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Introduction: A Special Issue in Honor of Joseph Altonji

Journal of Labor Economics 2021 39(S1), S1-S3
Joseph Altonji is one of the pioneers of modern labor economics. To mark Joe’s sixty-fifth birthday and honor his illustrious career, a conference was held at his alma mater and employer, Yale University, on September 7–8, 2018. This special issue contains seven of the papers presented by former students, coauthors, and colleagues. Joe has been central to the empirical revolution that has brought vast amounts of individual-level data to some of the most important questions ofbothmicroandmacroeconomics.His seminal breakthroughshave changed thewaywe think aboutnumerous topics, including the studyof consumption behavior and labor supply over time, intrafamily insurance, discrimination, wage determination and learning, school choice and school quality, returns to higher education, and the stochastic process of income. The hallmark of all thiswork is a thoughtful combination of theory anddata, the development ofnewempiricalmethods, thediscoveryofnovel identificationstrategies, and extreme care with extensive robustness checks and attention to data details. Early on in his career Joe was one of the first to develop our understanding of the relationship between intratemporal and intertemporal allocations and the implication this distinction has on estimating elasticities. These

Estimating the Effect of School Quality on Mortality in the Presence of Migration: Evidence from the Jim Crow South

Journal of Labor Economics 2021 39(2), 527-558
How does school quality affect health amid multiple behavioral responses? The Rosenwald schools transformed school quality for rural southern African Americans in the early 1900s. Research shows that the schools made black migration northward more likely and that the Great Migration shortened life expectancy for these migrants. Besides the hypothesized health-enhancing effects of school quality, negative health effects might also occur through migration. We disentangle behavioral mechanisms and find complete exposure to the Rosenwald schools increased life expectancy by 2–3 months; a more naive approach finds no relationship. Results are robust to heterogeneous treatment effects and various measurement issues.