There are persistent differences in self-reported subjective well-being across US metropolitan areas, and residents of declining cities appear less happy than others. Yet some people continue to move to these areas, and newer residents appear to be as unhappy as longer-term residents. While historical data on happiness are limited, the available facts suggest that cities that are now declining were also unhappy in their more prosperous past. These facts support the view that individuals do not maximize happiness alone but include it in the utility function along with other arguments. People may trade off happiness against other competing objectives.

Understanding the employment dynamics of disadvantaged families is increasingly important. We estimate duration models describing these dynamics for disadvantaged single mothers and use them to conduct a rich set of counterfactual analyses. We use a misreporting model to correct for “seam bias,” the problem that too many transitions are reported between reference periods in panel data. We find effects of demographics, minimum wages, unemployment rates, and maximum welfare benefits, but not policy changes introduced through state welfare waivers, on employment dynamics. We find that two commonly used ad hoc methods of addressing seam bias perform substantially worse than our approach.

We measure impacts of entry conditions on labor market outcomes for the US college graduating classes of 1974–2011. A large recession reduces initial earnings by 10%, through full-time work and wages, with small persistent impacts on wages. Those in high-paying majors experience smaller impacts on most labor market outcomes, widening earnings inequality across majors. In the Great Recession, early earnings losses are much larger than predicted given past patterns and the size of the recession. This is partially because the cyclical sensitivity of demand for college graduates has more than doubled. Recession effects also became more evenly distributed across majors.

We use admissions lotteries to estimate the effects of attendance at Boston's charter high schools on college preparation, college attendance, and college choice. Charter attendance increases pass rates on the high-stakes exam required for high school graduation in Massachusetts, with especially large effects on the likelihood of qualifying for a state-sponsored college scholarship. Charter attendance has little effect on the likelihood of taking the SAT, but shifts the distribution of scores rightward, moving students into higher quartiles of the state SAT score distribution. Boston's charter high schools also increase the likelihood of taking an Advanced Placement (AP) exam, the number of AP exams taken, and scores on AP Calculus tests. Finally, charter attendance induces a substantial shift from two-to four-year institutions, though the effect on overall college enrollment is modest. The increase in four-year enrollment is concentrated among four-year public institutions in Massachusetts. The large gains generated by Boston's charter high schools are unlikely to be generated by changes in peer composition or other peer effects.