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Explaining the Decline in the U.S. Employment-to-Population Ratio: A Review of the Evidence, 1999 and 2016

Reporter: Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN

 

Young, educated men are suffering from an employment gap

A paper just released by the National Bureau of Economic Research looks at how millions of missing American jobs is affecting people.

Young man, look at your life: Declines in workforce participation were similar among men and women aged 34 to 54. For younger workers, the story was very different: there was a 5.6 percent drop for men aged 25 to 34—more than twice as large as the drop for women.

What’s a degree worth?: Workers with a lower level of education left the workforce in the period studied, from 1999 to 2016. But the gender gap is far more pronounced among people with college degrees: Men with a college education were twice as likely as women to stop working.

Why?: There are several possible reasons, according to a report from Brookings: a mismatch between credentials and open jobs, more stay at home dads, and the tendency for young men to live at home could all be to blame.

SOURCE

From: Clocking In from MIT Tech Review <newsletters@technologyreview.com>

Reply-To: Clocking In from MIT Tech Review <newsletters@technologyreview.com>

Date: Monday, February 26, 2018 at 2:10 PM

To: Aviva Lev-Ari <AvivaLev-Ari@alum.berkeley.edu>

Subject: 🕐 The gender gap that’s hurting men 

Explaining the Decline in the U.S. Employment-to-Population Ratio: A Review of the Evidence

Katharine G. Abraham and Melissa S. Kearney

NBER Working Paper No. 24333 February 2018 JEL No. J01,J21

ABSTRACT

This paper first documents trends in employment rates and then reviews what is known about the various factors that have been proposed to explain the decline in the overall employment-to population ratio between 1999 and 2016. Population aging has had a notable effect on the overall employment rate over this period, but within-age-group declines in employment among young and prime age adults have been at least as important. Our review of the evidence leads us to conclude that labor demand factors, in particular trade and the penetration of robots into the labor market, are the most important drivers of observed within-group declines in employment. Labor supply factors, most notably increased participation in disability insurance programs, have played a less important but not inconsequential role. Increases in the real value of the minimum wage and in the share of individuals with prison records also have contributed modestly to the decline in the aggregate employment rate. In addition to these factors, whose effects we roughly quantify, we also identify a set of potentially important factors about which the evidence is too preliminary to draw any clear conclusion. These include improvements in leisure technology, changing social norms, increased drug use, growth in occupational licensing, and the costs and challenges associated with child care. Our evidence-driven ranking of factors should be useful for guiding future discussions about the sources of decline in the aggregate employment-to-population ratio and consequently the likely efficacy of alternative policy approaches to increasing employment rates.

Katharine G. Abraham Department of Economics and Joint Program in Survey Methodology University of Maryland 1218 LeFrak Hall College Park, MD 20742 and NBER kabraham@umd.edu

Melissa S. Kearney Department of Economics University of Maryland 3105 Tydings Hall College Park, MD 20742 and NBER kearney@econ.umd.edu

SOURCE

Click to access w24333.pdf

 

Other related article published in this Open Online Scientific Journal include the following:

Decline in Sperm Count – Epigenetics, Well-being and the Significance for Population Evolution and Demography

 

Dr. Marc Feldman, Expert Opinion on the significance of Sperm Count Decline on the Future of Population Evolution and Demography

Dr. Sudipta Saha, Effects of Sperm Quality and Quantity on Human Reproduction

Dr. Aviva Lev-Ari, Psycho-Social Effects of Poverty, Unemployment and Epigenetics on Male Well-being, Physiological Conditions affecting Sperm Quality and Quantity

https://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/2017/08/24/decline-in-sperm-count-epigenetics-well-being-and-the-significance-for-population-evolution-and-demography/