Research & Projects

Job Market Paper

Impact of Parental Displacement on Postsecondary Education Investments (with Jonathan Rothbaum)

Abstract: This paper examines how parental job displacement affects the type of human capital invest ments children make, focusing on educational attainment and fields of study. Using nationally representative administrative and survey data, we link children to parents’ employment histories by merging the American Community Survey, 1040 tax returns, 2000 Decennial Census, and Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD). Exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in the timing of employer closures and layoff events, we estimate the effects of involuntary parental job loss on child educational outcomes. We highlight three key findings: first, the intergenerational scarring effects on education are almost entirely concentrated among children of low-socioeconomic-status parents, reducing bachelor’s degree attainment by over 11 percentage points. Second, our findings suggest impacts on long term human capital formation depend on timing of the shock, with stronger effects in early and middle childhood. Third, conditional on strong labor force attachment, maternal job loss has a consistently larger and more persistent negative impact than paternal job loss. Our findings underscore the importance of both timing and composition in the intergenerational effects of labor market shocks.

Other Working Papers

Schooling and Political Activism in the Early Civil Rights Era (with Daniel Aaronson, Mark Borgschulte, and Bhashkar Mazumder)

Abstract: Do educational interventions have broader benefits to society through increased political engagement? New research suggests that this may largely depend on the economic circumstances of those experiencing educational gains. Theory suggests that when individuals are unable to take advantage of their human capital improvements in the labor market they are more likely to engage in political activity. We find empirical support for this idea by studying the Civil Rights Movement in the US. We show that growth in the NAACP in the South in the middle of the 20th century was stronger in precisely those areas where Black workers were denied returns to schooling due to occupational discrimination during the Jim Crow era. We further show that a large scale educational intervention, the construction of nearly 5,000 Rosenwald Schools largely during the 1920s led to greater NAACP activity during the 1940s and 1950s.  We also show that the effects of Rosenwald schools were more pronounced in areas where occupational segregation limited Black economic progress.

Intended Occupations and Human Capital Investments Under Job-Protected Leave: Evidence From Family Medical Leave Act

I evaluate how job-protected maternity leave can contribute to occupational sorting among young women by changing incentives to invest in human capital in the context of the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) of 1993. Using student-reported data from The Freshman Survey and skill change index measure for occupations, I find that female freshmen are at least three percentage points more likely (16% from base) to indicate the most probable major in a field with high change index and two percentage points more likely (10% from base) to indicate such occupation under the FMLA two years after implementation. Effect for occupational choice persists through the fourth year post treatment. Descriptively, while gender gap in business and engineering remains large in the study period, women reported more likely than men to indicate interest in careers with high formal educational barriers to entry 

Work in Progress

Impact of the Drug Crisis During Adolescence on Educational and Labor Market Outcomes (with Sanghee Mun)

Abstract: Drug overdose in the United States has increased over six times in the past three decades. We investigate the education and labor market consequences of adolescent exposure to the drug crisis. Previous research has largely focused on the direct labor market effects on drug users. Our paper shifts focus to the long-term consequences, specifically examining the educational attainment and labor market outcomes of adolescents who grew up in communities affected by the drug crisis. To mitigate potential omitted variable bias, we instrument for the severity of teens' exposure to the drug crisis using the state-level triplicate prescription programs, which influenced pharmaceutical companies' marketing strategies. By leveraging the variation in these state-level policies, we establish a causal link between the drug crisis and teenagers' outcomes in adulthood. We further shed light on the potential mechanisms by looking at direct effects on individuals and indirect effects on neighborhood amenities. Given the potential lifelong consequences of education and early career experiences, this research offers vital insights into the broader societal consequences of the ongoing drug crisis.