The Effect of Schooling and Ability on Achievement Test Scores

This paper develops two methods for estimating the effect of schooling on achievement test scores that control for the endogeneity of schooling by postulating that both schooling and test scores are generated by a common unobserved latent ability. These methods are applied to data on schooling and test scores. Estimates from the two methods are in close agreement. We find that the effects of schooling on test scores are roughly linear across schooling levels. The effects of schooling on measured test scores are slightly larger for lower latent ability levels. We find that schooling increases the AFQT score on average between 2 and 4 percentage points, roughly twice as large as the effect claimed by Herrnstein and Murray (1994) but in agreement with estimates produced by Neal and Johnson (1996) andWinship and Korenman (1997). We extend the previous literature by estimating the impact of schooling on measured test scores at various quantiles of the latent ability distribution.

The effect of schooling and ability on achievement test scores

This paper develops two methods for estimating the effect of schooling on achievement test scores that control for endogeneity of schooling by postulating that both schooling and test scores are generated by a common unobserved latent ability. These methods are applied to data on schooling and test scores. Estimates from the two methods are in close agreement. We find that the effects of schooling on test scores are roughly linear across schooling levels. The effects of schooling on measured test scores are slightly larger for lower latent ability levels. We find that schooling increases the AFQT score on average between 2 and 4 percentage points, roughly twice as large as the effect claimed by Herrnstein and Murray (1994) but in agreement with estimates produced by Neal and Johnson (1996) and Winship and Korenman (1997). We extend the previous literature by estimating the impact of schooling on measured test scores at various quantiles of the latent ability distribution.Education; ability; latent variables; selection; MCMC

What Explains the Gender Gap in Financial Literacy? The Role of Household Decision-Making

Research has shown that financial illiteracy is widespread among women, and that many women are unfamiliar with even the most basic economic concepts needed to make saving and investment decisions. This gender gap in financial literacy may contribute to the differential levels of retirement preparedness between women and men. However, little is known about the determinants of the gender gap in financial literacy. Using data from the RAND American Life Panel, we examined potential explanations for the gender gap including the role of marriage and division of financial decision-making among couples. We found that differences in the demographic characteristics of women and men did not explain much of the financial literacy gap, whereas education, income and current and past marital status reduced the observed gap by around 25%. Oaxaca decomposition revealed the great majority of the gender gap in financial literacy is not explained by differences in covariates - characteristics of men and women - but due to coefficients, or how literacy is produced. We did not find strong support for specialization in financial decision-making within couples by gender. Instead, we found that decision-making within couples was sensitive to the relative education level of spouses for both women and men

Can You Get What You Pay For? Pay-For-Performance and the Quality of Healthcare Providers

Despite the popularity of pay-for-performance (P4P) among health policymakers and private insurers as a tool for improving quality of care, there is little empirical basis for its effectiveness. We use data from published performance reports of physician medical groups contracting with a large network HMO to compare clinical quality before and after the implementation of P4P, relative to a control group. We consider the effect of P4P on both rewarded and unrewarded dimensions of quality. In the end, we fail to find evidence that a large P4P initiative either resulted in major improvement in quality or notable disruption in care.

Nuclear small-subunit ribosomal RNA gene-based characterization, molecular phylogeny and PCR detection of the Neoparamoeba from western Long Island Sound lobster

Author Posting. © National Shellfisheries Association, 2005. This article is posted here by permission of National Shellfisheries Association for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Shellfish Research 24 (2005): 719-731, doi:10.2983/0730-8000(2005)24[719:NSRRGC]2.0.CO;2.Western Long Island Sound (LIS) lobsters collected by trawl surveys, lobstermen and coastal residents during 2000 to 2002 were identified histologically as infected with a parasome-containing amoeba. Primers to conserved SSU rRNA sequences of parasome-containing amoebae and their nonparasome-containing relatives were used to amplify overlapping SSU rRNA fragments of the presumptive parasite from gill, antenna, antennal gland and ventral nerve cord of infected lobsters. The consensus sequence constructed from these fragments had 98% or greater nucleotide sequence identity with SSU rRNA gene sequences of strains of Neoparamoeba pemaquidensis and associated with high confidence in distance- and parsimony-based phylogenetic analyses with strains of Neoparamoeba pemaquidensis and not members of the family Paramoebidae, e.g., Paramoeba eilhardi. Primers designed to SSU rRNA sequences of the lobster amoeba and other paramoebid/vexilliferid amoebae were used in a nested polymerase chain reaction (PCR) protocol to test DNA extracted from formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissues of lobsters collected during the 1999 die-off, when this amoeba initially was identified by light and electron microscopy and reported to be a paramoeba of the genera Paramoeba or Neoparamoeba (Mullen et al. 2004). All sequences amplified from 1999 lobsters, with the exception of one, had 98% to 99% identity to each other, and the 1999 PCR product consensus had 98% identity to Neoparamoeba pemaquidensis strains CCAP 1560/4 (AF371969.1) and 1560/5 (AF371970.1). Molecular characterization of the amoeba from western LIS lobsters by direct amplification circumvents a collective inability to culture the organism in vitro, provides insight into the molecular epidemiology of neoparamoebiasis in American lobster, and allows for PCR-based detection of infected lobsters for future research and diagnostics.Funding for this work was provided by the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection under Long Island Sound Research Fund Grant No. CWF 333-R to S. Frasca; and by the Connecticut Sea Grant College Program, Grants No. LR/LR-4 to R. Gast and No. LR/LR-5 to P. Gillevet and C. O’Kelly, through the US Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Award NA16RG1364

Induced Entry into the Social Security Disability Program: Using Past SGA Changes as a Natural Experiment

Working Paper: WP 2012-262The number of American adults receiving benefits from the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program has increased dramatically over the past several decades. A proposed solution to rising program costs is to change program rules to encourage fully or partially recovered SSDI beneficiaries to return to work. One such option is a benefit offset policy, which would reduce SSDI benefits by $1 for every$2 of earned income. While a benefit offset could generate savings from increased labor supply and program exit among current beneficiaries, it could also generate unintended costs if the more generous work rules induce significant numbers of working individuals to apply for benefits. In this paper we examine how past changes in a closely related program parameter, the Substantial Gainful Activity (SGA) threshold, have affected SSDI applications. We exploit changes over time and across states in real relative SGA levels, relative to local average wages. We find that a 7 percentage point (30%) increase in the real relative SGA (on par with the 1999 increase from $500 to$700 per month) was associated with a 4.7% increase in applications.Social Security Administrationhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/93590/1/wp262.pd

Does Disability Insurance Receipt Discourage Work? Using Examiner Assignment to Estimate Causal Effects of SSDI Receipt

We present the first causal estimates of the effect of Social Security Disability Insurance benefit receipt on labor supply using all program applicants. We use new administrative data to match applications to disability examiners, and exploit variation in examiners’ allowance rates as an instrument for benefit receipt. We find that among the estimated 23% of applicants on the margin of program entry, employment would have been 28 percentage points higher had they not received benefits. The effect is heterogeneous, ranging from no effect for those with more severe impairments to 50 percentage points for entrants with relatively less severe impairments.Social Security Administrationhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/93591/1/wp241.pd

Disability Insurance and Healthcare Reform: Evidence from Massachusetts

As health insurance becomes available outside of the employment relationship as a result of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the cost of applying for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI)—potentially going without health insurance coverage during a waiting period totaling 29 months from disability onset—will decline for many people with employer-sponsored health insurance. At the same time, the value of SSDI and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) participation will decline for individuals who otherwise lacked access to health insurance. We study the 2006 Massachusetts healthcare reform to estimate the potential effects of the ACA on SSDI and SSI applications.Social Security Administrationhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/102264/1/wp289.pd

WP 2019-400

Understanding how health decline influences retirement decisions is fundamental for the design of targeted policies that encourage working longer. While there is wide agreement on the relevance of age-related health decline for determining labor supply and retirement decisions, the process of how health deterioration affects labor supply remains a black box. This paper explores the match between individuals’ functional abilities and job demands in the national economy using a new methodology to measure work capacity. Specifically, we construct a one-dimensional measure of individuals’ work capacities by comparing an individual’s own ability levels to the levels needed to perform different occupations, using new data containing individuals’ ratings of the same 52 abilities included in the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) database. We find that a one-unit increase in the fraction of jobs for a given education level that an individual can do — our measure of work capacity — is associated with a 15 to 21 percentage point increase in labor force participation, a 10 to 17 percentage point decrease in the percentage of respondents receiving SSDI benefits, a 7 to 10 percentage point increase in the subjective percent chance individuals will work longer, a 9 to 12 percentage point increase in the chance that retired individuals will return to the labor force, and a 17 to 25 percentage point increase in the chance that individuals with disabilities will return to the labor force. The magnitudes of these associations are all economically relevant and exist even when controlling for health status.U.S. Social Security Administration Award RDR18000002, UM19-02; National Institute on Aging Award R01AG056239https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/152118/1/wp400.pdfDescription of wp400.pdf : Working pape

The Changing Nature of Work

We provide new evidence on the changing nature of work and its influence on individuals’ capacity to work by linking historical measures of occupational job demands with harmonized data on individual abilities from a unique survey conducted in the RAND American Life Panel in 2018. We start by examining how job demands have evolved over time between 2003 and 2018 for different dimensions of abilities (cognitive, physical, sensory and psychomotor), overall and by educational group. We then decompose job demand changes into within-occupation changes and changes in the economy’s distribution of occupations. Finally, we provide evidence on how individuals’ work capacities have evolved over time due to job demand changes.U.S. Social Security Administration, RDR18000002-02, UM20-03http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/168226/1/wp415.pdfDescription of wp415.pdf : working paperSEL