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There is Such Thing as a Free Lunch: School Meals, Stigma, and Student Discipline
July 2022
Working Paper Number:
CES-22-23R
The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) allows high-poverty schools to offer free meals to all students regardless of household income. Conceptualizing universal meal provision as a strategy to alleviate stigma associated with school meals, we hypothesize that CEP implementation reduces the incidence of suspensions, particularly for students from low-income backgrounds and minoritized students. We link educational records for students enrolled in Oregon public schools between 2010 and 2017 with administrative data describing their families' household income and social safety net program participation. Difference-in-differences analyses indicate that CEP has protective effects on the probability of suspension for students in participating schools, particularly for students from low-income families, students who received free or reduced-price meals prior to CEP implementation, and Hispanic students.
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The impact of manufacturing credentials on earnings and the probability of employment
May 2022
Working Paper Number:
CES-22-15
This paper examines the labor market returns to earning industry-certified credentials in the manufacturing sector. Specifically, we are interested in estimating the impact of a manufacturing credential on wages, probability of employment, and probability of employment specifically in the manufacturing sector post credential attainment. We link students who earned manufacturing credentials to their enrollment and completion records, and then further link them to their IRS tax records for earnings and employment (Form W2 and 1040) and to the American Community Survey and decennial census for demographic information. We present earnings trajectories for workers with credentials by type of credential, industry of employment, age, race and ethnicity, gender, and state. To obtain a more causal estimate of the impact of a credential on earnings, we implement a coarsened exact matching strategy to compare outcomes between otherwise similar people with and without a manufacturing credential. We find that the attainment of a manufacturing industry credential is associated with higher earnings and a higher likelihood of labor market participation when we compare attainers to a group of non-attainers who are otherwise similar.
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Introduction of Head Start and Maternal Labor Supply: Evidence from a Regression
Discontinuity Design
January 2016
Working Paper Number:
CES-16-35
I use the non-public decennial censuses in 1970 to investigate the effect of the Head Start program on maternal labor supply and schooling in its early years. I exploit a discontinuity in county-level Head Start funding beginning in the late 1960s to explore differences in countylevel maternal employment and maternal schooling. The results provide suggestive evidence that the more availability of Head Start led to an increase the nursery school enrollment of children and a decrease in maternal labor supply. In addition, the ITT estimates imply a relatively large, negative effect of enrollment on maternal labor supply. However, the estimates are somewhat sensitive to addition of covariates and the standard errors are also large to draw firm inferences.
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THE DYNAMICS OF LATINO-OWNED BUSINESS WITH COMPARISIONS TO OTHER ETHNICITIES
January 2016
Working Paper Number:
CES-16-33
This paper employs the Michigan Census Research Data Center to merge three limited-access Census Bureau data sets by individual firm and establishment level to investigate the factors associated with the Latino-owned Business (LOB) location and dynamics over time. The three main LOB outcomes under analysis are as follows: (1) the probability of a business being Latino-owned as opposed to a business being Asian-owned, Black-owned, or White-owned; (2) the probability of new business entry and exit; and (3) LOB employment growth. This paper then compares these factors associated with LOB with past findings on businesses that are Asian-owned, Black-owned, and White-owned. Some notable findings include: (1) only Black business owners are less associated with using personal savings as start-up capital than Latinos; (2) the only significant coefficient on start-up capital source is personal savings and it increases the odds of survival of a Latino business by 4%; (3) on average, having Puerto Rican ancestry decreases the odds of business survival; and (4) LOB are relatively likely to start a business with a small amount of capital, which, in turn, limits their future growth.
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Is there an Advantage to Working? The Relationship between Maternal Employment and Intergenerational Mobility
September 2015
Working Paper Number:
CES-15-27
We investigate the question of whether investing in a child's development by having a parent stay at home when the child is young is correlated with the child's adult outcomes. Specifically, do children with stay-at-home mothers have higher adult earnings than children raised in households with a working mother? The major contribution of our study is that, unlike previous studies, we have access to rich longitudinal data that allows us to measure both the parental earnings when the child is very young and the adult earnings of the child. Our findings are consistent with previous studies that show insignificant differences between children raised by stay-at-home mothers during their early years and children with mothers working in the market. We find no impact of maternal employment during the first 5 years of a child's life on earnings, employment, or mobility measures of either sons or daughters. We do find, however, that maternal employment during children's high school years is correlated with a higher probability of employment as adults for daughters and a higher correlation between parent and daughter earnings ranks.
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Employer-Sim Microsimulation Model:
Model Development and Application to Estimation of Tax Subsidies to Health Insurance
December 2014
Working Paper Number:
CES-14-46
Employment-related health coverage is the predominant form of health insurance in the nonelderly, US population. Developing sound policies regarding the tax treatment of employer-sponsored insurance requires detailed information on the insurance benefits offered by employers as well as detailed information on the characteristics of employees and their familes. Unfortunately, no nationally representative data set contains all of the necessary elements. This paper describes the development of the Employer-Sim model which models tax-based health policies by using data on workers from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Household Component (MEPS HC) to form synthetic workforces for each establishment in the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Insurance Component (MEPS IC). This paper describes the application of Employer-Sim to estimating tax subsidies to employer-sponsored health insurance and presents estimates of the cost and indcidence of the subsidy for 2008. The paper concludes by discussing other potential applications of the Employer-Sim model.
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Changes in EITC Eligibility and Participation, 2005'2009
July 2014
Working Paper Number:
carra-2014-04
The rate of participation in the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) has been widely studied, but changes over time in eligibility for the credit have received less attention. One question of importance to policy-makers is whether (or by how much) eligibility might increase during economic downturns. The EITC is fundamentally tied to work. During periods of high unemployment, eligibility may decrease due to a lower number of workers - especially low-skilled workers - filing for a given tax year. On the other hand, family structure and underemployment may lead to increases in eligibility. For example, earners may become eligible when a two-earner family loses one job or when an earner works part of the year or fewer hours. Using IRS tax data linked with the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC), I examine changes in EITC eligibility and take-up between tax years 2005 and 2009, during which time the Great Recession began and ended. Employing fixed-effects models, I assess patterns of eligibility among demographic groups based on characteristics that also predict labor market outcomes. Results indicate that, in a period when overall EITC eligibility rates increased, the state unemployment rate had a significant positive effect on eligibility and a significant negative effect on take-up. Meanwhile, although joint filers, those with more children, and men experienced increasing rates of eligibility, those with less education experienced decreasing rates. Results point to the possibility that labor market groups who experienced the highest rates of unemployment in the recession may have become ineligible due to full-year job loss.
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Testing for Wage Discrimination in U.S. Manufacturing
September 2012
Working Paper Number:
CES-12-23
In spite of the large literature on labor market discrimination, the quantity of solid evidence on discrimination is relatively limited. This is because evidence of discrimination is difficult to obtain. Two individuals may be treated equally, but this does not prove discrimination unless we can show that the differences in treatment were not justified by differences in productivity. The method most commonly used to identify wage discrimination, the Oaxaca decomposition, is flawed because any omitted variables that are correlated with gender will contribute to the unexplained portion of the wage gap, leading to an over- or under-estimation of wage discrimination. Audit studies provide more direct evidence of differential treatment, but are costly to carry out. Only a small number of studies attempt to measure worker productivity to see if wage differences are justified. This may be because the data needed to measure productivity are difficult to obtain. This paper tests for wage discrimination by gender and race by estimating relative productivity from 2002 Census of Manufacturing data linked to demographic information on workers from Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) files. Comparing the estimated productivity ratios to the observed wage ratios, I conclude that females and blacks face wage discrimination in US manufacturing.
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The Emergence of Wage Discrimination in U.S. Manufacturing
June 2011
Working Paper Number:
CES-11-18
This paper examines the hypothesis that wage discrimination emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century. I test for wage discrimination by estimating the female-male productivity ratio from samples of manufacturing firms in the northeast, and then comparing the estimated productivity ratio to the wage ratio. I find that women did not face wage discrimination in manufacturing during the nineteenth century. In 1900 there was wage discrimination against women in white-collar jobs, but not in blue-collar jobs. Wage discrimination persisted, and in 2002 the female-male wage ratio was less than the productivity ratio.
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The Closure Effect: Evidence from Workers Compensation Litigation
January 2010
Working Paper Number:
CES-10-01
Consideration of the "best interests" of Workers Compensation (WC) claimants often involves the assumption that those who receive benefits in a "lump-sum" behave "too myopically" with respect to labor supply. However, many attorneys argue that lump-sum settlements induce a beneficial "sense of closure." In this paper, I provide an empirical context for these ideas using a unique set of linked administrative databases owned by the State of California. Upon receipt of a court-approved lump-sum settlement, WC claimants immediately increase labor supply. No such change is found for claimants who receive a court-approved settlement in which the insurer provides benefits over time, suggesting that the method of litigation settlement is a determinant of labor supply.
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