Labor Economics Commons^™

Year Three Report: Evaluating The Kansas City Scholars College Scholarship Program, Kevin Hollenbeck, Bridget Timmeney, Brad J. Hershbein, Shane M. Reed

Reports

No abstract provided.

The Political Economy Of Inequality: U.S. And Global Dimensions, Sisay Asefa Editor, Wei-Chiao Huang Editor

Upjohn Press

The contributors to this book discuss a variety of forms of social inequality which include large gaps in accumulated assets, discrepancies in access to quality education, unstable family life, lack of access to banking services, poor employment prospects, lack of health care services, and underrepresentation for political and legal matters. Together, they show how these forms of inequality are interrelated with income inequality and that, taken together, they pose the risk for societal and political unrest should they be left unresolved.

College Attainment, Income Inequality, And Economic Security: A Simulation Exercise, Brad J. Hershbein, Melissa S. Kearney, Luke W. Pardue

Upjohn Institute Policy and Research Briefs

No abstract provided.

College Attainment, Income Inequality, And Economic Security: A Simulation Exercise, Brad J. Hershbein, Melissa S. Kearney, Luke W. Pardue

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

We conduct an empirical simulation exercise that gauges the plausible impact of increased rates of college attainment on a variety of measures of income inequality and economic insecurity. Using two different methodological approaches—a distributional approach and a causal parameter approach—we find that increased rates of bachelor’s and associate degree attainment would meaningfully increase economic security for lower-income individuals, reduce poverty and near-poverty, and shrink gaps between the 90th and lower percentiles of the earnings distribution. However, increases in college attainment would not significantly reduce inequality at the very top of the distribution.

Does The Healthcare Educational Market Respond To Short-Run Local Demand?, Marcus Dillender, Andrew Friedson, Cong Gian, Kosali Simon

Upjohn Institute Policy and Research Briefs

No abstract provided.

Improving Economic Development Incentives, Timothy J. Bartik

Upjohn Institute Policy and Research Briefs

No abstract provided.

Who Benefits From Economic Development Incentives? How Incentive Effects On Local Incomes And The Income Distribution Vary With Different Assumptions About Incentive Policy And The Local Economy, Timothy J. Bartik

Upjohn Institute Technical Reports

This report presents results from a simulation model that examines the effects of economic development incentives (e.g., tax incentives such as property tax abatements or job creation tax credits) provided to businesses by state and local governments in the United States. The model simulates effects of incentive policies on the incomes of local residents, both for different income types (e.g., labor income versus property income) and for different income quintiles, under different assumptions about the economy’s workings and public policy. Net benefits of incentives for local incomes are greater if the incentives have greater job-creation effects conditional on their effects …

Degrees Of Poverty: The Relationship Between Family Income Background And The Returns To Education, Timothy J. Bartik, Brad J. Hershbein

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Drawing on the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we document a startling empirical pattern: the career earnings premium from a four-year college degree (relative to a high school diploma) for persons from low-income backgrounds is considerably less than it is for those from higher-income backgrounds. For individuals whose family income in high school was above 1.85 times the poverty level, we estimate that career earnings for bachelor’s graduates are 136 percent higher than earnings for those whose education stopped at high school. However, for individuals whose family income during high school was below 1.85 times the poverty level, the career …

Why Do Underrepresented Minorities Leave Science And Engineering?, Cindy Onyekwelu

Pitzer Senior Theses

This paper extends upon Jennifer Hunt’s research on “Why do women leave science and engineering?”, that contributes to existing literature that overlooks underrepresented minorities level of commitment to STEM fields based on their STEM educational backgrounds and additional contributing factors that relates to women engineer’s leaving their felid to another felid that does not have any relation to their STEM degree. The following independent factors are the respondents’ gender, reasons for leaving the felid of major, how much does their highest degree relate to their current principle/ primary job, parents’ level of education, current citizenship status, level of highest degrees …

Stem And The Local Economy: Do Regions Reap The Benefits Of A Stem-Educated Workforce?, Fran Stewart

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Are Teacher Pensions "Hazardous" For Schools?, Patten Priestley Mahler

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

I use a detailed panel of data and a unique modeling specification to explore how public schoolteachers respond to the incentives embedded in North Carolina’s retirement system. Like most public-sector retirement plans, North Carolina’s teacher pension implicitly encourages teachers to continue working until they are eligible for their pension benefits, and then leave soon afterward. I find that teachers with higher levels of quality, as measured by a teacher’s value-added to her students’ achievement test scores, are more responsive to the “pull” of teacher pensions. Younger teachers, those with higher salaries, and nonwhite teachers are also more likely to stay …

Charles Ballard Interview, Justin Carinci

External Papers and Reports

Professor Charles Ballard of Michigan State University delivered the lecture “The Fall and Rise of Income Equality in the United States” Sept. 27, 2017 as part of the Werner Sichel Lecture Series at Western Michigan University. Ballard detailed the “Great Convergence” of income equality in the United States that grew out of policies of the 1930s and 1940s and a “Great Divergence” of inequality starting about 1980. Ballard called this income gap, which is now greater than during the Gilded Age, “the largest economic phenomenon of our lifetimes.”

Genes, Education, And Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence From The Health And Retirement Study, Nicholas W. Papageorge, Kevin Thom

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Recent advances have led to the discovery of specific genetic variants that predict educational attainment. We study how these variants, summarized as a genetic score variable, are associated with human capital accumulation and labor market outcomes in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). We demonstrate that the same genetic score that predicts education is also associated with higher wages, but only among individuals with a college education. Moreover, the genetic gradient in wages has grown in more recent birth cohorts, consistent with interactions between technological change and labor market ability. We also show that individuals who grew up in economically …

The Stem Dilemma: Skills That Matter To Regions, Fran Stewart

Upjohn Press

Fran Stewart dives into the murky waters where education and economic goals meet to confront several key issues facing policymakers and educators, including the role of public investment in human capital, the types of human capital investment that provide the greatest public return, and whether those investments should vary by region.

She shows that not all high-paying jobs require STEM skills; that not all good-paying, highly skilled STEM jobs require college degrees; and that "soft skills" are important for STEM as well as other high-paying jobs.

Net Impact And Benefit-Cost Estimates Of The Workforce Development System In Washington State, Kevin Hollenbeck, Wei-Jang Huang

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Net Impact And Benefit-Cost Estimates Of The Workforce Development System In Washington State, Kevin Hollenbeck, Wei-Jang Huang

Upjohn Institute Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

College Grads Earn Less If They Grew Up Poor, Timothy J. Bartik, Brad J. Hershbein

Reports

No abstract provided.

Net Impact And Benefit-Cost Estimates Of The Workforce Development System In Washington State, Kevin Hollenbeck, Wei-Jang Huang

Upjohn Institute Technical Reports

This study estimates the net impacts and private and social benefits and costs of 11 workforce development programs administered in Washington State. Six of the programs serve job-ready adults: Workforce Investment Act (WIA) Title I-B Adult programs, WIA Title I-B Dislocated Worker programs, Community and Technical College Job Preparatory Training, Community and Technical College Worker Retraining, Private Career Schools, and Apprenticeships. Three of the programs serve adults with employment barriers: Community and Technical College Adult Basic Skills Education, IBEST, and Division of Vocational Rehabilitation programs. The other two programs serve youth: WIA Title I-B Youth programs and Secondary Career and …

New Labor Market Realities Require New Workforce Development Policies, Carl E. Van Horn

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Refining Workforce Education Supply And Demand Analysis: Final Report, Brad J. Hershbein, Kevin Hollenbeck

Upjohn Institute Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Breaking The Poverty Cycle With Education And Jobs In Kalamazoo, Randall W. Eberts

Presentations

No abstract provided.

Demographics, Skills Gaps, And Market Dynamics, Randall W. Eberts

Conference Papers

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of The Kalamazoo Promise On College Choice: An Analysis Of Kalamazoo Area Math And Science Center Graduates, Michelle Miller-Adams, Bridget Timmeney

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

The Kalamazoo Promise has led to a pronounced shift in the college-going patterns of Kalamazoo Public Schools (KPS) students who attend the Kalamazoo Area Math and Science Center (KAMSC). Following the introduction of the Kalamazoo Promise in 2005, the percentage of KPS KAMSC students attending public, in-state institutions of higher education has almost doubled—a shift that reflects the program rules of the Promise, which covers tuition and fees only at public postsecondary institutions in Michigan. The percentage of non-KPS KAMSC students attending an in-state, public institution also rose in the post-2006 period but only very slightly, suggesting that the Promise …

Family Income, Student Achievement, And Educational Costs, Timothy J. Bartik

Presentations

No abstract provided.

Worker Signals Among New College Graduates: The Role Of Selectivity And Gpa, Brad J. Hershbein

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Recent studies have found a large earnings premium to attending a more selective college, but the mechanisms underlying this premium have received little attention and remain unclear. In order to shed light on this question, I develop a multidimensional signaling model relying on college grades and selectivity that rationalizes students’ choices of effort and firms’ wage-setting behavior. The model is then used to produce predictions of how the interaction of the signals should be related to wages, namely that the return on college GPA should fall the more selective the institution attended. Using five data sets that span the early …

Return On Investment In Workforce Development Programs, Kevin Hollenbeck

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Under more and more fiscal scrutiny because of shrinking state and local budgets, workforce development programs are being asked to estimate their return on investment (ROI). This paper introduces basic concepts of ROI in workforce development programs. It distinguishes ROIs estimated for workforce programs from those that are estimated for financial investments or capital projects. The paper furthermore exposits the basic ingredients of an ROI study—identification of the treatment and time periods of analysis, identification of the net impacts of the program, and identification of net costs. Finally, the paper presents results from the estimation of the ROI for postsecondary …

What Works In Job Creation And Economic Development, Timothy J. Bartik

Presentations

No abstract provided.

Some Perspectives On And Examples Of Business Education Collaboration For Workforce Development, Kevin Hollenbeck

Presentations

No abstract provided.

Does The Workforce Investment Act Work?, Kevin Hollenbeck

Conference Papers

No abstract provided.

A Career Preparation System Accountability System, Kevin Hollenbeck

Reports

No abstract provided.