Journal of Human Resources

Scott-Clayton, Judith; Schudde, Lauren

doi: N/Apmid: N/A

<p>ABSTRACT:</p><p>Even need-based financial aid programs typically require recipients to meet Satisfactory Academic Progress (SAP) requirements. Using regression discontinuity and difference-in-difference designs, we examine the consequences of failing SAP for community college entrants in one state. We find heterogeneous academic effects in the short term, but, after six years, negative effects on academic and labor market outcomes dominate. Declines in credits attempted are two to three times as large as declines in credits earned, suggesting that SAP may increase aid efficiency. But students themselves are worse off, and the policy exacerbates inequality by pushing out low-income students faster than their higher-income peers.</p>

Lindo, Jason M.; Myers, Caitlin Knowles; Schlosser, Andrea; Cunningham, Scott

doi: N/Apmid: N/A

<p>ABSTRACT:</p><p>We document the effects of abortion-clinic closures on clinic access, abortions, and births using variation generated by a law that shuttered nearly half of Texas&apos; clinics. We find substantial and nonlinear effects of travel distance on abortion rates: an increase in travel distance from 0–50 miles to 50–100 miles reduces abortion rates by 16 percent, and the effects of increasing distance are smaller when the nearest clinic is already more than 50 miles away. We also demonstrate the importance of congestion with a proxy capturing effects of closures that have little impact on distance but reduce clinics per capita.</p>

Boatman, Angela; Hurwitz, Michael; Lee, Jason; Smith, Jonathan

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<p>ABSTRACT:</p><p>This paper estimates the impact of the College Level Examination Program (CLEP), an exam that offers credit for student competency in a content area in lieu of completing a course. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that passing a CLEP exam leads to a 5.5 percent increase in degree completion and 1.6 percent increase in estimated income. The college completion results are notably strong for students who traditionally struggle to graduate and are often hard to track in education data, including two-year and for-profit enrollees, students in the military, students older than 24, underrepresented minorities, and homeschoolers.</p>

Agopsowicz, Andrew; Robinson, Chris; Stinebrickner, Ralph; Stinebrickner, Todd

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<p>ABSTRACT:</p><p>A large literature studies the wage consequences of "overeducation" in the sense of a worker, by some measure, having a higher level of education than is required for the job. We use unique new data to reexamine the common interpretation that initial overeducation represents a harmful type of mismatch that arises due to information-induced frictions. We contrast this with the alternative that college graduates are heterogeneous with respect to their human capital and that the labor market is appropriately allocating them to jobs, even when many are observed starting in jobs that do not require a college degree.</p>

Cabrera, José María; Webbink, Dinand

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<p>ABSTRACT:</p><p>We study the effects of a policy aimed at attracting experienced teachers in primary schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods in Uruguay. Teachers in these schools could earn higher salaries. Program eligibility was based on a poverty index with a cutoff rule. Estimates from regression discontinuity models show that the policy increased teacher experience. Overall, the effect on student outcomes was small. The program may have increased experience in ways that are not strongly associated with improved student outcomes. Consistent with this, we do find achievement gains for students in schools that saw a reduction in the share of very inexperienced teachers.</p>

Landersø, Rasmus Kløve; Nielsen, Helena Skyt; Simonsen, Marianne

doi: N/Apmid: N/A

<p>ABSTRACT:</p><p>This paper investigates intrafamily spillovers from the focal child&apos;s timing of school start. We first show how school starting age affects the timing of subsequent educational transitions. Exploiting quasi-random variation in school starting age induced by date of birth, we then document effects on parental outcomes. At child age seven, for example, being one year older at school start increases maternal employment by four percentage points. At child age 15, it increases the likelihood that parents still cohabit by eight percentage points. Our results also indicate that later school start for the focal child improves older siblings&apos; academic performance.</p>

Velásquez, Andrea

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<p>ABSTRACT:</p><p>I estimate the impact of the recent and unprecedented surge in drug-related violence in Mexico on the labor market outcomes of Mexican workers. Using a nationally representative longitudinal data set that allows me to account for unobserved time-invariant heterogeneity, I find that there is a negative relationship between local violence and labor market outcomes. Self-employed individuals are the most sensitive to a violent environment, with men experiencing significantly reduced earnings and productivity, while women decrease their hours of work or exit the labor force entirely. I also find suggestive evidence that fear of victimization plays an important role explaining these changes.</p>

Harris, Matthew C.; Kessler, Lawrence M.; Murray, Matthew N.; Glenn, Beth

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<p>ABSTRACT:</p><p>We examine the effect of prescription opioids on county labor market outcomes, using data from the Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs of ten U.S. states and labor data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. We achieve causal identification by exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in the concentration of high-volume prescribers as instruments (using Medicare Part D prescriber data). We find strong adverse effects on labor force participation rates, employment-to-population ratios, and unemployment rates. Notably, a 10 percent increase in prescriptions causes a 0.53 percentage point reduction in labor force participation, similar to the drop attributed to the 1984 liberalization of Disability Insurance.</p>

Behrens, Kristian; Chemin, Matthieu

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<p>ABSTRACT:</p><p>Individuals tend to free-ride in teams, thus providing inefficiently low effort. We implement a system of confidential peer review in a randomly selected set of teams, whereby teammates complete an online survey to review the effort of their peers. These reviews are not linked to any rewards or sanctions, thus making them nonbinding. We find that nonbinding peer reviews increase effort and team productivity and do not decrease worker morale. The effects are stronger for low-ability individuals in low-ability teams, where the traditional forces of peer effects may be absent.</p>

Winters, John V.

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<p>ABSTRACT:</p><p>State and local policymakers are very interested in how attending college in one&apos;s home state affects the likelihood of living in that state after college. This paper uses cohort-level data from the American Community Survey, decennial censuses, and other sources to examine how birth-state college enrollment affects birth-state residence several years later. Ordinary least squares and instrumental variables estimates both suggest a statistically significant positive relationship. The preferred instrumental variable estimates suggest that a one percentage point increase in birth-state enrollment rates increases later life birth-state residence by roughly 0.41 percentage points. Implications for policy are discussed.</p>