CAREER: Long-Run Determinants of Income and Wealth Across the US Population

This CAREER award funds projects that examine issues in labor economics and public economics. Each project starts with creating useable data through digitization of government administrative records. The datasets will be used to test hypotheses about the causes of currently observed differences across the U.S. population in income and wealth.

The first project will digitize annual county-level records for six US states, including urban and rural areas in those states. The data analysis will assess the impact of franchise restrictions on economic mobility. The second project digitizes state-level unemployment insurance records over a sixty-year time period. The data analysis in this project will test hypotheses about the role of demographic change on state-level social insurance and the impact of changes in eligibility and generosity on distributional outcomes. The last project will digitize data from criminal court records and data on municipal ordinances. The data analysis will focus on the interaction between criminal court records and labor market outcomes.

This award reflects NSF’s statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation’s intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.