Computerization, Obsolescence and the Length of Working Life.

This paper analyzes how computerization affected the labor market outcomes of older workers between 1984 and 2017. Using the computerization supplements of the Current Population Survey (CPS) we show that different occupations were computerized at different times, older workers tended to start using computers with a delay compared to younger workers, but computer use within occupations converged to the same levels across age groups eventually. That is, there was a temporary knowledge gap between younger and older workers in most occupations. We estimate how this knowledge gap affected older workers' labor market outcomes using data from the CPS and the Health and Retirement Study. Our models control for occupation and time fixed effects and in some models; we also control for full occupation-time interactions and use middle aged (age 40-49) workers as the control group. We find strong and robust negative effects of the knowledge gap on wages, and a large, temporary increase in transitions from work to non-participation, consistent with a model of creative destruction in which the computerization of jobs made older workers' skills obsolete in birth cohorts that experienced computerization relatively late in their careers. We find larger effects on females and on middle-skilled workers.

Prep School for Poor Kids: The Long-Run Impacts of Head Start on Human Capital and Economic Self-Sufficiency.

This paper evaluates the long-run effects of Head Start using large-scale, restricted administrative data. Using the county rollout of Head Start between 1965 and 1980 and age-eligibility cutoffs for school entry, we find that Head Start generated large increases in adult human capital and economic self-sufficiency, including a 0.65-year increase in schooling, a 2.7 percent increase in high school completion, an 8.5 percent increase in college enrollment, and a 39 percent increase in college completion. These estimates imply sizable, long-term returns to investments in means-tested, public preschool programs.

Do Financial Incentives Aimed at Decreasing Interhousehold Inequality Increase Intrahousehold Inequality?

Research has shown that giving disadvantaged families financial incentives to invest in their children could decrease socioeconomic inequality by enhancing human capital formation. Yet, within the household how are such gains achieved? We use a field experiment to investigate how parents allocate time when they receive financial incentives. We find that incentives increase investment in the target child. But, parents achieve these gains by substituting away from time spent with the child's sibling(s). An unintended consequence is that intrahousehold inequality increases and aggregate gains from the program are overstated when focusing only on target children.

The importance of STEM: High school knowledge, skills and occupations in an era of growing inequality.

Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) jobs have grown in importance in the labor market in recent decades, and they are widely seen as the jobs of the future. Using data from the U.S. Census and American Community Survey, we first investigate the role of employment in STEM occupations when it comes to recent changes in the occupational employment distribution in the U.S. labor market. Next, with data from the High School and Beyond sophomore cohort (Class of 1982) recent midlife follow-up, we investigate the importance of high school students' mathematics and science coursework, knowledge, and skills for midlife occupations. The Class of 1982 completed high school prior to technological changes altering the demand for labor. We find that individuals who took more advanced levels of high school mathematics coursework enjoyed occupations with a higher percentile rank in the average wage distribution and were more likely to hold STEM-related occupations. Findings suggest that the mathematics coursework enabled workers to adapt and navigate changing labor market demands.

Vulnerable Boys: Short-term and Long-term Gender Differences in the Impacts of Adolescent Disadvantage.

The growing gender gap in educational attainment between men and women has raised concerns that the skill development of boys may be more sensitive to family disadvantage than that of girls. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) data we find, as do previous studies, that boys are more likely to experience increased problems in school relative to girls, including suspensions and reduced educational aspirations, when they are in poor quality schools, less-educated neighborhoods, and father-absent households. Following these cohorts into young adulthood, however, we find no evidence that adolescent disadvantage has stronger negative impacts on long-run economic outcomes such as college graduation, employment, or income for men, relative to women. We do find that father absence is more strongly associated with men's marriage and childbearing and weak support for greater male vulnerability to disadvantage in rates of high school graduation. An investigation of adult outcomes for another recent cohort from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 produces a similar pattern of results. We conclude that focusing on gender differences in behavior in school may not lead to valid inferences about the effects of disadvantage on adult skills.

Do Single-Sex Schools Enhance Students' STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) Outcomes?

In many countries, males currently lag behind females in schooling attainment but females are still underrepresented in STEM studies. This pattern has raised renewed interest in the potential of single-sex schools for enhancing STEM outcomes. Utilizing the unique setting in Seoul, where assignment to single-sex or coeducational high schools is random, and with multiple years of administrative data from the national college entrance examinations and a longitudinal survey of high school seniors, we assess causal effects of single-sex schools on students' math test scores and choice of the science-math test. We also assess whether single-sex schools affect students' interests and self-efficacy in math and science, and expectations and actual choices of a STEM college major in university. We find significantly positive effects of all-boys schools consistently across different STEM outcomes but not for girls. We address one possible mechanism by conducting mediation analysis with the proportion of same-gender math teachers.

The Agricultural Origins of Time Preference.

This research explores the origins of observed differences in time preference across countries and regions. Exploiting a natural experiment associated with the expansion of suitable crops for cultivation in the course of the Columbian Exchange, the research establishes that pre-industrial agro-climatic characteristics that were conducive to higher return to agricultural investment, triggered selection, adaptation and learning processes that generated a persistent positive effect on the prevalence of long-term orientation in the contemporary era. Furthermore, the research establishes that these agro-climatic characteristics have had a culturally embodied impact on economic behavior such as technological adoption, education, saving, and smoking.

The importance of family income in the formation and evolution of non-cognitive skills in childhood.

Little is known about the relationship between family income and children's non-cognitive (or socio-emotional) skill formation. This is an important gap, as these skills have been hypothesized to be a critical link between early outcomes and adult socioeconomic status. This paper presents new evidence of the importance of family income in the formation and evolution of children's non-cognitive skills using a recent US panel dataset that tracks children between grades K-5. Findings suggest an important divergence in non-cognitive skills based on family income that accumulates over time and does not seem to be explained by children's health status differences.

Human Capital and the Wealth of Nations†.

We reevaluate the role of human capital in determining the wealth of nations. We use standard human capital theory to estimate stocks of human capital and allow the quality of human capital to vary across countries. Our model can explain differences in schooling and earnings profiles and, consequently, estimates of Mincerian rates of return across countries. We find that effective human capital per worker varies substantially across countries. Cross-country differences in Total Factor Productivity (TFP) are significantly smaller than found in previous studies. Our model implies that output per worker is highly responsive to changes in TFP and demographic variables.

Is the Social Safety Net a Long-Term Investment? Large-Scale Evidence From the Food Stamps Program.

We use novel, large-scale data on 17.5 million Americans to study how a policy-driven increase in economic resources affects children's long-term outcomes. Using the 2000 Census and 2001-13 American Community Survey linked to the Social Security Administration's NUMIDENT, we leverage the county-level rollout of the Food Stamps program between 1961 and 1975. We find that children with access to greater economic resources before age five have better outcomes as adults. The treatment-on-the-treated effects show a 6% of a standard deviation improvement in human capital, 3% of a standard deviation increase in economic self-sufficiency, 8% of a standard deviation increase in the quality of neighbourhood of residence, a 1.2-year increase in life expectancy, and a 0.5 percentage-point decrease in likelihood of being incarcerated. These estimates suggest that Food Stamps' transfer of resources to families is a highly cost-effective investment in young children, yielding a marginal value of public funds of approximately sixty-two.

A health production model with endogenous retirement.

We formulate a stylized structural model of health, wealth accumulation and retirement decisions building on the human capital framework of health and derive analytic solutions for the time paths of consumption, health, health investment, savings and retirement. We argue that the literature has been unnecessarily restrictive in assuming that health is always at the 'optimal' health level. Exploring the properties of corner solutions, we find that advances in population health decrease the retirement age, whereas at the same time, individuals retire when their health has deteriorated. This potentially explains why retirees point to deteriorating health as an important reason for early retirement, whereas retirement ages have continued to fall in the developed world, despite continued improvements in population health and mortality. In our model, workers with higher human capital invest more in health and, because they stay healthier, retire later than those with lower human capital whose health deteriorates faster.

When Sarah Meets Lawrence: The Effects of Coeducation on Women's College Major Choices.

We leverage variation in the adoption of coeducation by U.S. women's colleges to study how exposure to a mixed-gender collegiate environment affects women's human capital investments. Our event-study analyses of newly collected historical data find a 3.0-3.5 percentage-point (30-33%) decline in the share of women majoring in STEM. While coeducation caused a large influx of male peers and modest increase in male faculty, we find no evidence that it altered the composition of the female student body or other gender-neutral inputs. Extrapolation of our main estimate suggests that coeducational environments explain 36% of the current gender gap in STEM.

Parenting Promotes Social Mobility Within and Across Generations.

This paper compares early childhood enrichment programs that promote social mobility for disadvantaged children within and across generations. Instead of conducting a standard meta-analysis, we present a harmonized primary data analysis of programs that shape current policy. Our analysis is a template for rigorous syntheses and comparisons across programs. We analyze new long-run life-cycle data collected for iconic programs when participants are middle-aged and their children are in their twenties. The iconic programs are omnibus in nature and offer many services to children and their parents. We compare them with relatively low-cost more focused home-visiting programs. Successful interventions target both children and their caregivers. They engage caregivers and improve the home lives of children. They permanently boost cognitive and non-cognitive skills. Participants in programs that enrich home environments grow up with better skills, jobs, earnings, marital stability, and health, as well as reduced participation in crime. Long-run monetized gains are substantially greater than program costs for the iconic programs. We investigate the mechanisms promoting successful family lives for participants and report intergenerational effects on their children. A study of focused home-visiting programs that target parents enables us to isolate a crucial component of successful programs: they activate and promote parenting skills of child caregivers. The home-visiting programs we analyze produce outcomes comparable to those of the iconic omnibus programs. National implementation of the programs with long-run follow up that we analyze would substantially shrink the overall US Black-White earnings gap.

Strategic management and organizational culture of medical device companies in relation to corporate performance.

AIMS: Strategies focus on securing the competitiveness of medical device corporations by strengthening their organizational capabilities, which, in turn, ensure their continuous development. This study aims to investigate both management strategies and organizational culture, which may affect the performance of these companies, and analyzes the influence of education and training investment. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We used data from the 3rd to 6th Human Capital Corporate Panel surveys by the Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education and Training as well as data from the Korea Information Service and 6,112 workers and 260 companies were analyzed. For the analysis, management strategy and organizational culture were set as independent variables, and corporation performance was set as the dependent variable. Additionally, investment in education and training was set as a control variable between the independent and dependent variables. Corporate performance was analyzed by dividing into organizational satisfaction and organizational commitment. RESULTS: Differentiation strategy and innovative culture had a positive (+) effect on organizational satisfaction, while cost leadership strategy and hierarchical culture had a negative (-) effect. On the other hand, in the case of interaction with education and training investment, cost leadership strategy and hierarchical culture had a positive (+) effect, while differentiation strategy and innovation culture had a negative (-) effect. In organizational commitment, innovation culture had a positive (+) effect, and hierarchical culture had a negative (-) effect. In the case of interaction with investment in education and training, only the hierarchical culture had a positive (+) effect. CONCLUSIONS: The innovation culture positively influenced the performance of medical device companies. Furthermore, cost leadership strategy, hierarchical culture, education and training investment improved the corporate performance of these companies. To enhance corporate performance, these companies should create an innovation culture and invest in education and training in accordance with the organizational culture.

COVID-19 has proven the excellence of Korea's medical devices, and the medical device industry is expected to continue to grow due to the increase in chronic disease and non-face-to-face treatment. However, the current medical device industry is monopolized by global companies with capital and technological prowess. To overcome this, Korean medical device companies are developing innovative medical devices centered on start-ups, but now is the time to strategically respond to them in order to compete with global companies. In general, companies establish management strategies for survival and growth by analyzing threats and opportunities based on the market environment to maintain the optimal organization according to market competition, government policies, and changes in consumer needs. Strategies are often established based on the culture of the organizations that make up the company. When it comes to strategy establishment, the medical device industry has special characteristics compared to other industries. The medical device industry is based on advanced technology and puts patient safety first, requiring continuous product upgrades. Therefore, it is an essential industry for employees to invest in education and training. The analysis shows the effectiveness of investment in education and training according to the management strategy and organizational culture of medical device companies. It was confirmed that when medical device companies create an Innovation culture, their performance improves. It also shows that when medical device companies adopt a cost leadership strategy, they need to increase their investment in education and training to improve corporate performance.

Artificial Intelligence and Employment: New Cross-Country Evidence.

Recent years have seen impressive advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and this has stoked renewed concern about the impact of technological progress on the labor market, including on worker displacement. This paper looks at the possible links between AI and employment in a cross-country context. It adapts the AI occupational impact measure developed by Felten, Raj and Seamans-an indicator measuring the degree to which occupations rely on abilities in which AI has made the most progress-and extends it to 23 OECD countries. Overall, there appears to be no clear relationship between AI exposure and employment growth. However, in occupations where computer use is high, greater exposure to AI is linked to higher employment growth. The paper also finds suggestive evidence of a negative relationship between AI exposure and growth in average hours worked among occupations where computer use is low. One possible explanation is that partial automation by AI increases productivity directly as well as by shifting the task composition of occupations toward higher value-added tasks. This increase in labor productivity and output counteracts the direct displacement effect of automation through AI for workers with good digital skills, who may find it easier to use AI effectively and shift to non-automatable, higher-value added tasks within their occupations. The opposite could be true for workers with poor digital skills, who may not be able to interact efficiently with AI and thus reap all potential benefits of the technology.

The Long-Run Effects of Recessions on Education and Income.

This paper examines the long-run effects of the 1980-1982 recession on education and income. Using confidential Census data, I estimate difference-in-differences regressions that exploit variation across counties in recession severity and across cohorts in age at the time of the recession. For individuals age 0-10 in 1979, a 10 percent decrease in earnings per capita in their county of birth reduces four-year college degree attainment by 15 percent and earnings in adulthood by 5 percent. Simple calculations suggest that, in aggregate, the 1980-1982 recession led to 1.3-2.8 million fewer college graduates and $66-$139 billion less earned income per year.

Revisiting the Effect of Retirement on Cognition: Heterogeneity and Endowment.

Since the seminal paper of Rohwedder and Willis (2010), the effect of retirement on cognition has drawn significant research interest from economists. Especially with ongoing policy discussions about public pension reforms and the increasing burden of dementia, it is indisputably an important research question with significant policy implications. Building on this growing literature, our paper makes two important contributions. First, we explicitly consider cognitive demands of jobs in studying hetereogeneity of the retirement effect. As the primary explanation for the potential adverse effect of retirement is that cognition is better maintained through mental exercise (Salthouse, 2006), by investigating the cognitive demands of the job one retires from we can directly test the hypothesized relationship. Second, we avoid biases associated with omitted variables, particularly by controlling for endowed cognitive ability. While endowed, genetic differences in cognitive ability is an important omitted variable that can explain individual differences in cognitive performance as well as selection into a particular type of job, this inherited characteristic has not been controlled for in the prior literature. Taking advantage of the polygenic risk score of cognition (Davies et al., 2015), we control for individual differences in genetic endowments in estimating the effect of retirement on cognition. We find supporting evidence for differential effects of retirement by cognitive demands of jobs after controlling for innate differences in cognition and educational attainment.

The Effects of Job Characteristics on Retirement.

Along with data about actual, desired and anticipated job characteristics, this paper uses a novel data element, the subjective conditional probability of working at age 70, to estimate the causal effects of job characteristics on retirement in the U.S. Having flexible work hours is the most consistent predictor of retirement preferences and expectations: if all current workers had flexible hours, the fraction working at age 70 would be 0.322, but it would be just 0.172 if none had this option. Job stress, physical and cognitive job demands, the option to telecommute, and commuting times were additional predictors of retirement expectations.

Health, Human Capital and Domestic Violence.

We treat health as a form of human capital and hypothesize that women with more human capital face stronger incentives to make costly investments with future payoffs, such as avoiding abusive partners and reducing drug use. To test this hypothesis, we exploit the unanticipated introduction of an HIV treatment, HAART, which dramatically improved HIV+ women's health. We find that after the introduction of HAART HIV+ women who experienced increases in expected longevity exhibited a decrease in domestic violence of 15% and in drug use of 1520%. We rule out confounding via secular trends using a control group of healthier women.

Burden of caring for Alzheimer's disease or dementia patients in Japan, the US, and EU: results from the National Health and Wellness Survey: a cross-sectional survey.

AIMS: The growing prevalence of Alzheimer's disease (AD) worldwide has sparked the implementation of national policies to support the growing burden among caregivers of AD/dementia patients. This study aims to quantify and compare the burden of AD/dementia caregivers and evaluate how different living arrangements might impact health outcomes among caregivers in Japan, five European countries (5EU), and the United States (US). MATERIALS AND METHODS: This is a cross-sectional study based on existing data from the 2018 National Health and Wellness Survey. Health outcome measures included health-related quality of life (HRQoL), health state utilities, work productivity and activity impairment (WPAI), and measurement of depression and anxiety amongst AD/dementia caregivers and non-caregivers. Pairwise comparisons between AD/dementia caregivers in Japan, 5EU, and the US were conducted. Multivariate analysis was used to compare across groups within each region, with adjustment for potential confounding effects. RESULTS: A higher proportion of caregivers of AD/dementia patients in Japan were 65 years or older as compared to 5EU and US. On the contrary, female caregivers were significantly higher in the US than Japan and 5EU. The HRQoL and health state utilities index scores amongst AD/dementia caregivers were highest in Japan and lowest in the US. Caregivers in Japan incurred the lowest WPAI among the three regions. The proportion of AD/dementia patients reportedly living in an institution was highest in Japan as compared to the US and EU. Notably, US caregivers whose patients lived in an institution experienced significantly less caregiving burden as compared to caregivers whose patients lived in the community. CONCLUSIONS: The caregiving burden among AD/dementia caregivers was substantial across the three regions, with similarities and differences between the West and Japan. The lower caregiving burden in Japan was potentially associated with national policies supporting long-term healthcare and institutionalized nursing care facilities for AD/dementia patients.