Why do regions decline? This paper explores how adverse shocks in one period affect regional adjustment to subsequent shocks, emphasizing the role of selective migration. I leverage differential exposure to coal’s decline and variation in proximity to historical employment shifts to study this process of regional decline in Appalachia. The consequences of the 2007–2017 coal shock were more acute in counties that experienced larger declines in college-educated adults due to exogenous labor demand shifts in the 1980s.
The outside options available to workers critically determine the transitional costs of labor demand shocks. Using comprehensive administrative data, we examine the worker-level effects of the decline of coal — a regionally concentrated labor demand shock that reduced employment by more than 50% between 2011 and 2021. We show that coal workers experienced large and persistent earnings losses compared to similar workers less connected to coal.
We estimate the distribution of life cycle wages for cohorts of prime-age men and women in the US. A quantile selection model is used to consistently recover the full distribution of wages accounting for systematic differences in employment, permitting us to construct gender and education-specific age-wage profiles, as well as measures of life cycle gender wage gaps.
We examine trends in household disposable income inequality and potential mechanisms shaping inequality through changes to work, wages, earnings, marriage, and the tax and transfer system in the United States over the nearly five-decade period from 1975 to 2022. Overall after-tax and transfer income inequality increased more than 25 per cent since the mid-1970s, and by as much as 50 per cent when comparing the 90th and 10th percentiles.
We examine the contribution of the U.S. tax and social safety net to ameliorating racial and geographic household income gaps. Using nearly five decades of data from the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement, we make a comparative assessment of after-tax and transfer Black-White and rural-urban household income gaps in relation to similar gaps based solely on household earnings. Our results paint a mixed portrait of economic progress of Black and rural households relative to their White and urban counterparts over the last 50 years.
We examine the relationship between the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Black-White after-tax income inequality from 1980-2020. The EITC lowers overall inequality by 5-10 percent in a typical year, improving the incomes of Black households relative to White households in the bottom half of the distribution. Gains in relative economic status emerged after the 1993 EITC expansion, concentrated among working class Black households, and not extending to those at the very bottom.
Using data from the Consumer Expenditures Survey, we document the level and volatility of quarterly consumption across the socio-economic distribution. While the measurement of economic well-being in the United States is focused on income, the secular and policy discourse prioritizes income-adequacy to meet family needs. This concern over income adequacy centers on the capacity of individuals and families to predictably consume minimally acceptable levels of basic needs, and the social and economic mobility consequences of low levels of consumption.
I examine trends in the material well-being of working-class households using data from the Current Population Survey in the two decades surrounding the Great Recession. Average earnings, homeownership, and insurance coverage all fell, while absolute poverty and food insecurity accelerated leading up to the Great Recession. After-tax incomes were stagnant for much of the distribution across and within skill groups.
There is a large literature on earnings and income volatility in labor economics, household finance, and macroeconomics. One strand of that literature has studied whether individual earnings volatility has risen or fallen in the U.S. over the last several decades. There are strong disagreements in the empirical literature on this important question, with some studies showing upward trends, some downward trends, and some flat trends. Some studies have suggested that the differences are the result of using flawed survey data instead of more accurate administrative data.
As of June 2020, the coronavirus pandemic has led to more than 2.3 million confirmed infections and 121 thousand fatalities in the United States, with starkly different incidence by race and ethnicity. Our study examines racial and ethnic disparities in confirmed COVID-19 cases across six diverse cities – Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, New York City, San Diego, and St. Louis – at the ZIP code level (covering 436 “neighborhoods” with a population of 17.7 million).
