TY  - JOUR
AU  - Oreopoulos,Philip
AU  - Page,Marianne
AU  - Stevens,Ann Huff
TI  - The Intergenerational Effect of Worker Displacement
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 11587
PY  - 2005
Y2  - August 2005
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11587
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11587.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Philip Oreopoulos
Department of Economics
University of Toronto
150 St. George Street
Toronto, ON  M5S 3G7
Canada
E-Mail: philip.oreopoulos@utoronto.ca

Marianne E. Page
Department of Economics
University of California, Davis
Davis, CA  95616-8578
Tel: 530-554-4940
Fax: NA
E-Mail: mepage@ucdavis.edu

Ann Huff Stevens
Department of Economics
One Shields Avenue
University of California, Davis
Davis, CA  95616
Tel: 530/752-3034
E-Mail: annstevens@ucdavis.edu
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 2005-08-29
AB  - This paper uses variation induced by firm closures to explore the intergenerational effects of worker displacement. Using a Canadian panel of administrative data that follows almost 60,000 father-child pairs from 1978 to 1999 and includes detailed information about the firms at which the father worked, we construct narrow treatment and control groups whose fathers had the same level of permanent income prior to 1982 when some of the fathers were displaced. We demonstrate that job loss leads to large permanent reductions in family income. Comparing outcomes among individuals whose fathers experienced an employment shock to outcomes among individuals whose fathers did not, we find that children whose fathers were displaced have annual earnings about 9% lower than similar children whose fathers did not experience an employment shock. They are also more likely to receive unemployment insurance and social assistance. The estimates are driven by the experiences of children whose family income was at the bottom of the income distribution, and are robust to a number of specification checks.
ER  -