Jeffrey A. Groen

Trade in university training: Cross-state variation in the production and stock of college-educated labor

The question of this analysis is how the production of college graduates at the state level affects the stock of college-educated workers in the state. The potential mobility of skilled workers implies that the number of college students graduating in an area need not affect the number of college graduates living in the area. However, the production of relatively large numbers of college graduates in a state may lead to increases in the employment of university-trained manpower if industries expand production of goods and services that use college-educated workers intensively. We find at best only a modest link between the production and stock of baccalaureate degree recipients.

Going Home after Hurricane Katrina: Determinants of Return Migration and Changes in Affected Areas

This article examines the decision of Hurricane Katrina evacuees to return to their pre-Katrina areas and documents how the composition of the Katrina-affected region changed over time. Using data from the Current Population Survey, we show that an evacuee’s age, family income, and the severity of damage in an evacuee’s county of origin are important determinants of whether an evacuee returned during the first year after the storm. Blacks were less likely to return than whites, but this difference is primarily related to the geographical pattern of storm damage rather than to race per se. The difference between the composition of evacuees who returned and the composition of evacuees who did not return is the primary force behind changes in the composition of the affected areas in the first two years after the storm. Katrina is associated with substantial shifts in the racial composition of the affected areas (namely, a decrease in the percentage of residents who are black) and an increasing presence of Hispanics. Katrina is also associated with an increase in the percentage of older residents, a decrease in the percentage of residents with low income/education, and an increase in the percentage of residents with high income/education.

The Effect of Hurricane Katrina on the Labor Market Outcomes of Evacuees

We use data from the Current Population Survey collected both before and after Hurricane Katrina to estimate the impact of Katrina on the labor market outcomes of evacuees. Our estimates are based on a difference-in-differences strategy that compares evacuees to all residents of Katrina-affected areas prior to Katrina, with a control group consisting of individuals who originally resided outside the areas affected by the storm. We estimate that Katrina had substantial effects on the labor market outcomes of evacuees over the 13-month period immediately following Katrina. However, our estimates suggest that the effects of Katrina diminished substantially over time as evacuees recovered from the hurricane and adjusted to new economic and social conditions. Evacuees who did not return to their pre-Katrina areas have fared much worse in the labor market than have those who returned. Differences in individual and family characteristics account for some of the differences in outcomes between returnees and non-returnees. We present evidence that non-returnees have fared much worse in the labor market primarily because they came from areas that experienced greater housing damage due to the storm and thus were more likely to have had their lives severely disrupted.

Inside the Black Box of Doctoral Education: What Program Characteristics Influence Doctoral Students' Attrition and Graduation Probabilities?

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s Graduate Education Initiative (GEI) provided funding to 54 departments in the humanities and related social sciences during the 1990s to improve their PhD programs. This article estimates the aspects of PhD programs the GEI influenced and how these aspects influenced attrition and graduation probabilities. It uses survey data on entrants to PhD programs at 44 of the “treatment” departments and 41 “control” departments during a 15-year period that spanned the start of the GEI. Factor analysis is used to group more than 100 program characteristics into a smaller number of factors, and the impact of the GEI on each and the impact of each on attrition and graduation probabilities are estimated. The article estimates the routes via which the GEI influenced attrition and graduation rates and indicates which aspects of PhD programs departments should concentrate on to improve their programs’ performance.

Occupation-specific human capital and local labour markets

Most skills acquired through on-the-job training may be specific to an occupation and therefore transferable to some but not all firms. This paper explores the relationship between the size of the local market for an occupation-specific skill and job-training outcomes. The Stevens (1994) model of training predicts that as market size increases, job turnover increases and training becomes more general. I test these predictions using data on blue-collar workers and variation in market size across U.S. metropolitan areas. The empirical results support the theoretical predictions and the impacts are most relevant at low levels of market size.

Building Knowledge Stocks Locally

There is increasing evidence that the stock of college-educated labor in an area has fundamental effects on state and local economies through its association with wages, economic growth, personal incomes, and tax revenues. As a result, policy makers in many states attempt to increase the percentage of the state’s population (or workforce) that has a college degree through the use of various higher education policies that have the potential to influence the supply side of the labor market. This article reviews evidence on the effectiveness of these policies in achieving that goal. The author discusses several types of policies related to the finance and production of undergraduate education within a state, including expansions in degree production, merit-based scholarships, location-contingent financial aid, adjustments to the composition of enrollment by residency or by field of study, and internships with state-based employers.

Storms and Jobs: The Effect of Hurricanes on Individuals’ Employment and Earnings over the Long Term*

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the U.S. Gulf Coast in 2005, destroying homes and businesses and causing mass evacuations. The economic effects of disasters are often studied at a regional level, but little is known about the responsiveness of individuals’ employment and earnings to the damages, disruption, and rebuilding—particularly in the longer run. Our analysis is based on data that tracks workers over nine years, including seven years after the storms. We estimate models that compare the evolution of earnings for workers who resided in a storm-affected area with those who resided in a suitable control counties. We find that, on average, the storms reduced the earnings of affected individuals during the first year after the storm. These losses reflect various aspects of the short-run disruption caused by the hurricanes, including job separations, migration to other areas, and business contractions. Starting in the third year after the storms, however, we find that the earnings of affected individuals outpaced the earnings of individuals in the control sample. We provide evidence that the long-term earnings gains were the result of wage growth in the affected areas relative to the control areas, due to reduced labor supply and increased labor demand, especially in sectors related to rebuilding. Despite the short-term earnings losses, we find a net increase in average quarterly earnings among affected individuals over the entire post-storm period. However, those who worked in sectors closely tied to tourism or the size of the local population experienced net earnings losses.

Do Merit-Aid Programs Help States Build Skilled Workforces?.

33 Jeffrey A. Groen (groen.jeffrey@bls.gov) is a research economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This article is based on an extended analysis entitled “Building Knowledge Stocks Locally: Consequences of Geographic Mobility for the Effectiveness of State Higher Education Policies” in Economic Development Quarterly. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. By Jeffrey A. Groen Do Merit-Aid Programs

The Impact of Labor Demand on Time to the Doctorate

The goal of this paper is to estimate the impact of labor demand on time to the doctorate. Empirical investigation of this relationship in previous research was hampered by the difficulty of measuring labor demand. I construct a measure of labor demand in seven fields in the humanities and social sciences based on the annual number of job listings from 1975 to 2005. My empirical strategy relates variation over time in the number of job listings within a field to the timing of completion using student-level data on all doctorates awarded in these fields by U.S. universities. Estimates indicate that the number of job listings is not correlated with expected time to degree. This finding implies that cyclical variation in labor demand is not responsible for changes in time to degree within fields.