March Current Population Survey Research Articles

Examining the impact of topcodes adjustment on studies of gender earnings inequality in the US: evidence from March CPS data

ABSTRACT Topcoded survey data has been widely used for studies of gender earnings inequality. How robust are these studies to the choice of topcode adjustment methods? We examine this issue using the public-use March Current Population Survey data from 1979 to 2018 in the United States. In general, using more informative data and more sophisticated parametric procedure implies greater gender earnings inequality. Regression and mean decomposition analyses of gender earnings gap are quite robust to the choice of topcode correction methods. Nevertheless, topcode correction methods do matter significantly for studies of the relationship between gender earnings gap and some covariates (education) but not others (occupational characteristics). For researchers lacking access to internal data, the recommended topcode correction approach is SW/PC method. This method combines the benefits of using public data with replacement values that replicate the less topcoded internal data distribution while integrating parametric correction for the remaining topcoding bias.

Estimating the Value of Gender- and Race-Specific Job Injury Risk

AbstractThe compensating wage differential (CWD) for nonfatal injury and value of statistical life or injury in occupations have rarely been analysed separately by gender or race. This paper uses individual-level data from the 2012–2015 March Current Population Survey to estimate the CWD as well as the value of statistical injury (VOI) by race and gender. We find male workers command a positive risk premium, and this is higher when they are unionised. We also find a positive risk premium for White unionised workers and a slightly lower risk premium for White males. Like other investigators, we find that nonfatal risk is heterogenous, and its compensation is difficult to estimate using a standard wage equation, even with some smaller subsamples from our dataset that are gender- or race-specific. Our estimates of the VOI show us that male workers who are unionised have the highest VOI, followed by Hispanic union workers, and Black females. This last finding follows from Black females working in jobs that have the highest risk rates compared to White and Hispanic females.

Optimal unemployment policy

AbstractThis paper shows that the optimal policy to deal with unemployment features important roles for monitoring of search and job search assistance, with the optimal combined policy also incorporating more generous unemployment insurance (UI). These results are significantly different from the previous literature, which has overwhelmingly focused on UI on its own. I incorporate two empirically relevant phenomena that have often been ignored: private consumption smoothing and fiscal externalities from income taxes. I estimate a job search model using indirect inference on data from the March Current Population Survey, and simulate the model to evaluate a variety of policy reforms.

The Economic Status of People with Disabilities and Their Families since the Great Recession

People with disabilities face substantial barriers to sustained employment and stable, adequate income. We assess how they and their families fared during the long economic expansion that followed the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009, using data from the monthly Current Population Survey (CPS) and the March CPS annual income supplement. We find that the expansion bolstered the well-being of people with disabilities and, in particular, their labor market engagement. We also find that federal disability benefits fell during the expansion. On balance, our results suggest that sustained economic growth can bolster the labor market engagement of people with disabilities and potentially reduce their reliance on disability benefits.

The Economic Status of People with Disabilities and their Families since the Great Recession

People with disabilities face substantial barriers to sustained employment and stable, adequate income. We assess how they and their families fared during the long economic expansion that followed the Great Recession of 2007-09, using data from the monthly Current Population Survey (CPS) and the March CPS annual income supplement. We find that the expansion bolstered the well-being of people with disabilities and in particular their relative labor market engagement. We also find that applications and awards for federal disability benefits fell during the expansion. On balance, our results suggest that sustained economic growth can bolster the labor market engagement of people with disabilities and potentially reduce their reliance on disability benefits.

The Evolution of Skill Use within and between Jobs

We develop a tractable general equilibrium model for understanding within- and between-occupation changes in skill use over time. We apply the model to skill-use measures from the third, fourth, and revised fourth editions of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles and data from the 1960, 1970, and 1980 Censuses and March Current Population Surveys. We recover changes in skill productivity by exploiting between-occupation movements. Most importantly, finger-dexterity productivity grew rapidly while abstract-skill productivity lagged. We leverage these findings to estimate an inelastic relation between abstract and routine inputs and explain within-occupation shifts in skill use.

The Economic Status of People with Disabilities and Their Families Since the Great Recession

People with disabilities face substantial barriers to sustained employment and stable, adequate income. We assess how they and their families fared during the long economic expansion that followed the Great Recession of 2007-09, using data from the monthly Current Population Survey (CPS) and the March CPS annual income supplement. We find that the expansion bolstered the well-being of people with disabilities and in particular their relative labor market engagement. We also find that applications and awards for federal disability benefits fell during the expansion. On balance, our results suggest that sustained economic growth can bolster the labor market engagement of people with disabilities and potentially reduce their reliance on disability benefits.

The Effects of Child Care Subsidies on Paid Child Care Participation and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from the Child and Dependent Care Credit

The Child and Dependent Care Credit (CDCC), a tax credit based on taxpayers’ income and child care expenses, reduces families’ child care costs. The nonrefundable federal CDCC is available to working families with children younger than 13 years old in all states, and nearly half of states supplement the federal credit with their own child care credits. The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act expanded the federal CDCC in 2003, which led to differential increases in CDCC generosity across states and family sizes. I document CDCC eligibility and expenditures over time and across income and demographic groups. Using data from the March Current Population Survey, I find that a 10 percent increase in CDCC benefits increases annual paid child care participation by 4–5 percent among households with children younger than 13 years old. I also find that CDCC benefits increase labor supply among married mothers. Increases in labor supply among married mothers with very young children suggest that CDCC benefits may generate long-run earnings gains.

Health insurance transitions and use of fringe banks: Evidence from the Affordable Care Act

AbstractThe Affordable Care Act (ACA) increased health insurance enrollment, potentially improving financial security. We test whether this insurance increase relates to changes in use of “fringe banks” (e.g., payday lenders, check cashers, and pawn shops). Using the panel structure of the Current Population Survey (CPS), we link 5 years of a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)‐sponsored supplement to March CPS data. We find declines in fringe bank use, specifically fringe credit (e.g., pawn loans), associated with new insurance coverage with larger declines for households affected by the ACA's Medicaid expansion. These results suggest that health insurance reduces reliance on these controversial financial products.

Have Income-Based Achievement Gaps Widened or Narrowed?

Since 1990, U.S. policymakers have worked to close gaps in academic achievement by income and race (e.g. with school finance reform and school accountability systems) even as rising income inequality and income-based residential segregation have threatened to widen them. Using estimates of the mean and variance in household income for sampled schools, we reconstruct the student-level relationship between achievement and household income in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) from 1990 to 2015. We find that achievement at all levels of parental income rose substantially in 4th and 8th grade. In contrast to Reardon (2011), we find that achievement gaps narrowed substantially in 4th grade reading and math and in 8th grade math, while the gaps remained stable in 8th grade reading. As a robustness check, we used the March Current Population survey to impute income for dependent children by race, mother’s education, urbanicity and state and then calculated mean achievement for those same groups in the NAEP. Again, we found gaps in achievement narrowing between groups with high and low predicted mean household incomes. Our results challenge the prevailing understanding that income-based achievement gaps have widened in the United States over the last 30 years. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Statistical Discrimination, Employer Learning, and Employment Gap by Race and Education

Tests of statistical discrimination require evaluation records provided by employers or variables that employers do not observe directly but are observed by researchers. As such variables are difficult to obtain, this paper develops a strategy that uses variables available in usual data sets. This paper derives testable implications for statistical discrimination by exploiting the heterogeneity in employer learning processes. Evidence from analysis using the March Current Population Survey for 1971-2016 is consistent with the theoretical predictions. The empirical findings are not explained by alternative hypotheses, such as human capital theory, taste-based discrimination, or search and matching models.

The Impact of Housing Prices on Health in the United States Before, During, and After the Great Recession

We estimate the effects of U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Area housing prices on a variety of health outcomes and health‐related behaviors separately for homeowners and tenants. The constructed data set consists of information on individuals from the 2002–2012 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System combined with homeownership data from the March Current Population Survey and housing prices from Freddie Mac. We estimate positive effects on homeowners' mental health when housing prices increase. We also find negative effects on tenants' health and health‐related behaviors with increases in housing prices. These estimated contemporaneous effects are concentrated among low‐income homeowners and tenants, and the effects for tenants are not persistent in the long run. However, the cumulative effects of an increase in housing prices on obesity become more pronounced for homeowners in the long run, resulting in worse self‐reported health.

Labor supply of married foreign-born women in credit-constrained households

In credit-constrained households, some family members who would otherwise not work participate in the labor market. This particular supply of labor, however, is expected to decrease when their families overcome credit constraints. To examine this family investment hypothesis, we develop a test which exploits the dynamic features of the labor supply of married foreign-born women in the United States. Empirical findings, based on the matched March Current Population Survey, are consistent with the hypothesis. This paper also finds that previous results which refute the hypothesis are reversed when the sample is confined to women working in low-skill jobs.

Labor Force Attachment and Maternity Leave Usage of Cohabiting Mothers in the United States

This paper studies the labor supply decisions of new mothers in cohabiting relationships in the United States. Using cross-sectional data from the 1997 Cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth as well as from the March Current Population Survey Annual Demographic Supplement, this paper analyzes how the birth of a child impacts a mother’s labor supply. Different subgroups of women based on relationship status are analyzed and compared. Both cross-sectional analyses show that new mothers in cohabiting households behave differently than their married counterparts when it comes to their labor supply after the birth of a child, taking significantly shorter leaves and working more hours in the year of birth. The results also suggest that their partner’s income is not a significant factor in determining their labor supply, which differs from married mothers. This research gives us important insights into the economic decision-making behavior of these nontraditional households.

Race, Residence, and Underemployment: Fifty Years in Comparative Perspective, 1968–2017

High underemployment has been a chronic structural feature of the rural United States for decades. In this paper, we assess whether and how inequalities in underemployment between metropolitan (metro) and nonmetropolitan (nonmetro) areas have changed over the course of the last five decades. Drawing on data from the March Current Population Survey (CPS) from 1968 to 2017, we analyze inequality in the prevalence of underemployment between metro and nonmetro areas of the United States, paying special attention to differences between white, black, and Hispanic workers. Our results show that the underlying risk of underemployment has increased in both metro and nonmetro areas over the last fifty years. Nonmetro workers have consistently faced greater employment hardship compared to their metro counterparts, and these differences cannot be fully explained by differences in population characteristics. Nonmetro ethnoracial minorities have experienced particularly poor labor market outcomes. The disadvantage of ethnoracial minority status and rural residence is especially pronounced for nonmetro black workers, among whom underemployment has remained persistently high with only modest convergence with other workers. Hispanic workers also face elevated risk of underemployment, but we observe a unique convergence between metro and nonmetro workers within this population.

Time Flexibility, Women’s Wages, and the Gender Wage Gap

Paid jobs providing more time flexibility may appeal to workers who have primary responsibility as a caregiver for young children or for sick, handicapped, or elderly adults. However, in some jobs, workers who are given this flexibility may be less productive per hour than workers who commit to a fixed work schedule chosen by the employer. These two realities may lead employers to offer, and caregivers to accept, lower paying jobs that come with more time flexibility. Since caregivers in the United States are disproportionally women, this may help to explain the lingering gender wage gap in the U.S. Data sets were combined from the 2015 revision of the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) and the 2003 through 2015 March Current Population Surveys to analyze this issue. The combined data set includes extensive information on workers’ average hourly earnings and personal characteristics along with 407 characteristics of their occupations. Log wage regressions were used to show that the data are not consistent with the Time Flexibility Hypothesis when applied to occupation categories.

Effects of the Medicaid expansion on low-income, childless household savings: Evidence from the Affordable Care Act

This article examines the effects of the Medicaid expansion on low-income, childless household savings. I exploit the structural changes in the Medicaid program by the Affordable Care Act, which extended the coverage to childless households and eliminated the asset-test for its eligibility. Analyzing the March Current Population Survey Supplement data, I find that the Medicaid expansion increased unearned income generated from savings for childless households with income below the 100% federal poverty level. However, the Medicaid expansion had no effects on earned or total income for those households.

Generation, education, and intermarriage of Asian Americans

ABSTRACT The influx of immigrants from Asia to the United States (U.S.) has expanded the pool of co-ethnic marriageable partners, strengthened racial identity, and contributed to the decline in interracial marriage with whites among Asian Americans. Yet, retreat from interracial marriage with whites may well vary by immigrant generation, an important factor in marital assimilation. Using data from the March Current Population Survey (1994–2015), we examine generational differences in intergenerational marriage and interracial marriage with whites among Asian Americans. The results reveal that over time third-plus-generation Asians show no significant change in interracial marriage with whites but declines in intergenerational marriage with first- or second-generation Asians. Second-generation Asians, on the other hand, have become more likely to marry first-generation Asians and less likely to marry whites. In addition, education provides different opportunities for intermarriage, with highly-educated Asian Americans more likely than their less-educated counterparts to marry whites and less likely to marry other Asians. Notably, highly-educated second-generation Asians tend to marry third-plus-generation Asians and whites while their less-educated counterparts marry first-generation Asians. These findings highlight the importance of generation and education in integration of Asian Americans.

Minimum Cash Wages, Tipped Restaurant Workers, and Poverty

This is the first study to examine the effect of increases in the tipped minimum cash wage—the wage employers must pay to tipped employees—on poverty. Using March Current Population Survey data (1988–2014), we find that tipped minimum cash wage increases are associated with declines in the risk of a tipped restaurant worker living in a poor family (elasticities around –0.2). However, we find little evidence of poverty‐alleviating effects when using the household rather than the family as the sharing unit. This result is consistent with evidence that a substantial share of tipped workers who live in a poor family live in a nonpoor household with persons unrelated by blood, marriage, or adoption who contribute to the household's income. Furthermore, we find that tipped minimum cash wage hikes are associated with increases in the risk of a younger, less‐educated individual living in a poor family or household. Adverse labor demand effects that redistribute income among low‐skilled individuals drive these results. We conclude that raising the tipped minimum cash wage is a poorly targeted policy to deliver income to poor restaurant workers.

From the West Indies to Africa: A universal generational decline in health among blacks in the United States

Research shows that foreign-born blacks have better health profiles than their U.S.-born counterparts. Less is known, however, regarding whether black immigrants’ favorable health outcomes persist across generations or whether these patterns differ across the diverse sending regions for black immigrants. In this study, we use data from the 1996–2014 waves of the March Current Population Survey (CPS) to investigate generational differences in self-rated health among blacks with West Indian, Haitian, Latin American, and African ancestry. We show that first-generation black immigrants have a lower probability of reporting fair/poor health than third/higher generation blacks. The health advantage of the first generation over the third/higher generation is slightly more prounced among the foreign-born who migrated to the United States after age 13. Second-generation immigrants with two foreign-born parents are generally less likely to report their health as fair/poor than the third/higher generation. However, we find no evidence that self-reported fair/poor health varies between second-generation immigrants with mixed nativity parents (only one foreign-born parent) and the third/higher generation. These general patterns hold across each of the ancestral subgroups in the study sample. In summary, our findings highlight a remarkable convergence in health across immigrant generations among blacks in the United States.