Accounting for Changes in Labor Force Participation of Married Women: The Case of the U.S. since 1959

Using a model of family decision-making with home production and individual heterogeneity, we quantitatively investigate the role of changes in several aspects of the joint earnings distribution of husbands and wives (gender earnings gap, gender-specific inequality and assortativeness of matching) and the decline in prices of home appliances in accounting for the dramatic rise in labor force participation of married women since 1959. The implications of the factors examined are tested against changes in participation for disaggregated groups of couples and leisure trends of married individuals, documented from the U.S. population census and time-use survey data.labor force participation, married couples, family time allocation, gender earnings gap, home production

Supplemental Notes to "Demographic transition and industrial revolution: A macroeconomic investigation"

These notes cover: Derivation of the objective function of the Dynastic Problem, Characterization of the competitive equilibrium, Sequential Problem (SP) whose solution corresponds to the competitive equilibrium allocation, Limiting behavior of the equilibrium time paths, Calibration as a solution to the system of linear equations, Solution method, Solving our model with the Barro and Becker parental utility, Effects of TFP and Labor Supply Changes on Structural Change.

Accounting for Changes in Labor Force Participation of Married Women: The Case of the U.S. since 1959

Using a model of family decision-making with home production and individual heterogeneity, we quantitatively investigate the role of changes in several aspects of the joint earnings distribution of husbands and wives (gender earnings gap, gender-specific inequality and assortativeness of matching) and the decline in prices of home appliances in accounting for the dramatic rise in labor force participation of married women since 1959. The implications of the factors examined are tested against changes in participation for disaggregated groups of couples and leisure trends of married individuals, documented from the U.S. population census and time-use survey data

Demographic transition and industrial revolution: A macroeconomic investigation

All industrialized countries experienced a transition from high birth rates and stagnant standards of living to low birth rates and sustained growth in per capita income. What contributed to these transformations? Did economic and demographic changes transpire through common or distinct channels? We construct a general equilibrium model with endogenous fertility in order to quantitatively investigate the English case. We find that mortality decline significantly influences birth rates. Increased productivity has a negligible effect on birth rates but accounts for nearly all of the increase in per capita output, industrialization, urbanization, and the decline of land share in total income. The quantitative assessment of these two channels (young-age mortality and productivity) conducted in this paper sheds light on the relative importance of several theoretical mechanisms developed in this field

How risky is college investment?

This paper is motivated by the fact that nearly half of U.S. college students drop out without earning a bachelor’s degree. Its objective is to quantify how much uncertainty college entrants face about their graduation outcomes. To do so, we develop a quantitative model of college choice. The innovation is to model in detail how students progress towards a college degree. The model is calibrated using transcript and financial data. We find that more than half of college entrants can predict whether they will graduate with at least 80% probability. As a result, stylized policies that insure students against the financial risks associated with uncertain graduation have little value for the majority of college entrants

An In-Depth Look Into Intergenerational Flows

The goal of this paper is to carefully document the characteristics of within-family monetary transfers in the United States, using all nine waves of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). The main purpose of doing so is to summarize the relevant moments that can be used as calibration targets by macro studies. As of now, most macroeconomic models have omitted within-family transfers from their consideration. While this choice is innocuous for many studies, for others, such as those studying public policy reforms, or the effect of demographic changes on macroeconomic outcomes, omitting within-family transfers may significantly bias the results. One reason why it has been difficult to incorporate intergenerational transfers into these frameworks is the lack of well-documented transfer characteristics that could be used as calibration targets. In fact, the existing studies based on HRS usually aim to disentangle transfer motives and focus on just a couple of HRS waves, reporting only the estimated coefficients for their empirical models.

The return to college: selection and dropout risk

This paper studies the effect of graduating from college on lifetime earnings. We develop a quantitative model of college choice with uncertain graduation. Departing from much of the literature, we model in detail how students progress through college. This allows us to parameterize the model using transcript data. College transcripts reveal substantial and persistent heterogeneity in students’ credit accumulation rates that are strongly related to graduation outcomes. From this data, the model infers a large ability gap between college graduates and high school graduates that accounts for 54% of the college lifetime earnings premium

Demographic Transition and Industrial Revolution: A Coincidence?

All industrialized countries experienced a transition from high birth rates and stagnant standards of living to low birth rates and sustained growth in per capita income. What contributed to this transformation? Were output and population dynamics driven by common or separate forces? We develop a general equilibrium model with endogenous fertility in order to quantitatively investigate the English case. We find that mortality decline significantly influences birth rates. Increased productivity has a negligible effect on birth rates but accounts for nearly all of the increase in per capita output, industrialization, urbanization, and the decline of land share in total incomedemographic transition, industrial revolution, mortality, technological progress