Gordon Hanson,
Chen Liu, Craig McIntosh, NBER: The Rise and Fall of U.S. Low-Skilled
Immigration. From the 1970s to the early
2000s, the United States experienced an epochal wave of low-skilled
immigration. Since the Great Recession, however, U.S. borders have become a far
less active place when it comes to the net arrival of foreign workers. The number
of undocumented immigrants has declined in absolute terms, while the overall
population of low-skilled, foreign-born workers has remained stable. We examine
how the scale and composition of low-skilled immigration in the United States
have evolved over time, and how relative income growth and demographic shifts
in the Western Hemisphere have contributed to the recent immigration slowdown. Because major source countries
for U.S. immigration are now seeing and will continue to see weak growth of the
labor supply relative to the United States, future immigration rates of young,
low-skilled workers appear unlikely to rebound, whether or not U.S. immigration
policies tighten further.
Richard Florida,
NYT: The Urban Revival Is Over. While many, if not most, large cities grew faster than their suburbs
between 2000 and 2015, in the last two years the suburbs outgrew cities in
two-thirds of America’s large metropolitan areas. Several factors have come together to potentially stymie
the urban revival. Foremost is a recent uptick in violent crime. And, of
course, the most desirable cities have become incredibly expensive places to
live. Finally, the anti-urban mood in Washington and many state
legislatures is making things worse for cities at the worst possible time.
Badly needed investments in transit, bridges and tunnels, affordable housing
and job upgrading and training are not being made. Stopping or reversing the
urban revival would not just be bad for cities. It would be a disaster for all
of us.
Naci H. Mocan, Han
Yu, NBER: Can Superstition Create a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy? School Outcomes
of Dragon Children of China. In Chinese
culture those who are born in the year of the Dragon under the zodiac calendar
are believed to be destined for good fortune and greatness, and parents prefer
their kids to be born in a Dragon year. Using province level panel data we show
that the number of marriages goes up during the two years preceding a Dragon
year and that births jump up in a Dragon year. Using three recently collected
micro data sets from China we show that those born in a Dragon year are more
likely to have a college education, and that they obtain higher scores at the
university entrance exam. Similarly, Chinese middle school students have higher
test scores if they are born in a Dragon year. We show that these results are
not because of family background, student cognitive ability, self-esteem or
students’ expectations about their future. We find, however, that the “Dragon”
effect on test scores is eliminated when we account for parents’ expectations
about their children’s educational and professional success. We find that parents of Dragon
children have higher expectations for their children in comparison to other
parents, and that they invest more heavily in their children in terms of time
and money. Even though neither the Dragon children nor their families are
inherently different from other children and families, the belief in the
prophecy of success and the ensuing investment become self-fulfilling.
Ellyn Terry, Atlanta
Fed: Is Poor Health Hindering Economic Growth? So how might poor health hinder economic growth? Health factors
account for a significant part of the decline in labor force participation
since at least the late 1990s. After controlling for demographic changes, the
share of people too sick or disabled to work is about 1.6 percentage points
higher today than it was two decades ago. Other things equal, if this trend reversed itself
during the next year, it could increase the workforce by up to 4 million
people, and add around 2.6 percentage points to gross domestic product.
Quoctrung Bui,
NYT: Why Some Men Don’t Work: Video Games Have Gotten Really Good. If innovations in housework helped free women to
enter the labor force in the 1960s and 1970s, could innovations in leisure —
like League of Legends — be taking men out of the labor force today? By 2015,
American men 31 to 55 were working about 163 fewer hours a year than that same
age group did in 2000. Men 21 to 30 were working 203 fewer hours a year. One
puzzle is why the working hours for young men fell so much more than those of their
older counterparts. The gap between the two groups grew by about 40 hours a
year, or a full workweek on average. Between 2004 and 2015, young men’s leisure time grew by 2.3 hours a
week. A majority of that increase — 60 percent — was spent playing video games,
according to government time use surveys. In contrast, young women’s leisure
time grew by 1.4 hours a week. A negligible amount of that extra time was spent
on video games.
No comments:
Post a Comment