We quantify the effect of education on mortality using a linkage of the full count 1940, 2000, and 2010 US census files and the Numident death records file. Our sample is composed of children aged 0-18 in 1940, observed living with at least one parent, for whom we can construct a rich set of parental and neighborhood characteristics. We estimate effects of educational attainment in 1940 on survival to 2000, as well as the effects of completed education, observed in 2000, on 10-year survival to 2010. The educational gradients in longevity that we estimate are robust to the inclusion of detailed individual, parental, household, neighborhood and county covariates. Given our full population census sample, we also explore rich patterns of heterogeneity and examine the effect of mediators of the education-mortality relationship. The mediators we consider in this study explain more than half of the relationship between education and mortality. We further show that the mechanisms underlying the education-mortality gradient might be different at different margins of educational attainment.
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Parental Earnings and Children's Well-Being and Future Success: An Analysis of the SIPP Matched to SSA Earnings Data
April 2011
Working Paper Number:
CES-11-12
We estimate the association between parental earnings and a wide variety of indicators of child well-being using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) matched to administrative earnings records from the Social Security Administration. We find that the use of longer time averages of parent earnings leads to substantially higher estimated effects compared to using only a single year of parent earnings. This suggests that previous studies may have understated the potential efficacy of income support programs to improve child well-being. Further, policy makers should take into account the attenuation bias when comparing studies that use different time spans to measure parental income. Using 7 year time averages of parent earnings, we show for example, that a doubling of parent earnings reduces the probability of a teenager reporting being in poor health by close to 50 percent and a child having insufficient food by 75 percent.
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Divorce, Family Arrangements, and Children's Adult Outcomes
May 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-28
Nearly a third of American children experience parental divorce before adulthood. To understand its consequences, we use linked tax and Census records for over 5 million children to examine how divorce affects family arrangements and children's long-term outcomes. Following divorce, parents move apart, household income falls, parents work longer hours, families move more frequently, and households relocate to poorer neighborhoods with less economic opportunity. This bundle of changes in family circumstances suggests multiple channels through which divorce may affect children's development and outcomes. In the years following divorce, we observe sharp increases in teen births and child mortality. To examine long-run effects on children, we compare siblings with different lengths of exposure to the same divorce. We find that parental divorce reduces children's adult earnings and college residence while increasing incarceration, mortality, and teen births. Changes in household income, neighborhood quality, and parent proximity account for 25 to 60 percent of these divorce effects.
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From Marcy to Madison Square? The Effects of Growing Up in Public Housing on Early Adulthood Outcomes
November 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-67
This paper studies the effects of growing up in public housing in New York City on children's long-run outcomes. Using linked administrative data, we exploit variation in the age children move into public housing to estimate the effects of spending an additional year of childhood in public housing on a range of economic and social outcomes in early adulthood. We find that childhood exposure to public housing improves labor market outcomes and reduces participation in federal safety net programs, particularly for children from the most disadvantaged families. Additionally, we find there is some heterogeneity in impacts across public housing developments. Developments located in neighborhoods with relatively fewer renters and higher household incomes are better for children overall. Our estimate of the marginal value of public funds suggests that for every $1 the government spends per child on public housing, children receive $1.40 in benefits, including $2.30 for children from the most disadvantaged families.
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EXAMINING THE LONG TERM MORTALITY EFFECTS OF EARLY HEALTH SHOCKS
March 2014
Working Paper Number:
CES-14-19
A growing literature in economics and other disciplines has tied exposure to early health shocks, particularly in utero influenza, to reductions in a variety of socioeconomic and health outcomes over the life course. However, no current evidence exists that examines this health shock on mortality because of lack of available data. This paper uses newly released files from the large, representative National Longitudinal Mortality Study to explore the mortality effects of the 1918 influenza pandemic for those in utero. While the results on socioeconomic outcomes mimic those in the literature, showing reductions in completed schooling and income fifty years following influenza exposure, the findings also suggest no effect on overall mortality or by categories of cause-of-death. These results are counter-intuitive in their contrast with the many reported effects on cardiovascular health as well as the literature linking education with later mortality
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The Long-Term Effects of Income for At-Risk Infants: Evidence from Supplemental Security Income
March 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-10
This paper examines whether a generous cash intervention early in life can "undo" some of the long-term disadvantage associated with poor health at birth. We use new linkages between several large-scale administrative datasets to examine the short-, medium-, and long-term effects of providing low-income families with low birthweight infants support through the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program. This program uses a birthweight cutoff at 1200 grams to determine eligibility. We find that families of infants born just below this cutoff experience a large increase in cash benefits totaling about 27%of family income in the first three years of the infant's life. These cash benefits persist at lower amounts through age 10. Eligible infants also experience a small but statistically significant increase in Medicaid enrollment during childhood. We examine whether this support affects health care use and mortality in infancy, educational performance in high school, post-secondary school attendance and college degree attainment, and earnings, public assistance use, and mortality in young adulthood for all infants born in California to low-income families whose birthweight puts them near the cutoff. We also examine whether these payments had spillover effects onto the older siblings of these infants who may have also benefited from the increase in family resources. Despite the comprehensive nature of this early life intervention, we detect no improvements in any of the study outcomes, nor do we find improvements among the older siblings of these infants. These null effects persist across several subgroups and alternative model specifications, and, for some outcomes, our estimates are precise enough to rule out published estimates of the effect of early life cash transfers in other settings.
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The Effects of Smoking in Young Adulthood on Smoking and Health Later in Life: Evidence Based on the Vietnam Era Draft Lottery
September 2008
Working Paper Number:
CES-08-35
An important, unresolved question for health policymakers and consumers is whether cigarette smoking in young adulthood has significant lasting effects into later adulthood. The Vietnam era draft lottery offers an opportunity to address this question, because it randomly assigned young men to be more likely to experience conditions favoring cigarette consumption, including highly subsidized prices. Using this natural experiment, we find that military service increased the probability of smoking by 35 percentage points as of 1978-80, when men in the relevant cohorts were aged 25-30, but later in adulthood this effect was substantially attenuated and did not lead to large negative health effects.
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Gifted Identification Across the Distribution of Family Income
December 2025
Authors:
Quentin Brummet,
Andrew Penner,
Emily Penner,
Leah R. Clark,
Michelle Spiegel,
Paul Hanselman,
Nicholas J. Ainsworth,
Aaron J. Ainsworth,
Christopher Cleveland,
Jacob Hibel,
Andrew Saultz
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-73
Currently, 6.1 percent of K-12 students in the United States receive gifted education. Using education and IRS data that provide information on students and their family income, we show pronounced differences in who schools identify as gifted across the distribution of family income. Under 4 percent of students in the lowest income percentile are identified as gifted, compared with 20 percent of those in the top income percentile. Income-based differences persist after accounting for student test scores and exist across students of different sexes and racial/ethnic groups, underscoring the importance of family resources for gifted identification in schools.
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Long-Run Adult Socio-economic Outcomes
from In Utero Airborne Lead Exposure
November 2022
Working Paper Number:
CES-22-53
As a neurotoxin, early exposure to lead has long been assumed to affect socioeconomic out-comes well into adulthood. However, the empirical literature documenting such effects has been limited. This study documents the long-term effects of in utero exposure to air lead on adult socio-economic outcomes, including earnings, disabilities, employment, public assistance, and education, using US survey and administrative data. Specifically, we match individuals in the 2000 US Decennial Census and 2001-2014 American Community Surveys to average lead concentrations in the individual's birth county during his/her 9 months in utero. We find a 0.5 'g/m3 decrease in air lead, representing the average 1975-85 change resulting from the passage of the U.S. Clean Air Act, is associated with an increase in earnings of 3.5%, or a present value, at birth, of $21,400 in lifetime earnings. Decomposing this effect, we find greater exposure to lead in utero is associated with an increase in disabilities in adulthood, an increase in receiving public assistance, and a decrease in employment. Looking at effects by sex, long-term effects for girls seem to fall on participation in the formal labor market, whereas for boys it appears to fall more on hours worked. This is the first study to document such long-term effects from lead using US data. We estimate the present value in 2020, from all earnings impacts from 1975 forward, to be $4,230 Billion using a discount rate of 3%. In 2020 alone, the benefits are $252 B, or about 1.2% of GDP. Thus, our estimates imply the Clean Air Act's lead phase out is still returning a national dividend of over 1% every year.
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The Relationship of Personal and Neighborhood Characteristics to Immigrant Fertility
August 2002
Working Paper Number:
CES-02-20
We find that fertility varies by immigrant generation, with significant declines between the first and subsequent generations for groups with large immigrant population. However, we find that personal characteristics--such as educational attainment, marital status, and income levels--are much more important than immigrant generation in understanding fertility outcomes. In fact, generations are not independently important once these personal characteristics are controlled for. We maintain that declining fertility levels among the descendants of Mexican and Central American immigrants are primarily the result of higher educational attainment levels, lower rates of marriage, and lower poverty. For example, a four-year increase in educational attainment decreases children ever born (CEB) by half a child. We conclude that immigrant generation serves as a proxy for changes in other personal characteristics that decrease fertility. Neighborhood characteristics have some bearing on fertility, but the correlations are relatively weak. Among Mexican and Central American immigrants and their descendants, the most consistent predictor of children ever born (CEB) at the neighborhood level is the percentage of Hispanic adults. However, no neighborhood characteristics bear any statistical relationship to current fertility, the measure that emphasizes recent births. This pattern of evidence suggests that the observed relationships between neighborhood characteristics and fertility are based on selection into the neighborhood rather than on neighborhood influences as such.
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DOES PARENTS' ACCESS TO FAMILY PLANNING INCREASE CHILDREN'S OPPORTUNITIES? EVIDENCE FROM THE WAR ON POVERTY AND THE EARLY YEARS OF TITLE X
January 2017
Working Paper Number:
CES-17-67
This paper examines the relationship between parents' access to family planning and the economic resources of their children. Using the county-level introduction of U.S. family planning programs between 1964 and 1973, we find that children born after programs began had 2.8% higher household incomes. They were also 7% less likely to live in poverty and 12% less likely to live in households receiving public assistance. After accounting for selection, the direct effects of family planning programs on parents' incomes account for roughly two thirds of these gains.
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