Avner Ahituv

The Responsiveness of the Demand for Condoms to the Local Prevalence of AIDS.

This paper investigates the degree to which the local prevalence of AIDS increases the demand for disease-preventing methods of contraception among young adults. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY-1979), we find substantial evidence that the use of condoms was quite responsive to the prevalence of AIDS in ones state of residence, and this responsiveness has been increasing over time. We present both cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence estimating that a 1 percent increase in the prevalence of AIDS increases the propensity to use a condom significantly and up to 50 percent for the most prevalence-responsive groups. Our findings lend support to the existence of a self-limiting incentive effect of epidemics-an effect that tends to be ignored in epidemiological theories of the spread of infectious diseases.

How do marital status, work effort, and wage rates interact?

How marital status interacts with men’s earnings is an important analytic and policy issue, especially in the context of debates in the United States over programs that encourage healthy marriage. This paper generates new findings about the earnings-marriage relationship by estimating the linkages among flows into and out of marriage, work effort, and wage rates. The estimates are based on National Longitudinal Survey of Youth panel data, covering 23 years of marital and labor market outcomes, and control for unobserved heterogeneity. We estimate marriage effects on hours worked (our proxy for work effort) and on wage rates for all men and for black and low-skilled men separately. The estimates reveal that entering marriage raises hours worked quickly and substantially but that marriage’s effect on wage rates takes place more slowly while men continue in marriage. Together, the stimulus to hours worked and wage rates generates an 18%–19% increase in earnings, with about one-third to one-half of the marriage earnings premium attributable to higher work effort. At the same time, higher wage rates and hours worked encourage men to marry and to stay married. Thus, being married and having high earnings reinforce each other over time.

Employment, Motherhood, and School Continuation Decisions of Young White, Black, and Hispanic Women

We examine the empirical relationship between early employment activity and school continuation decisions for young American women using a dynamic, sequential discrete‐choice framework that estimates schooling, labor supply, and birth decisions jointly, controlling for unobserved heterogeneity and the endogeneity of these life cycle decisions. That the rate of school withdrawal increases as work intensity rises helps explain the higher departure rates of Hispanic girls from secondary school and the premature departure of young black women from college. The disturbing implication is that youth employment induces long‐run wage stagnation for early school leavers and potentially increases race and ethnic inequities.