Knowledge that Transforms

Using 4 decades of variation in the federal and state Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), we estimate the impact of exposure to EITC expansions in childhood on education and employment outcomes in adulthood. Reduced-form results suggest that an additional $1,000 in EITC exposure when a child is 13–18 years old increases the likelihood of completing high school (1.3%), completing college (4.2%), and being employed as a young adult (1.0%) and earnings by 2.2%. Our analysis reveals that the primary channel through which the EITC improves these outcomes is increases in pretax family earnings.

We study variation in skill demands for professionals across firms and labor markets. We categorize a wide range of keywords found in job ads into 10 general skills. There is substantial variation in these skill requirements, even within narrowly defined occupations. Focusing particularly on cognitive and social skills, we find positive correlations between each skill and external measures of pay and firm performance. We also find evidence of a cognitive social skill complementarity for both outcomes. As a whole, job skills have explanatory power in pay and firm performance regressions beyond what is available in widely used labor market data.

Editor's Note Our policy is to annotate all English-language books on economics and related subjects that are sent to us. A very small number of foreign-language books are called to our attention and annotated by our consulting editors or others. Our staff does not monitor and order books published; therefore, if an annotation of a book does not appear six months after the publication date, please write to us or the publisher concerning the book.

Editor's Note Our policy is to annotate all English-language books on economics and related subjects that are sent to us. A very small number of foreign-language books are called to our attention and annotated by our consulting editors or others. Our staff does not monitor and order books published; therefore, if an annotation of a book does not appear six months after the publication date, please write to us or the publisher concerning the book.

The categories listed below are used to classify books, book reviews, journal articles, and dissertations indexed in JEL, JEL on CD, EconLit. New changes to the classification system appear as soon as possible on www.econlit.org . The JEL classification system may be used freely for scholarly purposes. We suggest the following format: “JEL: A10, B10, etc.”

Editor's Note Our policy is to annotate all English-language books on economics and related subjects that are sent to us. A very small number of foreign-language books are called to our attention and annotated by our consulting editors or others. Our staff does not monitor and order books published; therefore, if an annotation of a book does not appear six months after the publication date, please write to us or the publisher concerning the book.

The categories listed below are used to classify books, book reviews, journal articles, and dissertations indexed in JEL, JEL on CD, EconLit. New changes to the classification system appear as soon as possible on www.econlit.org . The JEL classification system may be used freely for scholarly purposes. We suggest the following format: “JEL: A10, B10, etc.”

Editor's Note Our policy is to annotate all English-language books on economics and related subjects that are sent to us. A very small number of foreign-language books are called to our attention and annotated by our consulting editors or others. Our staff does not monitor and order books published; therefore, if an annotation of a book does not appear six months after the publication date, please write to us or the publisher concerning the book.