National Bureau of Economic Research
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From the NBER Bulletin on Health
Unemployment Insurance, Birth Rates, and Infant Health
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Falling birth rates in the US and other advanced economies have raised questions about the links between economic conditions, government safety nets, and fertility and infant health. In The Cyclicality of Births and Babies’ Health, Revisited: Evidence from Unemployment Insurance (NBER Working Paper 30937), Lisa Dettling and Melissa Kearney find that fertility rates and infant health are influenced by the mother’s financial circumstances during economic downturns. Unemployment insurance (UI), which provides liquidity following job loss, can mitigate financial stress and improve birth...
Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 37
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This volume of Tax Policy and the Economy presents new research on important issues concerning US taxation and transfers.
A research summary from the monthly NBER Digest
A ‘Light Touch’ Intervention Gets Mothers Talking to Their Babies
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The importance of verbal engagement for infant language and cognitive development is well established, but many low-income parents do not converse with their infants regularly. This compounds the disadvantages faced by children in poorer families. In Informing Mothers about the Benefits of Conversing with Infants: Experimental Evidence from Ghana (NBER Working Paper 31264), Pascaline Dupas, Camille Falezan, Seema Jayachandran, and Mark P. Walsh report on the effects of a cheap, scalable intervention designed to change mothers’ beliefs about conversing with their...
From the NBER Reporter: Research, program, and conference summaries
Longevity and the Well-Being of Populations
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Life expectancy has increased tremendously in the United States, from an average of roughly 47 years in 1900 to 77 years in 2020. However, increases in longevity have not been equally distributed among all subgroups of the population. Longevity is an important component of well-being, possibly as important as income; people are willing to pay very large sums to protect and increase it. Understanding the evolution and distribution of lifespan is critical to understanding changes in population well-being. In this article...
From the NBER Bulletin on Retirement and Disability
Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Retirement Outcomes: Impacts of Outreach
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Workers need to prepare for their future as retirees. This is a complex task that is influenced by workers’ retirement knowledge, financial literacy, preferences, expectations, and opportunities.
In Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Retirement Outcomes: Impacts of Outreach (NBER Working Paper 30456), researchers Angelino Viceisza, Amaia Calhoun, and Gabriella Lee review literature on disparities in retirement outcomes and the potential for outreach and service delivery by the Social Security Administration and other entities to help address such disparities.
Average retirement wealth in households near retirement age is…
From the NBER Bulletin on Entrepreneurship
Gender and Race Gaps on the Path to Startup Success
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Depending on the data source, 12 and 28 percent of high-growth startups are run by women, although women make up 45 percent of the overall labor force. Fewer than 10 percent of entrepreneurs are Black. In Race and Gender in Entrepreneurial Finance (NBER Working Paper 30444), Michael Ewens surveys available data and presents a framework for assessing gender and race gaps in startup founding, financing, and growth.
The startup path is complex: individual entrepreneurs must secure financing, grow, and successfully exit. In addition to the initial decision to launch a startup, decisions on firm type, scale, industry, location, and long-term…
Featured Working Papers
Since the early 2000s, the college wage premium and the race wage gap have been stable, and the gender wage gap has declined, according to new research by Jonathan Heathcote, Fabrizio Perri, Giovanni L. Violante, and Lichen Zhang. Inequality in disposable income and consumption declined for the first time in 50 years during the COVID-19 recession, largely due to government transfers.
Georgy Egorov and Konstantin Sonin find that an electoral system like the electoral college system can provide more effective protection against fraud than a popular vote system because it locates incentives for fraud in swing states where local government is politically divided and fraud therefore more difficult.
Public R&D conducted by NASA contractors in the Cold War-era space race increased manufacturing value-added, employment, and capital accumulation in space-related sectors by about the same amount as other non-R&D types of government expenditures in other sectors, Shawn Kantor and Alexander T. Whalley find.
Government healthcare policies that affect payments to physicians influence the type and quantity of medical care that doctors supply in the short run, retirement timing in the medium run, and the choice of specialty in the long run, Joshua D. Gottlieb, Maria Polyakova, Kevin Rinz, Hugh Shiplett, and Victoria Udalova find.
Access to news from Washington facilitated by the growth of the electric telegraph network in 1840-1852 led newspapers to expand coverage of Congress, the presidency, and sectional divisions involving slavery, and had a robust positive effect on voter turnout in national elections, Tianyi Wang finds.
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Through a partnership with the University of Chicago Press, the NBER publishes the proceedings of four annual conferences as well as other research studies associated with NBER-based research projects.
