Who Marries Differently-Aged Spouses?: Earnings, Ability and Appearance

In direct contrast to conventional wisdom and most economic models of gender differences in age of marriage, we present robust evidence that men and women who are married to differently-aged spouses are negatively selected. Earnings analysis of married couples in the 1970, 1980, 1990 and 2000 Decennial Censuses finds that male earnings decrease with within-couple age difference, regardless of whether the man is older or younger than his wife. In contrast, female earnings increase with within-couple age difference. We argue and present evidence that women in differently-aged couples have higher earnings not because of positive selection, but because their hours of work increase in response to partnering with a lower earning man. We test for negative selection into differently-aged couples using three measures: average earnings per hour in occupation using Census data, cognitive skills assessments from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 cohort (NLSY79), and measures of physical appearance from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). The point estimates indicate negative selection on all of these characteristics, although statistical significance varies by outcome and sample.marital sorting, occupational choice, non-labor market outcomes

The Effect of Prenatal Stress on Birth Weight: Evidence from the al-Aqsa Intifada

No previous study has attempted to estimate the effect of intrauterine exposure to armed conflict, a potential source of stress, on pregnancy outcomes. Drawing on data from the 2004 Palestinian Demographic and Health Survey, we examine the relationship between fatalities caused by Israeli security forces (a measure of conflict intensity) and birth weight. Our estimates suggest that first-trimester fatalities are positively related to the probability that a child weighed less than 2,500 grams at birth. This result is consistent with medical studies showing a strong negative correlation between self-reported stress during the first trimester of pregnancy and birth weight.Birth weight, prenatal stress, Israeli-Palestinian conflict

The Effect of Prenatal Stress on Birth Weight: Evidence from the al-Aqsa Intifada

No previous study has attempted to estimate the effect of intrauterine exposure to armed conflict, a potential source of stress, on pregnancy outcomes. Drawing on data from the 2004 Palestinian Demographic and Health Survey, we examine the relationship between fatalities caused by Israeli security forces (a measure of conflict intensity) and birth weight. Our estimates suggest that first-trimester fatalities are positively related to the probability that a child weighed less than 2,500 grams at birth. This result is consistent with medical studies showing a strong negative correlation between self-reported stress during the first trimester of pregnancy and birth weight.birth weight, prenatal stress, Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Does Employer Learning Vary by Occupation?

Models in which employers learn about the productivity of young workers, such as Altonji and Pierret (2001), have two principal implications: First, the distribution of wages becomes more dispersed as a cohort of workers gains experience; second, the coefficient on a variable that employers initially do not observe, such as the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) score, grows with experience. If employers' learning varies significantly across occupations, both of these indicators of learning should covary positively across groups defined by a worker's occupational assignment at labor market entry. This paper tests this implication of the employer learning model using data from the NLSY and CPS. I find that occupations with high growth in the variance of residual wages over the first ten years of the worker's career are also the occupations with high growth in the AFQT coefficient, confirming the learning perspective. Interestingly, occupations that my analysis characterizes as having a low level of employer learning are not occupations where employers know little about the worker after ten years of experience; instead they appear to be occupations where employers have already learned about the worker's AFQT score at the time of hire. I provide several pieces of evidence that occupational assignment affects the learning process independently from education and that the results are not driven by workers' occupational mobility.Wage Dynamics, Occupational Choice, Earnings Inequality

Same-Occupation Spouses: Preferences and Search Costs

Married individuals match with spouses who share their occupation more frequently than predicted by chance, suggesting either a preference for same-occupation matches or lower search costs within occupation. To distinguish between these explanations, we use a differences-in-differences strategy that compares the difference in wages between same-occupation husbands and different-occupation husbands across occupations with different percent male workers. Under the preferences mechanism, the difference should be decreasing in percent male. Under the search cost mechanism, the difference should be increasing in percent male. Our results are consistent with the search cost explanation, especially in occupations with greater degree of workplace communication

Couples' Time Together: Complementarities in Production versus Complementarities in Consumption

Economists have previously suggested that gains from marriage can be generated by complementarities in production (gains from specialization and exchange) or by complementarities in consumption (gains from joint consumption of household public goods and joint time consumption). This paper uses the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) from 2003-2011 to test whether couples that engage in less specialization (are more similar in hours of market work) spend more time together. We find that among married couples without young children, those with a greater difference in weekly hours of work between husband and wife spend less time together on non-working weekend days. Importantly, we find that this relationship is quite symmetric between couples in which the husband works greater hours and couples in which the wife works greater hours. We do not find evidence of a relationship between specialization and couple time together among couples with young children

Is internet job search still ineffective?

While the Internet has been found to reduce trading frictions in a number of other markets, existing research has failed to detect such an effect in the labor market. In this paper, we replicate Kuhn and Skuterud's (2004) study - which found that Internet job search (IJS) was associated with longer unemployment durations in 1998/2000 - using comparable data from a decade later. We find that IJS now appears to be effective: it reduces individual workers' unemployment durations by about 25 percent. This finding is robust to controls for workers' AFQT scores and detailed indicators of Internet access. IJS appears to be most effective in reducing unemployment durations when used to contact friends and relatives, to send out resumes or fill out applications, and also to look at ads. We detect no effect of IJS on wage growth between jobs

Weighing the Military Option: The Effects of Wartime Conditions on Investments in Human Capital

Military service is an important vehicle through which young Americans invest in their human capital. Using internal military data, we show that county-level exposure to U.S. combat casualties during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars decreased the supply of new soldiers in that county, and changed the observable characteristics of soldiers who enlisted in that county. Using data from the American Community Survey, we find that exposure to casualties at a young age (17-18) increases the probability of dropping out from high school, and decreases the probability of attaining a college degree. The results suggest that increasing access to higher education and skill training positively impacts the human capital investments of marginal students

Prenatal Stress and Low Birth Weight: Evidence from the Super Bowl

Studies have estimated the relationship between psychological stress and birth weight by exploiting natural disasters and terrorist attacks, both of which could affect fetal health through other channels. Using data from the National Vital Statistics System for the period 1969-2004, we estimate the effect of prenatal exposure to the Super Bowl on low birth weight. Although major sporting events elicit intense emotions, they do not threaten viewers with direct physical harm or limit access to prenatal care. We find that Super Bowl exposure is associated with a small, but precisely estimated, increase in the probability of low birth weight