Knowledge that Transforms

Mortality is a crucial indicator of well-being, and recent mortality trends have been a subject of public debate in many Western countries. This paper compares mortality inequality in Canada and the United States over the period 1990/91 through 2010/11. In Canada, mortality inequality remained constant among the youngest but increased for men over 24 and women over 14. In contrast, in the United States, mortality inequality fell for children and youth and either modestly increased or held steady at older ages. By 2010/11, the initially higher US rates of infant and child mortality had almost converged to their Canadian counterparts.

We exploit cross-cohort variation in the prevalence of teacher strikes within and across provinces in Argentina to examine how teacher strikes affect student long-run outcomes. Being exposed to the average incidence of strikes during primary school reduces labor earnings of males and females by 3.2% and 1.9%, respectively. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that this amounts to an aggregate annual earnings loss of $2.34 billion. We also find an increase in unemployment and a decline in the skill levels of the occupations into which students sort. These effects are driven, at least in part, by a reduction in educational attainment.

Most research on online education compares student performance across online and in-person formats. We provide the first evidence that online education affects the number of people pursuing education by studying Georgia Tech’s Online MS in Computer Science, the earliest model offering a highly ranked degree at low cost. A regression discontinuity in admission shows that program access substantially increases overall educational enrollment. By satisfying large, previously unmet demand for midcareer training, this program will boost annual production of American computer science master’s degrees by at least 7%. Online options may open opportunities for populations who would not otherwise pursue education.

We provide evidence that constraints that prevent highly skilled women from working long hours hinder gender pay equality. We show that relaxing one such constraint by increasing the supply of substitutes for household production—proxied by intercity variation in predicted low-skilled immigration—increases the relative earnings of women in occupations that disproportionately reward overwork. Low-skilled immigration inflows induce young women to enter occupations with higher returns to overwork and shift women toward higher quantiles of the male wage distribution. The share of women in the top decile remains unaffected, suggesting that other barriers prevent women from reaching the very top.

This paper studies the differential persistent effects of initial economic conditions for labor market entrants in the United States from 1976 to 2015 by education, gender, and race using labor force survey data. We find persistent earnings and wage reductions, especially for less advantaged entrants, that increases in government support only partly offset. We confirm that the results are unaffected by selective migration and labor market entry by also using a double-weighted average unemployment rate at labor market entry for each birth cohort and state-of-birth cell based on average state migration rates and average cohort education rates from census data.

“Daddy quotas” that reserve some parental leave for fathers are increasingly common in developed nations, but it is unclear whether fathers respond to the binding constraints or the labeling effects they produce. Furthermore, little is known about their long-term effects on household behavior. I examine the Quebec Parental Insurance Plan, which improved compensation and reserved 5 weeks of leave for fathers. I find that fathers’ participation increased by 250%, driven by higher benefits and the framing effect of labeling some weeks as “daddy only.” I also present causal evidence that paternity leave reduces sex specialization long after the leave period.