand if jobs are readily available to young people youth from poor families may be able to enroll in school supporting themselves through part time work with no jobs available some may be unable to afford school expenditures and may drop out bowen and finegan 1969 p 404 on the other hand readily available employment opportunities for youth may simply raise the probability of dropping out of school and working full time our findings will help to determine how young people react to this influence and to other influences of the market from the viewpoint of public policy there are a number of reasons why it is important that the enrollment labor supply decisions be understood and that the separate responses to wage and job availability be isolated for one thing there is a tendency to discount the welfare importance of unemployment or poor labor participation for young people enrolled in school feldstein and ellwood 1979 however the joint nature of the enrollment labor supply decisions suggests that a high enrollment rate may not be simply a cause of low participation rates but may be an additional symptom of adverse labor market conditions indeed our results for nonwhite males support an interpretation of this kind second the joint nature of the decisions also implies that public programs such as the received for publication january 31 1980 revision accepted for publication december 11 1980 both authors are with dartmouth college and the national bureau of economic research the research reported here was supported by the division of technical systems in the office of technical and analytic systems office of the assistant secretary for planning and budget u s department of education and is part of the nber s research program in labor studies any opinions expressed are those of the authors and not those of the national bureau of economic research or of the department of education we would like to thank gary fields meir kohn robert plotnick martin segal and participants in the labor seminars at harvard and at cornell for their helpful comments

program interventions intrahousehold distribution and the welfare of individuals modelling household behavior abstract in this essay the implications for the intrahousehold distribution of resources derived from economic models of household behavior that treat the household as maximizing a single welfare function are reviewed particular attention is paid to the within family allocation of time and food and to the effects of these resources on the schooling earnings and health status of individuals as they are affected by direct food intervention and female employment schemes and price altering policies empirical applications are provided from data sets from india indonesia and the philippines to illustrate the power and limitations of such models for illuminating household interventions and for placing restrictions on data

rising inequality in mexico household characteristics and regional effects we use an empirical framework to identify the contributions of microeconomic factors to the sharp rise in household per capita income inequality in mexico between 1984 and 1994 results indicate that changes in returns to household characteristics in particular changes in returns to education are responsible for about half of the increase in the gini coefficient the deteriorating conditions in rural areas relative to the urban areas and of the southern region relative to other regions account for another fourth of the increase in the gini

local natural resources and crime evidence from oil price fluctuations in texas abstract we exploit plausibly exogenous changes in the value of reserves in texas s giant oil fields to determine the impact of crime in texas counties that have reserves texas provides an ideal setting for this research strategy first texas has the largest number of giant oil fields second texas s giant oil fields possess the greatest remaining oil potential third giant oil fields are dispersed throughout the state we find that a 1 increase in the value of oil reserves increases murder by 0 16 robbery by 0 55 and larceny by 0 18 using the estimated elasticities an average increase in the value of oil reserves 26 increase in the value of reserves results in a 4 15 increase in murder rates 8 increase in robbery and 4 7 increase in larceny these effects are not trivial we explore potential mechanisms that could be driving this increase in crime and find that an increase in the value of local oil reserves improves the local economic conditions increases the share of young males and increases the share of individuals residing in group quarters e g temporary worker housing of its county with no effect on the local economic conditions demographic changes or crime rates of adjacent counties

fertility and the size of the u s labor force this paper reviews and interprets from an economic perspective the demographic trends in the u s since the turn of the century the primary focus will be upon the interplay between the fertility and labor force participation of women and how they may be interpreted within simple economic models we will begin by stating what economic demography is and why careful analytic methods are needed section ii provides a brief demographic history of the u s section iii describes the major economic theories of fertility and section iv discusses the empirical performance of these theories section v discusses the linkages between fertility and the size of the labor force and section vi concludes excerpt

local labor markets and welfare spells do demand conditions matter this paper examines the impact of changes in labor market conditions on participation in the aid to families with dependent children afdc program in california transitions off welfare and transi

the economic consequences of labor mobility unlike most previous research on the relative changes in earnings of job stayers and job changers this study examines the variance in earnings changes rather than simply average changes men and women rather than only men and the five year period following job change rather than only the first year or two the author finds great variability in earnings changes both within and across race and gender groups notably men gained more from quits and except in the case of low wage workers lost less from layoffs than women also men suffered a much smaller penalty than women for repeated job changes for all groups the percentage difference between earnings before and after leaving a job generally persisted for several years

marriage and divorce reply in the popular press and among policymakers the effect of no fault divorce laws on divorce rates remains an issue see e g new york times 23 july 1991 in my 1986 article in this review i show that the adoption of one form of no fault divorceunilateral divorce does not lead to a significant increase in divorce rates the theoretical model that is consistent with this empirical evidence would imply that the new law does not decrease the costs of divorce it merely redefines which party has the right to terminate the marriage

labour force transitions among low wage married couples a simultaneous probability model interdependence in the labour force transitions of low income married couples is studied it utilizes a simultaneous probability model in which each person s job exit depends in part on the job transitions of their spouse estimates are based on data from the seattle denver income maintenance experiments the evidence appears to indicate that wives emulate the nonwork status of their husbands wives of exit prone husbands are themsleves more exit prone and less likely to enter employment evidence in favour of reverse dependence of husbands status on wives exits appears to be weak and imprecise

the youth entitlement demonstration subsidized employment with a schooling requirement the during program employment and school enrollment effects of the youth incentive entitlement pilot projects yiepp are reported this program offered a minimum wage job part time during the school year and full time during the summer to 16 19 year olds from low income households the effect of yiepp is to provide a horizontal demand curve at the minimum wage permitting all target population youths who wish to work at this wage to do so 4 study sites denver cincinnati baltimore and 8 rural counties in southern mississippi and 4 comparison sites phoenix louisville cleveland and a group of counties in western and eastern mississippi were studied through household interviews some results are 1 yiepp increase the site wide average share of days spent both enrolled in school and employed form 9 4 of a youths time without the program to 28 with it 2 time spent in school and not employed decreased by 16 8 and 3 yiepp decreased the share of days spent neither enrolled in school nor employed by 5 3 the ratio of employment sector effects to yiepp employment rates is 74 2 for the public 52 9 for private and 68 4 for total employment unique features of this program are its entitlement nature with sufficient funds available to provide jobs to all eligibles who applied and the fact that school enrollment is required for participation subsidized employment increased total employment for the target population but this occurred with a displacement rate of 31 6 these estimates must be input into future benefit cost calculations of program efficacy

when married men lose jobs income replacement within the family using matched file data from the january and march 1986 current population surveys the author estimates a model of earnings reduction and family income replacement in 1985 for a group of married men displaced from full time nonagricultural jobs the displacements which occurred between 1981 and 1984 resulted in substantial earnings losses for a large fraction of the sample husbands with earnings losses had higher levels of spouse earnings and income transfers in 1985 than the control group of non displaced husbands but the fraction of lost earnings replaced was not large on average the author concludes that long term trends in both the nature of the experience of displaced workers and the structure of the family economy call for reconsideration of traditional family adjustment mechanisms

interindustry variation in the costs of job displacement job displacement entails a substantial wage reduction for most displaced workers we show that the mean reduction the tenure profile of reductions and the experience profile of reductions all vary substantially across industries we then link this interindustry variation to analogous variation in firm size unionization wage levels and the incidence of employer provided training while these industry characteristics explain some of the interindustry variation in mean wage reductions they do not explain variation in the tenure or experience profiles of wage reductions

labour supply estimates for low income female heads of household using mincome data in this paper we present labour supply estimates for low income female heads of households using data generated by the 1974 baseline survey of the manitoba basic annual income experiment mincome a simultaneous equations model of the labour market is specified and estimated by a procedure that accounts for the simultaneous equations nature of the model and for the possibility of sample selection bias the major empirical findings are that wages net of child care costs rather than gross wages determine the supply of hours total unearned income and for married women the husband s gross wage have a negative influence on hours supplied the presence of young children also has a negative influence but children between six and fifteen years of age apparently do not formal education is found to be an important determinant of the wage offer available to women mesures de l offre de travail desfemmes a bas revenu qui sont chefs defamille a partir des resultats de l enquete mincome ce memoire presente des mesures de l offre de travail des femmes a bas revenu qui sont chefs de famille a partir des resultats de l enquete de 1974 manitoba basic annual income experimenit mincome les auteurs developpent un modele du marche du travail a l aide d un systeme d equations simultanees et le calibrent a l aide d une procedure qui prend en compte a la fois le caractere simultane du modele et la possibilite de biais de selection dans l echantillonnage les principaux resultats empiriques sont les suivants ce sont les salaires nets decantes des cofits de la garde des enfants plut6t que les salaires bruts qui determinent le nombre d heures de travail le revenu total non gagne et pour les femmes mariees le salaire brut du mari ont une influence negative sur le nombre d heures de travail an earlier version of this paper was extensively criticized in a most constructive way by one of the referees for which we are very grateful the structure of the current version owes a great deal to this referee in addition we would like to thank jenny arnott and karen harris for excellent research assistance and lloyd spitzig for programming assistance canadian journal of economics revue canadienne d economique xix no i february fevrier 1986 printed in canada imprime au canada 0008 4085 86 134 141 1 50 canadian economics association this content downloaded from 157 55 39 112 on wed 07 sep 2016 04 53 19 utc all use subject to http about jstor org terms labour supply estimates 135 fournies la presence de jeunes enfants a aussi le meme effet encore que la presence d enfants entre six et quinze ans ne semble pas avoir cet impact le degre d instruction formelle semble aussi etre un e1lment determinant du salaire offert aux femmes

household income as a determinant of child labor and school enrollment in brazil evidence from a social security reform abstractthis article studies the effects of household income on labor participation and school enrollment of children aged 10 14 in brazil using a social security reform as a source of exogenous variation in household income i find that increased benefits are associated with increases in school enrollment for girls as well as a smaller reduction in their labor participation but i find no effects for boys i also uncover evidence that the gender of the benefit receiver matters for girls labor variables only benefits received by females reduce girls work

parental preference heterogeneity and human capital inequality abstract in this article i provide an empirical account of the human capital investment behavior of parents in the face of endowment differences among siblings the data set used contains a three wave panel of 4 030 individuals the article presents a rare case in which endowments are measured explicitly health endowments are estimated from dynamic health production functions while educational endowments are obtained from test scores the simple score of the standard raven s colored progressive matrix cpm test is used to measure educational endowments i use estimation procedures that combine an instrumental variables method with panel data estimators to control for endogeneity and heterogeneity the results suggest that parents compensate for initial differences in health but reinforce initial educational differences among siblings hence an educational subsidy aimed at reducing inequality may end up reinforcing the inequality that might exist in the absence of such subsidy when parents invest mor

labour market conditions and labour force participation the case of the netherlands we develop a model to explain the relationship between unemployment and labour force participation by males and females in the netherlands following recent advances in the literature a distinction is made between temporary and permanent unemployment our findings indicate that male labour force participation is significantly influenced by the temporary unemployment variable while permanent unemployment does not seem to play a significant part for females we find the opposite

the real exchange rate structural change and female labor force participation abstract while a large literature examines the role of fiscal policy in reducing gender gaps in labor market outcomes scant evidence exists for the role of monetary and exchange rate policies in doing so recent studies have shown that targeting an undervalued real exchange rate stimulates economic growth by expanding tradable sector output we examine whether such growth reduces gender gaps in labor force participation by improving labor market opportunities for women using a comprehensive cross country dataset from 1960 to 2015 for a maximum of 103 countries we test whether there is a robust relationship between currency undervaluation and female labor force participation we find that countries that maintain an undervalued real exchange rate realize an increase in female labor force participation and a corresponding decline in the difference between male and female labor force participation rates this finding is particularly pertinent for developing countries and is robust to various specification checks as well as different estimation techniques we also provide suggestive evidence that the operative channel is an expansion of female employment in manufacturing and industrial sectors our findings have important policy implications particularly for countries in earlier stages of their development our results indicate that the positive effect of undervaluation on female labor force participation is stronger in developing countries implying that there may be opportunities for interventions to target a more undervalued real exchange rate in these countries hence competitive exchange rate policies matter not only for raising long term growth potential but also for reducing longstanding gender disparities in labor force participation

school attendance and child labor a model of collective behavior this paper theoretically investigates how community approval or disap proval aects school attendance and child labor and how aggregate behavior of the community feeds back towards the formation and persistence of an anti or pro schooling norm the proposed community model continues to take aggregate and idiosyncratic poverty into account as an important driver of low school attendance and child labor but it provides also an explanation for why equally poor villages or regions can display dierent attitudes towards schooling distinguishing between three dierent modes of child time allocation school attendance work and leisure the paper shows how the time costs of schooling and child labor productivity con tribute to the existence of a locally stable anti schooling norm it proposes policies that eectively exploit the social dynamics and initiate a permanent escape from the anti schooling equilibrium an extension of the model explores how an education contingent subsidy paid to the poorest families of a community manages to initiate a bandwagon eect towards education for all the optimal mechanism design of

the effect of economic opportunity and family background on adolescent cohabitation on adolescent cohabitation and childbearing among low income blacks this article uses a hazards model permitting continuous covariates and fixed effects to estimate the effect of local employment opportunity and family background on the cohabitation and childbearing of black youths from low income households support is found for w j wilson s hypothesis that employment opportunity encourages the formation of cohabitational unions as well as for the opportunity cost hypothesis that employment opportunity discourages childbearing outside such unions however the latter effect appears to be larger suggesting that the opportunity cost hypothesis is the primary channel through which higher employment rates result in lower rates of illegitimacy among underclass youths

benefits and the labour supply of women married to unemployed men this paper seeks to explain the low labor force participation rates of women married to unemployed men in the reducing the net increment to household income that would result from the wife s employment simple probit models of the participation and part time full time decisions are estimated using a large cross sectional data set the results confirm the importance of severe disincentive effects controlling for labor market conditions income related benefits are found to create worse problems than national insurance benefits both types impede part time work in particular copyright 1990 by royal economic society

a theory of quits and layoffs with efficient turnover this paper answers the efficient turnover literature s long silence regarding the quit layoff distinction treating quits as worker initiated separations and layoffs as firm initiated separations i establish that the existence of layoffs is compatible with optimizing workers and firms forming and dissolving employment matches to exploit all the gains from trade the efficient turnover approach is shown to be consistent with many empirical regularities that distinguish quits from layoffs structural implications of the model are tested on data from the psid

modelling labour decisions of french agricultural households a joint model of labour decisions for farm couples is presented attention is given to operator and spouse participation decisions in the off farm labour market as well as the decision to use hired farm labour farm household labour choices which include both on farm and off farm work decisions and hired labour decisions are thus modelled as a household joint process the model is applied to a sample of french farm households empirical results illustrate the importance of spouse decisions on off farm labour participation and supply function structure they also show that operator labour and hired farm labour are complementary but wife labour and hired farm labour are substitutable

school subsidies for the poor evaluating the mexican progresa poverty program abstract this paper evaluates how the progresa program which provides poor mothers in rural mexico with education grants has affected enrollment poor children who reside in communities randomly selected to participate in the initial phase of the progresa are compared to those who reside in other control communities pre program comparisons check the randomized design and double difference estimators of the program s effect on the treated are calculated by grade and sex probit models are also estimated for the probability that a child is enrolled controlling for additional characteristics of the child their parents local schools and community and for sample attrition to evaluate the sensitivity of the program estimates these estimates of program short run effects on enrollment are extrapolated to the lifetime schooling and the earnings of adults to approximate the internal rate of return on the public schooling subsidies as they increase expected private wages

governmental interventions and household behavior in a developing country anticipating the unanticipated consequences of social programs abstract estimates of the joint effects of governmental health education and family planning programs as well as sources of water on fertility child mortality and schooling are obtained from combined district level and household level data from rural india the estimates are used both to test the implications of a model of household decision making and to assess the effectiveness of the joint public provision of such services in shifting resources from increasing family size to augmenting human capital per person the results appear consistent with household optimizing behavior and suggest that reductions in the costs of medical services contraceptives and schooling and the improvement of water sources are mutually reinforcing alternatives for implementing the joint policy goals of reduced population growth and increased human capital formation

family labour force participation multinomial logit estimates studies of labour force participation choices are mostly aimed at explaining determinants of participation for individuals the objective of this study is the empirical estimation of the parameters of family participation decisions family participation decisions can be analysed as a choice problem of a family between a finite number of distinct alternatives the appropriate estimation procedure for a model involving choice among multiple discrete alternatives requires a statistical technique different from ordinary least squares in this study i use the multinomial logit model a logit model allows me to explain the probability that a particular participation alternative will be chosen by a family as a function of a set of independent variables it is found that economic variables such as wage rates and wealth play a significant role in affecting the probabilities of choosing a particular labour force participation alternative this study shows that an increase in the market wage for a family member not

what causes public assistance caseloads to grow this paper uses state panel data to investigate changes in public assistance caseloads through the end of the afdc program in 1996 with particular attention to the rapid increase in caseloads between 1990 and 1994 previous research has focused on total caseloads with attention to economic and policy variables and does a relatively poor job of explaining this caseload increase this paper utilizes a much richer set of control variables to investigate the causes of caseload change it separates afdc caseloads into three subcomponent programs separately investigating changes within the afdc up program afdc child only cases and the remaining core afdc cases with benefits paid to single mothers and their children and it explores whether this caseload rise was driven by changes in takeup rates versus in eligibility the results indicate a large unexplained rise in total afdc caseloads even with a very rich specification a good share of this is due to sharp increases in child only cases driven by program and demographic shifts to a lesser extent this rise was caused by the expansion of afdc up to all states these two factors explain half of the overall rise and all of the unexplained rise in afdc caseloads the remaining increase in core afdc cases benefits received by single mothers and their children is well explained within the model and is the result of economic demographic political and policy changes these variables appear to have increased eligibility among the core afdc population in the early 1990s during the economic slowdown takeup rates also increased during this time period but not by a large amount

birth spacing and sibling inequality asymmetric information within the family this paper formulates a dynamic model of birth spacing incorporating uncertainty about and heterogeneity in birth outcomes and joint production to assess how the spacing of children responds to exogenous shocks in birth outcomes estimation technics are developed that use assumptions about the constraints on the information available to parental decision makers associated with the sequential nature of childbearing ignored in static models of intra household behavior section 1 examines the technology of birth spacing and its consequences for the level and distribution of child outcomes and resources in section 2 the model compares alternative estimation technics in section 3 data from a probability sample of us white married couples are used to describe intrafamily variation in birth outcomes and spacing and to test for heterogeneity bias the results in section 4 suggest that across family heterogeneity bias may be less important than within family heterogeneity bias in estimates of the effects of birth order and timing patterns of births on health results from family fixed effect of sibling models of child quality determination that ignore intrafamily substitution may be misleading section 5 estimates how birth outcome endowments and information on gender are used to estimate how differences in them affect subsequent birth timing decisions and sibling inequality results suggest that 1 the birth of 1st born children tends to be delayed among families with high income husbands highly educated parents superior health endowment or high tastes for health investments 2 the proximity of the birth of the 2nd child to that of the 1st child is a positive function of the quality of the 1st born and 3 the spacing and existence of a 3rd child is significantly related to the birth outcomes sex composition and sex ordering of the 1st and 2nd children

minimum wages and teenagers enrollment employment outcomes a multinominal logit model this paper tests the hypothesis that the effect of minimum wage legislation on teenagers education decisions is asymmetrical across family income classes with the legislation inducing children from low income families to reduce their levels of schooling and children from higher income families to increase their educational attainment we use data from the national longitudinal surveys nls and exploit the fact that although the minimum wage is fixed at a point in time its value relative to adult wages varies across areas multinomial logit models of teenagers enrollment employment outcomes are estimated the hypothesis appears to be confirmed for white teens however the evidence for nonwhites is more ambiguous

marital status and fertility in the united states welfare and labor market effects the incidence of marriage and the proportion of childbearing that occurs within marriage have decreased sharply in the united states in the last several decades this paper examines whether the probability that a woman is currently married and the number of children she has borne as reported in the 1980 u s census are related to two identifiable factors the variation in welfare programs across states specifically afdc and medicaid benefits and afdc up expenditures or the variation in the market wage opportunities available to women and to their potential husbands afdc and medicaid benefit levels are associated with fewer women being currently married medicaid benefits are related to lower fertility levels for both black and white women whereas afdc benefits in cash and food are associated with lower fertility among white women ages 15 24 those states that extend afdc benefits to families with unemployed parents in other words fathers in intact poor families do not have significantly more women married or higher fertility rates contrary to what might be expected from economic incentives men s market wages are associated with more frequent marriage and higher fertility whereas higher market wage opportunities for women have substantial effects in the opposite direction all of which are consistent with standard models of gender specialization and the demand for marriage and fertility

persistent real misalignments and the role of the exchange rate regime we assess for a sample of 54 economies the impact of de facto exchange rate regimes on both the persistence of real exchange misalignments and the average rate of real appreciation we find that a fixed exchange rate regime reduces the speed of the real exchange rate s convergence to its equilibrium level it also increases the average appreciation rate but only in the case of developing economies in developed countries the real exchange rate dynamics is inelastic to the exchange rate regime

measuring the power to monopolize a simple game theoretic approach abstract this paper proposes a measure of the power to monopolize based on the ability of firms to induce a shift from a competitive to a non competitive regime through coalition formation first in the framework of monotonic simple games we show how to use the shapley value in terms of a power index for individual firms within an industry second we construct an aggregate power index for industries it is based on axioms allowing to make explicit the respective roles of the number and size of the minimal winning coalitions and aggregates additively non normalized individual power indices

household choices of child labor and schooling a simple model with application to brazil this paper argues that conflicting results from previous literature related to the effect of economic conditions on child labor derive from different income and substitution effects implicit in different types of income variation we use agricultural shocks to local economic activity in brazil coffee production to distinguish between increases in household income and increases in the opportunity cost of time results show that higher household wealth is associated with lower child labor and higher schooling nevertheless temporary increases in local economic activity are associated with higher child labor and lower schooling particularly for children with poor economic backgrounds

female earnings and the divorce rate a simultaneous equations model economists have contributed a great deal of research both theoretical and empirical to the study of marital formation and dissolution many empirical examinations of marriage and divorce rates exist based on becker s seminal contributions to the literature all of these divorce studies are single equation models with female earnings assumed exogenous as discussed by becker 1981 however causality may run in the opposite direction as well the divorce rate may influence female earnings this paper estimates a simultaneous equations model in which divorce rates and female earnings are the jointly endogenous variables data are by state for 1960 1970 1980 and 1990 the state wide divorce rate equation is an extension of waters and ressler 1999 and the specification of a state wide earnings equation follows standard human capital theory the specification of joint endogeneity between female earnings and the divorce rate allows valid inferences to be made regarding the effect of female earnings on

marriage and divorce informational constraints and private contracting the relationship between divorce rates in the united states and laws regulating divorce are analyzed using data from a special current population survey undertaken in 1979 with particular reference to the adoption by many states of no fault divorce laws the author utilizes a contract theoretic framework to examine the impact of both legal and informational constraints on several aspects of the marriage relationship 1 the probability of divorce 2 compensation at divorce i e the terms of the divorce settlement 3 the probability of entering marriage and 4 incentives for investment in marriage specific capital two different models are developed the first assumes that ex post information about the value of each spouses opportunites at divorce is symmetric and that since divorce would only occur if the joint benefits outweigh the joint costs the law has no effect on the divorce rate the second model asserts that the existence of asymmetric information results in a fixed wage marriage contract and that divorce would be higher in states that allow unilateral divorce the evidence supports the first of these hypotheses excerpt

the real exchange rate and economic growth revisiting the case using external instruments abstract we investigate the impact of movements in the real exchange rate on economic growth based on five year average data for a panel of over 150 countries in the post bretton woods period unlike previous literature we use external instruments to deal with possible reverse causality from growth to the real exchange rate our country specific instruments are i global capital flows interacted with individual countries financial openness and ii the growth rate of official reserves we find that a real appreciation depreciation reduces raises significantly annual real gdp growth more than in previous estimates in the literature however our results confirm this effect only for developing countries and for pegs

longevity complementarities under competing risks many of the high expenditure health programs established by international organizations or national and subnational governments involve disease specific interventions such as measles vaccinations hiv education programs mammogram screening malaria prevention and lung cancer research typically these programs are evaluated solely upon the success or failure of their impact on the targeted disease this paper argues that such an exclusive evaluation may significantly underestimate the overall effect of disease specific interventions when multiple risks act as competing forces on life we suggest that programs that target one disease may have important spillover effects on the mortality and morbidity of other causes of death in order to better understand and evaluate the overall effects of disease specific programs it is necessary to understand and measure these spillover effects this paper provides a theoretical and empirical analysis of the incentives introduced by disease specific mortality interventions more precisely we discuss predictions about health investment incentives as implied by the competing risk model which is the empirical framework almost exclusively used to study multiple cause mortality we show that important complementary effects between niultiple causes of death operate to equalize the occurrence of the causes we argue that this complementarity should alter the evaluation of cause specific interventions by discrediting the argument that interventions are wasted because competing mortality risks are just around the corner in support of the existence of such complementarities we present substantive evidence from one of the most important public health programs ever introduced in developing countries the expanded programme on immunization epi of the united nations the paper is organized as follows section i provides a theoretical analysis arguing that the competing risk model of multiple causes of mortality corresponds to the leontief production function of survival this implies that there are inherent complementarities between investments in the prevention of cause specific mortality risks both on the individual level and on the aggregate level for competing risks the marginal benefit of investing to avoid one cause of death increases as a function of the survival rates of other causes the implications of this complementarity are important and have not received sufficient attention in theoretical or practical evaluations of causespecific interventions when mortality is treated as exogenous a disease specific intervention may seem wasteful if members of the targeted group are likely to die from a second cause as soon as the first has been eliminated then reducing the mortality from one cause of death would not appear to substantially increase life expectancy indeed this argument is repeatedly made by economists and demographers about medical care interventions in old age however it is sguided to use the preintervention background mortality when assessing the effectiveness of an interventionbehavior under one policy should not be assumed to prevail under a new policy as the leontief nature of competing risks predicts health investments will be focused upon he most immediate cause of death so that there are dow department of health policy and administration cb 7400 university of north carolina chapel hill nc 27599 philipson irving b harris graduate school of public policy studies department of economics and the law school university of chicago 1155 east 60th street chicago il 60637 sala i martin department of econornics columbia university 420 west 118th street 1005 new york ny 10027 and universitat pompeu fabra we are thankful to three anonymous referees for comments that substantially improved the paper and we especially acknowledge the contributions of jessica holmes who was a research assistant and co author on early drafts of this work we also thank gary becker kate howe steen jorgenson casey mulligan sherwin rosen paul schultz and participants at numerous workshops for discussions dow acknowledges financial support from national institute on aging grant no t32 ag00244 philipson from the national science foundation and the rockefeller foundation this research was begun while all authors were at yale university during 1994

testing the neoclassical model of family labor supply and fertility the mcelroy horney nash bargaining model of family demand behavior relaxes the restriction that nonearned income of husband and wife has the identical effect on family labor supply and commodity demands this restriction of the neoclassical model offamily behavior is tested for the determination of husband and wife labor supply andfertility based on the 1981 socioeconomic survey of thailand the neoclassical restriction is rejected for female labor supply andfertility another unexplored limitation offamily demand studies due to the sample self selection of intact marriages is empirically treated through alternative estimation strategies in this case a more sharply focused theory of marital behavior is needed to identify family demand models

does child labour displace schooling evidence on behavioral responses to an enrollment subsidy this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study entitled does child labour displace schooling evidence on behavioral responses to an enrollment subsidy conducted between 1995 and 1996 in bangladesh the study observed that the subsidy increases schooling but its effect on child labour is ambiguous the subsidy increased schooling by far more than it reduced child labour substitution effects helped protect current incomes from the higher school attendance induced by the subsidy substitution effects helped protect current incomes from the higher school attendance induced by the subsidy the reduction in the incidence of child labour by boys girls represents about one quarter eighth of the increase in their school enrollment rate

the empirical content of nash bargained household behavior in households whose allocation decisions can be represented as nash bargained household decisions extrahousehold environmental parameters eeps serve as pure shifters of the threat points the comparative statics of changes in demands due to changes in these eeps are given these are incorporated into a comprehensive statement of the empirical content of nash bargained household behavior including a nash generalization of barten s 1966 fundamental matrix equation of the theory of consumer demand estimation and data requirements are discussed along with nested testing of the following structure the neoclassical model is nested in the nash bargained model which in turn is nested in an unrestricted model of household demands emphasized throughout is the enriched menu of explanatory variables for demand analysis provided by the nash model as well as the model s ability to jointly analyze i household formation and ii intrahousehold allocation decisions

should transfers to poor families be conditional on school attendance a household bargaining perspective this article considers the welfare implications of transfers to poor families that are conditional on school attendance and other forms of investment in children s human capital family decisions are assumed to be the result of generalized nash bargaining between the two parents we show that as long as bequests are zero conditional transfers are better for children than unconditional transfers the mother s welfare may also be improved by conditional transfers thus conditioning transfers to bequest constrained families have potentially desirable intergenerational and intragenerational welfare effects conditioning transfers to unconstrained families make every family member worse off

a normative approach to industrial performance evaluation and concentration indices abstract in this paper we present a normative theory of industrial evaluation our framework provides a foundation for the notion of the equivalent number of equal sized firms which is an inverse measure of concentration from an axiomatic basis we develop a particular functional form for the evaluation of industry performance a cobb douglas function of the equivalent number of equal sized firms and total output

changing world prices women s wages and the fertility transition sweden 1860 1910 this time series analysis examines during 1860 1910 the impact of changes in local prices of agricultural commodities on wages among men and women in sweden and the impact of changes in wages on fertility decline child mortality urbanization and improved social conditions linear ordinary least squares models are set up to determine whether demand induced increases in womens wages relative to mens are significant factors in explaining swedish total fertility rates data are obtained from 25 counties and the city of stockholm among pooled observations for six time periods during 1860 64 and 1910 14 this period is marked by a total fertility decline of 28 a marital fertility decline of 26 and a child mortality decline of 52 explanatory variables are the relative prices of main agricultural outputs employment outside of agriculture the proportion of urban population and the child mortality rate findings indicate a significant relationship between child mortality and total fertility and specific fertility rates among women aged 20 39 years a doubling of the male real wage rate was significantly associated with earlier marriage higher birth rates among women aged 15 29 years and lower birth rates among women aged 35 49 years the ratio of male wages to female wages was associated with a decline in birth rates at all ages with the exception of teenagers 66 of fertility increase was due to declines in child mortality but this increase was counterbalanced by fertility decline among older women child mortality and urbanization depressed marital fertility male wages increased the proportion married a 10 increase in the male female wage rate was associated with a 25 reduction in the total fertility rate another 25 increase in the male female wage rate was associated with a 50 reduction in child mortality it is concluded that the value of womens time had a key impact on the swedish fertility transition

aid dutch disease and manufacturing growth abstract we examine the effects of aid on the growth of manufacturing using a methodology that exploits the variation within countries and across manufacturing sectors and corrects for possible reverse causality we find that aid inflows have systematic adverse effects on a country s competitiveness as reflected in the lower relative growth rate of exportable industries we provide some evidence suggesting that the channel for these effects is the real exchange rate appreciation caused by aid inflows we conjecture that this may explain in part why it is hard to find robust evidence that foreign aid helps countries grow

employment opportunities of young men and family formation major shifts in family patterns have limited progress toward reducing poverty and narrowing black white income differences much of the recent rise in female headship results from the rising number of never married mothers despite a decline in the proportion of unmarried young women having babies the drop in marriage rate has been so great that a rising proportion of children are under the care of never married mothers the absence of a parent dramatically increases current poverty of children and as sara mclanahan 1988 shows growing up in a poor family and in a mother headed family holding constant for income increases the chances that a child will become poor as an adult a long literature links the creation of mother headed families with the inadequate financial resources of men in 1965 the moynihan report attributed the then high rates of marital disruption among black families to the joblessness of black men but warned that family dissolution might have reached a self perpetuating stage unrelated to employment opportunities did the dramatic increases in one parent families after 1965 reflect such a new self generating pattern or were the job market problems of men the primary cause of the continuing decline in stable intact american families the most forceful recent proponent of the male job opportunity hypothesis hereafter mjo is sociologist william j wilson wilson 1987 argues that the declining number of employed black men relative to black women best explains the increasing proportions of black female headed families clifford johnson and andrew sum 1987 contend that declining real earnings of all young men was a major cause of their declining marriage rates this paper examines the mjo hypothesis with respect to young men and family formation marriage and becoming parents i begin by viewing the mjo hypothesis from the perspective of the economics of the family i then consider evidence from empirical studies of the mjo hypothesis the conclusion notes future policy and research direc

the impact of economic conditions on participation in disability programs evidence from the coal boom and bust abstract we examine the impact of the coal boom of the 1970 s and the coal bust of the 1980 s on disability program participation these shocks provide clear evidence that as the value of labor market participation increases disability program participation falls for the disability insurance program the elasticity of payments with respect to local earnings is between 0 3 and 0 4 and for supplemental security income the elasticity is between 0 4 and 0 7 consistent with a model where qualifying for disability programs is costly the relationship between economic conditions and program participation is much stronger for permanent than for transitory economic shocks

trends in the well being of american women 1970 1995 this paper examines the trends in the well being of american women over the last 25 years a time of significant changes in the relative economic status of women and in the labor market as a whole a broad range of indicators are considered to capture changes in women s well being in the family as well as in the labor market for virtually all age and education groups substantial evidence is obtained of rising gender equality in labor market outcomes notably labor force participation wages and occupational distributions broad evidence is also found of greater gender parity within married couple families as the housework time of husbands increased relative to wives and the relative wages of wives rose compared to their husbands however parallel to the recent evidence of the declining labor market position of lower skilled men there has been a similar deterioration in the economic status of less educated women especially high school dropouts their labor force participation rates and wages have risen at a much slower pace than those of more highly educated women while their incidence of single headship has increased much more rapidly these findings for less educated women serve to underscore the widening gap between more and less skilled americans of both sexes as well as to emphasize its broad dimensions

labor supply and marital separation panel data are used to estimate the effect of marital separation on labor supply female labor supply increases substantially and male labor supply declines marginally lending support to the theory of specialization within the household the most interesting finding is that women began to increase their labor supply well before the actualsplit occurs suggesting either that shocks to labor supply change divorce probabilities or that women with a higher likelihood of divorcework more this argument is pursued by constructing and estimating a simultaneous model of labor supply and divorce risk copyright 1986 by american economic association

are children normal abstract we examine becker s 1960 contention that children are normal for the cross section of non hispanic white married couples in the united states we show that when we restrict comparisons to similarly educated women living in similarly expensive locations completed fertility is positively correlated with the husband s income the empirical evidence is consistent with children being normal in an effort to show causal effects we analyze the localized impact on fertility of the mid 1970s increase in world energy prices an exogenous shock that substantially increased men s incomes in the appalachian coal mining region empirical evidence for that population indicates that fertility increases with men s income

population growth and human capital investments theory and evidence this paper presents evidence from empirical studies that test hypotheses derived from models of household behavior pertaining to the interrelationships among population growth human capital and economic development these studies have exploited quasi natural experiments embodied in the cross area variability in the wage rates of children in a number of low income countries the intercouple variation in the biological propensity to conceive and the geographically selective introduction of new high yielding seed varieties in india in the period 1961 71 the different varieties of evidence support the hypotheses that alterations in the returns to human capital associated with exogenous technical change lead simultaneously to increases in human capital investments and to reductions in fertility and that the costliness of fertility control is a significant but modest factor in inhibiting human capital investments

schooling and earnings distributions with endogenous labour force participation marital status and family size this paper investigates the impact of various schooling investment strategies on family and per capita earnings within a framework that integrates effects on earnings family size marital status and labour force participation data are from a 1977 1978 survey of urban nicaraguan women aged 15 45 excerpt

the impact of exogenous child mortality on fertility a waiting time regression with dynamic regressors in this paper the authors develop and implement an econometric methodology estimating a family specific exogenous component of life expectancy in order to determine the responsiveness of fertility to exogenous changes in child mortality they use a generalized waiting time regression model applied to length of life which is viewed as the output of a production process they allow for family specific heterogeneity in duration of life and for time varying explanatory variables the heterogeneity component retrieved from the production function estimation is used to estimate the impact of exogenous child mortality on a measure of fertility the data concern 1938 children from 311 families included in the 1976 malaysian family life survey this paper was previously published in econometrica chicago ill vol 51 no 3 may 1983 pp 731 49 excerpt

heterogeneity intrafamily distribution and child health data were collected in candelaria colombia from 1968 to 1974 to evaluate the impact of child health services in all households in which there were any children under 6 years old to estimate the birth outcome equation and post birth health equation a subsample of 109 households was selected in which at least 2 children were born during the 7 year program the sample size was 238 children estimates of the parameters of the normalized weight equations were obtained using seemingly unrelated regression sur the family fixed effects procedure ffe and the lagged instrumental fixed effects technique life an illustrative dynamic model of intra family allocative behavior incorporating variations in individual child characteristics was formulated to show how both the timing of childbearing and child specific allocations vary with both family and child specific health endowments the information restrictions were used in the model associated with the sequencing of births to develop an estimation procedure which takes into account both intrafamily and interfamily heterogeneity longitudinal data on children and households compared estimates of the effects of birth order birth spacing and timing per capita food consumption inoculations and the incidence of breast feeding on the age standardized weight of children at 2 life cycle points at birth and within 6 months after birth the estimates indicated that healthier families for given income had more children and more closely spaced children but consumed no more food per capita than did less well endowed families these results imply that families behave so as to reduce inherent interfamily inequalities in child health however while the estimates suggest that the healthier the prior surviving child the more quickly parents are likely to have a subsequent child parents are also more likely to breastfeed an inherently healthier child

employment constraints and the labor supply of married women a reexamination of the added worker effect little evidence is found to support the conventional notion of the added worker effect the husband s unemployment has no measurable impact on the wife s actual hours of work however the constraint on his ability to supply hours of work to the labor market and not simply his unemployment influences his wife s labor supply furthermore the observed hours of work of the wife may not accurately reflect her desired hours of work with these considerations the wife s labor supply is found to be positively associated with the unemployment and underemployment of her husband and this added worker effect is estimated to be quite substantial

welfare marital prospects and nonmarital childbearing the roles of the entitlements of the afdc program and marital prospects in the fertility and marriage choices of young women are assessed in the context of a model incorporating heritable endowment heterogeneity assortative mating concern for child quality and potential parental and public support alternatives estimates based on data describing the fertility and marital experience up to age 23 of the eight birth cohorts of women in the nlsy provide evidence that higher afdc benefit levels and lower marital prospects induce young women to choose to have a child outside of marriage

the quit propensity of married men this paper hypothesizes that the quit propensity of married men rises with an increase in their wives income assuming that individuals are risk averse and that quitting is risky the wife s income increases the husband s expected value of quitting by reducing the variance of expected family income using the longitudinal data from the michigan panel study of income dynamics psid the wife s income is found to have a large effect on quits the average husband s quit rate increases by about 45 when the wife s income rises from zero to two thirds that of the husband s the wife s income effect nearly offsets the negative effect that marriage typically has on male quit rates

does the availability of high wage jobs for low skilled men affect welfare expenditures evidence from shocks to the steel and coal industries abstract we study shocks to the coal and steel industries to measure the effect of long term changes in demand for low skilled workers on welfare expenditures the coal and steel industries have historically paid high wages to low skilled men we find a substantial increase in welfare expenditures in response to the collapse of the steel and coal industries in the 1980s and an even more substantial reduction in welfare expenditures during the coal boom of the 1970s additional analysis indicates the reduction in welfare expenditures during the coal boom is due in part to a decline in single parent households