Full Citation
Title: Essays on the Responses to Local Labor Market Shocks
Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis
Publication Year: 2018
ISBN: 9780438084438
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Abstract: This dissertation studies the impacts of local labor market changes on the US family structures and disability benefit take-up. The dissertation uses unexpected time series changes in energy prices, together with the pre-existing county exposure to the unexpected time series changes, to identify causal links between the changes in county's economic conditions and changes in marriage outcomes, fertility outcomes, and disability benefit payments. The first chapter is motivated by the decline in marriage and the rise in out-of-wedlock births, which are among the most important changes in American lives over the last half century. A notable hypothesis to explain both trends, sometimes dubbed as the “unmarriageable men hypothesis,” attributes these changes to the disappearance of well-paying industrial jobs for the less-educated men. Exploiting county-level variation in oil-producing and coal-producing areas from the shocks to world oil and coal prices in the 1970s and 1980s, I find that a decrease in men's earnings leads to lower marriage prevalence, lower marital fertility rates, and higher non-marital fertility rates, confirming the hypothesis. When men's earnings increase, however, marriage outcomes and non-marital births respond differently across regions: while higher earnings lead to higher marriage prevalence and lower non-marital births in coal-producing counties, I find little marriage response and more non-marital births in oil-producing counties during the oil boom, which is inconsistent with the implications of the unmarriageable men hypothesis.
Url: https://search.proquest.com/docview/2064410121/abstract/6BCA9FDC3559458BPQ/1?accountid=14586
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Authors: Li, Yiming
Institution: The University of Chicago
Department: Public Policy Studies
Advisor: Charles, Kerwin
Degree: Ph.D.
Publisher Location: Chicago, Illinois
Pages: 95
Data Collections: IPUMS USA, IPUMS NHGIS
Topics: Family and Marriage, Fertility and Mortality, Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Other
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