New research suggests that unmeasured forms of domestic labor may play a significant role in the gender wage gap. Economists Laura Gee, Olga Stoddard and Kristy Buzard will quantify invisible household labor, defined as the cognitive, emotional, and managerial tasks that are essential to household functioning, and investigate its causes, consequences, and inequalities. Their preliminary findings based on a pilot survey suggest that these responsibilities disproportionately fall on women, particularly mothers.
The primary goal of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is to improve the health outcomes of low-income individuals and families by allowing them to afford nutritious food. Policymakers have called for lowering shopping burdens through expanding digital access via online redemption of WIC benefits and grocery delivery, and the program is currently working to implement online ordering using WIC benefits.
The American Dream is built on the idea that hard work and determination can enable anyone to succeed. These ideals underpin government policies that strive to equalize opportunity, such as affirmative action or equal employment opportunity laws. Yet there has been little experimental research into whether, and under what conditions, Americans prefer to equalize opportunities; instead, much of it examines preferences for redistributing economic outcomes.
Rigorous evidence on generative artificial intelligence’s (AI) labor market effects remains limited, partly due to substantial constraints in measuring actual firm adoption. Economists Germán Reyes and Joaquín Serrano will use novel proprietary data from Ramp that directly captures AI expenditures across more than 25,000 businesses to answer four research questions: 1) How rapidly is generative AI spreading across industries and labor markets? 2) What are the causal effects of AI adoption on local labor market outcomes such as employment, wages, hiring, and separations?
Workers who anticipate bias may avoid challenging jobs where they are likely to face discriminatory penalties for mistakes. Economists Michelle Jiang and Alexandra Opanasets ask: 1) Do workers from underrepresented groups take disproportionate actions to avoid failure on the job, such as not taking on better-paying jobs with a higher risk of failure? 2) If so, is this because they anticipate discriminatory penalties for failure on the job, either for themselves or for others in their demographic group?
The magnitude of month-to-month earnings volatility has proven difficult to measure systematically for a large and representative sample of workers. Economist Peter Ganong will combine paycheck, scheduling, and job title data to identify firm-level and managerial sources of pay volatility. He will also interview firm managers and analyze how changes in management or scheduling affect volatility. Ganong draws on two data sources. The first is from an anonymous payroll processing company, which issues paychecks to between two and four million employees each month at small firms.
Despite years of policy and revised corporate practice intended to correct inequality in the hiring process, application gaps persist for women and individuals from underrepresented racial minority groups. Economist Tanner Eastmond and colleagues will examine whether adjusting the language about qualifications in job listings can change job seekers’ views about the company and the hiring process and help increase the number of highly qualified individuals who apply, especially from underrepresented groups.
Weiwu will examine how the construction of the Interstate Highway System reshaped the geography of economic opportunity in the United States. By constructing new linkages in historical administrative tax records that span the near universe of children born between 1964 and 1979, the study measures how large-scale infrastructure investments influenced intergenerational income mobility across neighborhoods. Preliminary analysis shows that highway development increased job connectivity and raised average incomes in suburban areas that gained access to downtown employment centers.
Do large landlords in affordable housing markets degrade the quality of their buildings? This project will explore the dynamics of unsafe and deteriorating living conditions for low-income renters in North America.
This project investigates whether prosecutorial declination policies—formal decisions not to prosecute specific low-level offenses—improve employment outcomes for individuals diverted from the criminal justice system. Despite evidence that criminal records devastate employment prospects, particularly for Black Americans who face disproportionate arrest rates, no causal evidence exists on whether prosecutorial reforms that prevent criminal record creation enhance economic mobility.