The Willingness to Pay for Job Amenities: Evidence from Mothers' Return to Work

This study is the first to estimate mother's marginal willingness to pay (MWP) for job amenities directly. Its identification strategy relies on German maternity leave length. The key aspect of the maternal leave framework is that mothers can decide whether and when to return to their guaranteed job. Thus, in contrast to previous studies that analyze the job search of employed workers, this framework allows us to overcome the limitation of not observing the wage/amenity offer process. A theoretical model of the leave length decision is derived from a random utility approach. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and the Qualification and Career Survey, this model is estimated by a discrete duration method. The MWP for amenities can be inferred through the estimated elasticities of the leave length with respect to the amenities and the wage. The results provide evidence that mothers are willing to sacrifice a significant fraction of their wage to reduce hazards (22%) and to enjoy a flexible working schedule (36-56%)

Unexplained Gaps and Oaxaca-Blinder Decompositions

We analyze four methods to measure unexplained gaps in mean outcomes: three decompositions based on the seminal work of Oaxaca (1973) and Blinder (1973) and an approach involving a seemingly naive regression that includes a group indicator variable. Our analysis yields two principal findings. We show that the coefficient on a group indicator variable from an OLS regression is an attractive approach for obtaining a single measure of the unexplained gap. We also show that a commonly-used pooling decomposition systematically overstates the contribution of observable characteristics to mean outcome differences when compared to OLS regression, therefore understating unexplained differences. We then provide three empirical examples that explore the practical importance of our analytic results

Are adolescents with high socioeconomic status more likely to engage in alcohol and illicit drug use in early adulthood?

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Previous literature has shown a divergence by age in the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and substance use: adolescents with low SES are more likely to engage in substance use, as are adults with high SES. However, there is growing evidence that adolescents with high SES are also at high risk for substance abuse. The objective of this study is to examine this relationship longitudinally, that is, whether wealthier adolescents are more likely than those with lower SES to engage in substance use in early adulthood.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The study analyzed data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (AddHealth), a longitudinal, nationally-representative survey of secondary school students in the United States. Logistic regression models were analyzed examining the relationship between adolescent SES (measured by parental education and income) and substance use in adulthood, controlling for substance use in adolescence and other covariates.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Higher parental education is associated with higher rates of binge drinking, marijuana and cocaine use in early adulthood. Higher parental income is associated with higher rates of binge drinking and marijuana use. No statistically significant results are found for crystal methamphetamine or other drug use. Results are not sensitive to the inclusion of college attendance by young adulthood as a sensitivity analysis. However, when stratifying by race, results are consistent for white non-Hispanics, but no statistically significant results are found for non-whites. This may be a reflection of the smaller sample size of non-whites, but may also reflect that these trends are driven primarily by white non-Hispanics.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Previous research shows numerous problems associated with substance use in young adults, including problems in school, decreased employment, increases in convictions of driving under the influence (DUI) and accidental deaths. Much of the previous literature is focused on lower SES populations. Therefore, it is possible that teachers, parents and school administrators in wealthier schools may not perceive as great to address substance abuse treatment in their schools. This study can inform teachers, parents, school administrators and program officials of the need for addressing drug abuse prevention activities to this population of students.</p

A New Look at Intergenerational Mobility in Germany Compared to the US

Motivated by contradictory evidence on intergenerational mobility in Germany, I present a cross-country comparison of Germany and the US, reassessing the question of whether intergenerational mobility is higher in Germany than the US. I can reproduce the standard result from the literature, which states that the German intergenerational elasticity estimates are lower than those for the US. However, based on highly comparable data, even a reasonable degree of variation in the sampling rules leads to similar estimates in both countries. I find no evidence for nonlinearities along the fathers' earnings distribution. In contrast, the analysis shows that mobility is higher for the sons at the lowest quartile of the sons' earnings distribution in both countries. In Germany this result is mainly driven by a high downward mobility of sons with fathers in the upper middle part of the earnings distribution. The corresponding pattern is clearly less pronounced in the US

Transitions in welfare participation and female headship

This study uses data from the 1990, 1992, 1993 and 1996 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation to examine how welfare policies and local economic conditions contribute to women's transitions into and out of female headship and into and out of welfare participation. It also examines whether welfare participation is directly associated with longer spells of headship. The study employs a simultaneous hazards approach that accounts for unobserved heterogeneity in all of its transition models and for the endogeneity of welfare participation in its headship model. The estimation results indicate that welfare participation significantly reduces the chances of leaving female headship. The estimates also reveal that more generous welfare benefits contribute indirectly to headship by increasing the chances that mothers will enter welfare. More generous Earned Income Tax Credit benefits are associated with longer spells of headship, non-headship, welfare participation and nonparticipation. Other measures of welfare policies, including indicators for the adoption of welfare waivers and the implementation of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families programs, are generally not significantly associated with headship or welfare receipt. Better economic opportunities are estimated to increase headship but reduce welfare participation among unmarried mothers

Pay discrimination against persons with disabilities: Canadian evidence from PALS

The objective of the study is to estimate the extent of pay discrimination against persons with a disability in Canada. The methodology involves decomposing or partitioning the pay gap between persons with disabilities and a comparison group of persons without disabilities into a portion due to differences in the pay-determining characteristics and a portion due to the differences in pay when they have the same characteristics – commonly attributed to discrimination. In this study, we further control for differences in performance by restricting the analysis to persons with a disability that does not limit their performance at work. The data is from the 2006 Participation and Activity Limitation Survey linked to the 2006 Census. We find that persons with a disability that does not affect their performance at work are still paid about 10% less than a comparison group with no disability but with the same pay-determining characteristics