534 research outputs found

    Mapping Cultural Participation in Chicago

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    Charts the household income, educational level, race, and ethnicity of all neighborhoods in Chicago's metropolitan area and explores whether smaller, ethnic, and diverse organizations reach a different audience than the larger institutions

    Estimating the Effect of Training on Employment and Unemployment Durations: Evidence From Experimental Data

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    Using data from a social experiment, we estimate the impact of training on the duration of employment and unemployment spells for AFDC recipients. Although an experimental design eliminates the need to construct a comparison group for this analysis, simple comparisons between the average durations or the transition rates of treatments' and controls' employment and unemployment spells lead to biased estimates of the effects of training. We present and implement several econometric approaches that demonstrate the importance of and correct for these biases. For the training program studied in the paper, we find that it raised employment rates because employment durations increased. In contrast, training did not lead to shorter unemployment spells.

    Should we teach old dogs new tricks? the impact of community college retraining on older displaced workers

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    This paper estimates the returns to retraining for older displaced workers--those 35 or older--by estimating the impact that community college schooling has on their subsequent earnings. Our analysis relies on longitudinal administrative data covering workers who were displaced from jobs in Washington State during the first half of the 1990s and who subsequently remained attached to the state’s work force. Our database contains displaced workers' quarterly earnings records covering 14 years matched to the records of 25 of the state's community colleges. We find that older displaced workers participate in community college schooling at significantly lower rates than younger displaced workers. However, among those who participate in retraining, the per-period impact for older and younger displaced workers is similar. ; We estimate that one academic year of such schooling increases the long- term earnings by about 8 percent for older males and by about 10 percent for older females. These per-period impacts are in line with those reported in the schooling literature. These percentages do not necessarily imply that retraining older workers is a sound social investment. We find that the social internal rates of return from investments in older displaced workers' retraining are less than for younger displaced workers and likely less than those reported for schooling of children. However, our internal rate of return estimates are very sensitive to how we measure the opportunity cost of retraining. If we assume that these opportunity costs are zero, the internal rate of return from retraining older displaced workers is about 11 percent. By contrast, if we rely on our estimates of the opportunity cost of retraining, the internal rate of return may be less than 2 percent for older men and as low as 4 percent for older women.Displaced workers ; Education

    Earnings Losses of Displaced Workers

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    The 1990-1991 recession has intensified concerns about the consequences of workers' job losses. To estimate the magnitude and temporal pattern of displaced workers' earnings losses, we exploit an unusual administrative data set that includes both employees' quarterly earnings histories and information about their firms. We find that when high-tenure workers separate from distressed firms their long-term losses average 25 percent per year. Further, their losses mount even prior to separation, are not limited to workers in a few industrial sectors, and are substantial even for those who find new jobs in similar firms. This evidence suggests that displaced workers' earnings losses result largely from the loss of some unidentified attribute of the employment relationship.earnings, wages, losses, displaced, dislocated, workers, Jacobson, LaLonde, Sullivan

    The impact of incarceration in state prison on the employment prospects of women

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    This paper uses a unique data set constructed from two sets of administrative records to examine the relationship between incarceration and employment rates for former female state prisoners from Illinois. Our analysis indicates that although prison is associated with declining employment rates during the quarters leading up to women's incarcerations, it does not appear to harm their employment prospects later on. In the short-term, we estimate that women's post-prison employment rates are about four percentage points above expected levels. However, these employment gains do not persist and gradually fall back to pre-prison levels. But for some groups of women, including those with four or more children, those who served longer prison spells, and those who served time for person-related or drug-related offenses, we find that modestly positive employment effects that are on the order of a few percentage points persist. These results indicate that time out of the work force or diminished skills are not costs associated with incarcerating women. Nor does a prison record appear to send an undesirable signal in the labor market that reduces former female inmates' employment chances. Although incarcerated women's subsequent employment rates are very low, they do not appear to be low because of their experience in prison

    Testing for Selection Bias

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    This paper uses the control function to develop a framework for testing for selection bias. The idea behind our framework is if the usual assumptions hold for matching or IV estimators, the control function identifies the presence and magnitude of potential selection bias. Averaging this correction term with respect to appropriate weights yields the degree of selection bias for alternative treatment effects of interest. One advantage of our framework is that it motivates when is appropriate to use more efficient estimators of treatment effects, such as those based on least squares or matching. Another advantage of our approach is that it provides an estimate of the magnitude of the selection bias. We also show how this estimate can help when trying to infer program impacts for program participants not covered by LATE estimates
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