Life-Cycle Choices and the Evolution of Youth Labor Markets

生命周期选择和青年劳动力市场的演变

• 批准号: 9730657
• 负责人: Stephen Cameron
• 金额: $ 23.98万
• 依托单位: National Bureau of Economic Research Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 1998
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1998-04-01 至 2004-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9730657&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Life; Cycle; Choices; Evolution; Youth

The aim of this project is to empirically examine how changes in labor markets for young workers have affected their marriage, fertility, and housing decisions. The 1980s and 1990s have witnessed significant changes in the age of first marriage and the percentage of young households that own a house. Understanding these developments requires an understanding of how career developments for young individuals affect these other significant life decisions. There is a growing literature which documents that the 1980s involved a dramatic increase in income inequality in the United States. It is argued that declining real income prospects for workers at the outset of their careers do not appear to fully explain the new trends in marriage, fertility, and housing decisions. For example, using Census of Population data it is shown that the declines in home ownership for young men between 1980 and 1990 occurred across the income and education spectrum. To reconcile this, other broad changes in labor market outcomes are examined. This research will add to the emerging literature which argues that earnings variability increased in the 1980s. The trends in earnings variability are documented and analyzed using panel data from the National Longitudinal Surveys and matched Current Population Surveys. The recent investment literature emphasizes the importance of the option value of delay for investments that involve irreversibilities and must be made in an uncertain economic environment. A general prediction is that the option value of delay increases with the degree of uncertainty regarding the costs/payoffs from the investment. These option based models apply equally to an individual's decisions regarding marriage, fertility, and housing. All of these decisions involve significant transactions costs and other forms of irreversibilities. Increasing variability of labor market earnings increase the option value of delaying these decisions. To date, little empirical work has been carried out to test this prediction. This project will take an important step in the direction of filling in this gap. The research will also significantly advance the general statistical modeling used to study housing tenure decisions. Most of the existing empirical literature on housing tenure decisions is estimated with cross sectional data. It is argued that using panel data and transition models provides a much tighter integration between economic theory and measurement. These models can be simulated to provide meaningful estimates of the stock of homeowners at any given age. It is shown that for variables such as the user cost of housing which vary considerably over time, the traditional estimation methods lead to significantly biased inferences. It is also shown how the econometric framework can be extended to handle multiple housing transitions, and allowing household formation, marriage, and fertility decisions to be endogenous. u»

该项目的目的是实证研究年轻工人劳动力市场的变化如何影响他们的婚姻、生育和住房决策。 20 世纪 80 年代和 90 年代初婚年龄和拥有房产的年轻家庭比例发生了显着变化。了解这些发展需要了解年轻人的职业发展如何影响其他重要的人生决策。越来越多的文献表明，20 世纪 80 年代美国收入不平等急剧加剧。工人在职业生涯初期的收入前景似乎并不能完全解释婚姻、生育和住房决策的新趋势，例如，人口普查数据显示，1980 年期间年轻男性的住房拥有率下降。为了协调这一点，本研究将对认为 20 世纪 80 年代收入波动性增加的新兴文献进行了考察，并记录了收入波动性的趋势。使用国家纵向调查和匹配的当前人口调查的面板数据进行分析，最近的投资文献强调了涉及不可逆转性且必须在不确定的经济环境中做出的投资的期权价值的重要性。延迟的价值随着投资成本/回报的不确定性而增加。这些基于期权的模型同样适用于个人的婚姻、生育和住房决策。所有这些决策都涉及重大的交易成本和其他形式的不可逆转性。劳动力市场收入的不断变化增加了延迟这些决策的期权价值，迄今为止，很少有实证工作来检验这一预测，该研究也将朝着填补这一空白的方向迈出重要一步。显着推进了用于研究住房保有权决策的一般统计模型。大多数现有的住房保有权决策实证文献都是用横截面数据进行估计的。有人认为，使用面板数据和转型模型可以使经济理论和测量之间更加紧密地结合。 .可以模拟这些模型以提供有意义的估计研究表明，对于诸如住房用户成本等随时间变化很大的变量，传统的估计方法会导致显着偏差的推论。处理多重住房转型，并允许家庭组建、婚姻和生育决策是内生的。