Research

Working Papers

Housing Costs, Parental Resources, and the Decline in Male Labor Force Participation [Link] 

Prime-age male labor force participation in the U.S. has steadily declined over the last 60 years, particularly among those without a college degree. Over this same period, the share of men living with parents has doubled. This paper investigates how housing affordability and family support drive labor supply decisions. Using geographic housing supply constraints as an instrument, I show that rising rents significantly increase parental coresidence. I then develop a dynamic lifecycle model to decompose the participation decline, quantifying the contributions of falling labor demand, rising housing prices, and increased parental resources.

Love and the (Superstar) City: Housing Costs and the Geography of Marriage with Elena Pellegrini [Link]

We provide new evidence on assortative marriage in the United States. Using four decades of microdata from the American Community Survey, we document substantial spatial variation in assortative marriage by income: it is strongest in areas with higher housing costs and a larger share of college-educated workers. Using panel variation in land-use regulation, we show that MSAs where land use regulation became more stringent experienced bigger increases in assortative mating, and a greater share of college graduates. To interpret these findings, we develop a spatial equilibrium model that embeds a marriage matching model within a spatial superstar-city environment. In the model, high-productivity workers are drawn into expensive cities, where the concentration of skilled workers thickens the high-skill marriage market and raises the returns to matching with a high-earning partner.

Policy and Other Writing

Higher rents keep men at home, American Institute for Boys and Men [Link] 

Long-term unemployment in Australia, with Natasha Cassidy, Iris Chan, and Amelia Gao [Link]

Household Wealth prior to COVID-19: Evidence from the 2018 HILDA Survey, with Nicole Adams, Cara Holland, and Lorenzo Schofer [Link]

Job Loss, Subjective Expectations and Household Spending, with Gianni La Cava, Reserve Bank of Australia Research Discussion Paper No 2021-08 [Link]

Works in progress

Returns to Experience and the Child Penalty, with Saloni Vadeyar

The child penalty literature treats fertility timing as exogenous, yet women may delay or forgo child-bearing precisely because they anticipate career costs. We study how rising returns to experience shape both child penalties and fertility decisions. Using Current Population Survey data, we document that occupations with steeper wage-experience profiles exhibit larger post-childbirth earnings gaps and greater fertility declines over time. To complement this evidence, we are fielding a survey experiment that elicits women’s perceived child penalties and measures gaps between desired and expected fertility across occupations. Together, the administrative and survey evidence will clarify how modern career structures contribute to delayed and declining fertility.