Sanders Korenman

Does Marriage Really Make Men More Productive

This paper presents new descriptive evidence regarding marital pay premiums earned by white males. Longitudinal data indicate that wages rise after marriage, and that cross-sectional marriage premiums appear to result from a steepening of the earnings profile. Data from a company personnel file that includes information on job grades and supervisor performance ratings reveal large marital status pay differences within a narrow range of occupations (managers and professionals) and environments (a single firm). Married workers tend to be located in higher paying job grades; there are very small pay differentials within grades. Married men receive higher performance ratings than single men; as a result, they are much more likely to be promoted. Controlling for rated performance, however, eliminates the promotion differential.

Marital status and health among the elderly

Many studies have documented a longevity advantage for married persons relative to their unmarried counterparts in all age groups. However, these studies have failed to determine whether the advantage experienced by married elderly persons arises mostly from selection and causal processes which operated at younger ages. This paper employs data from the Longitudinal Study of Aging (1984-1990) to explore whether marital status continues to exert any influence on health and mortality at the older ages. In the presence of an extensive set of controls for health status at the baseline survey, a series of logistic models are used to determine: (1) the magnitude of marital status effects on disability and on mortality, among older males and older females; and (2) the extent to which the social environment and economic status of the elderly can account for the existing disability and mortality differences by marital status.

Long-term poverty and child development in the United States: Results from the NLSY.

Abstract We describe developmental deficits in early childhood associated with longterm poverty in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). We compare estimates of the effects of long-term poverty (based on a 13-year average of income) to estimates of the effects of poverty based on a single year of income (at the time of developmental assessment). There are substantial developmental deficits among children who, on average, are poor over a number of years relative to those who are not. These deficits are approximately twice as large according to the long-term income measure as compared to those based on the single-year measure, and are not explained by differences in maternal education, family structure, maternal behaviors during pregnancy, infant health, nutritional status, or age of mother at first birth. However, an index of the home environment accounts for one third to one half of the developmental disadvantages (net of other factors) of children who experience long-term poverty.

The effect of pregnancy intention on child development

In this paper, we use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to investigate the empirical link between unintended pregnancy and child health and development. An important contribution of our study is the use of information on siblings to control for unmeasured factors that may confound estimates of the effect of pregnancy intentions on infant and child outcomes. Results from our study indicate that unwanted pregnancy is associated with prenatal and postpartum maternal behaviors that adversely affect infant and child health, but that unwanted pregnancy has little association with birth weight and child cognitive outcomes. Estimates of the association between unwanted pregnancy and maternal behaviors were greatly reduced after controls for unmeasured family background were included in the model. Our results also indicate that there are no significant differences in maternal behaviors or child outcomes between mistimed and wanted pregnancies.

Does Young Maternal Age Adversely Affect Child Development? Evidence from Cousin Comparisons in the United States

The following issues are addressed: the need to distinguish conceptually between current maternal characteristics and family background the difficulties in using matched comparison groups to control for family background and the inability of controls for socioeconomic status to capture family background characteristics that my confound the relationship between maternal age and child development. Specifically the objective is to examine the degree to which family background characteristics preceding 1st pregnancy account for development differences between children of teen and nonteen mothers. The sample of women aged 14-21 in 1979 who are sisters with their 1st births at different ages and have 1 1st cousin was drawn from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) 1979-88. The main sample was 1223 children in the 1986 and/or 1988 NLSY and the 1st cousin sample consisted of 637 mothers. Least square regressions were used to estimate cross-sectional effects on developmental scores of children of teen mothers. All children in the 1st cousins sample are categorized by whether 1) all sisters had their 1st births as teenagers 2) at least 1 sister had a 1st birth after age 19 but the mother was a teen 3) the reverse of 2 and 4) all sisters had 1st births after age 19. The within family effect compares groups 2 and 3. Analyses are conducted on the full sample of 1st cousins a subsample of firstborn children a subsample of non-Hispanic black women and a subsample of non-Hispanic white women. Conclusions may be drawn only about the effects for women from more disadvantaged families in which women have teen 1st births. The results were that young maternal age is associated with impaired child development. But in the 1st cousins comparisons the findings were that there was not an adverse effect of maternal age on measures of child development. The results are confounded by family background. The lower performance of children of teen mothers may reflect their mothers prechildbearing characteristics rather than their youth. The comparisons among cousins suggests that socioeconomic costs to women from disadvantaged backgrounds of early childbearing may be much lower than suggested in other findings. Further systematic study is needed to explain the cousins results particularly of differences in parenting skills or parenting as a shared activity.

Black-white differences in social and economic consequences of obesity

OBJECTIVE:To investigate social and economic effects of obesity for black and white females, and to explore possible explanations for race differences in obesity effects.SUBJECTS:1354 non-Hispanic black and 3097 non-Hispanic, non-black, women aged 25–33 y in 1990 from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979–1990.MEASUREMENTS:Body mass index (BMI) evaluated at age 17–24 y (1982) and 25–33 y (1990).METHODS:Logistic and linear regression of six labour market and marriage outcomes on early or attained BMI. Detailed controls for family socioeconomic background.RESULTS: Socioeconomic effects of obesity appear larger for whites than blacks. Obesity is associated with low self-esteem among whites, but not blacks. Differences in self-esteem do not account for race differences in the effects of obesity on socioeconomic status. Lower probability of marriage and lower earnings of husbands among those who marry account for the majority of the income differences between obese white women and those of recommended weight. Occupational differences account for more than one fifth of the effect of obesity on the hourly wages of both white and black women.CONCLUSION:Cultural differences may protect black women from the self-esteem loss associated with obesity for whites. However, differences in self-esteem do not account for the effects of obesity on socioeconomic status. Because the effect of obesity on the economic status of white women works primarily through marriage, it may therefore be less amenable to policy intervention to improve the labor market prospects of obese women.

On the Validity of Retrospective Assessments of Pregnancy Intention

Information on pregnancy intention is often gathered retrospectively (after the birth of a child). This article investigates whether the retrospective assessment of pregnancy intention leads to biased estimates of the extent or consequences of unintended fertility. Comparisons are made between pregnancy intentions ascertained during pregnancy and after birth using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. To address the bias caused by selective recognition or acknowledgment of pregnancy, we used the longitudinal feature of the data to determine actual pregnancy status at the time of interviews, which, in turn, was used as an instrumental variable for the retrospective (versus prospective) reporting of pregnancy intention. After correction for selective pregnancy recognition, we found no evidence that the retrospective assessment of pregnancy intention produces misleading estimates of either the number or the consequences of unintended births. This finding is supported by additional analyses of a small subsample of women for whom information on pregnancy intention was collected both during pregnancy and after birth.

Does Staying in School Make You Smarter? The Effect of Education on IQ in The Bell Curve

Can education increase an individual’s IQ? This has been one of the most incendiary and controversial questions in the social sciences in the past few decades. The greatest firestorm occurred after the publication of Arthur Jensen’s 1969 article in The Harvard Education Review, “How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?”1 The controversy was further fueled by Richard Herrnstein’s 1971 Atlantic Monthly article, “IQ.”2 Then, after smoldering for two decades, the passion and acrimony reignited with publication in 1994 of The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray.3

Sources of Bias in Women's Wage Equations: Results Using Sibling Data

We use data on sisters to jointly address heterogeneity bias and endogeneity bias in estimates of wage equations for women. This analysis yields evidence of biases in OLS estimates of wage equations for white and black women, some of which are detected only when these two sources of bias are addressed simultaneously. For both white and black women there is evidence of upward bias in the estimated returns to schooling. Bias-corrected estimates of the effect of marriage on wages, for white women, suggest a positive marriage premium. We also use the sibling data to identify our models, and test a number of other commonly used identifying assumptions as overidentifying restrictions.

An assessment of the validity of the ECERS-R with implications for measures of child care quality and relations to child development.

The Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Revised (ECERS-R) is widely used to associate child care quality with child development, but its validity for this purpose is not well established. We examined the validity of the ECERS-R using the multidimensional Rasch partial credit model (PCM), factor analyses, and regression analyses with data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Birth Cohort. The PCM identified rating category disordering, indicating previously unrecognized problems with the scales response process validity. Factor analyses identified neither a single factor nor the ECERS-R six subscales, replicating prior research regarding the scales structural validity. Criterion validity results were mixed, with small effect sizes for regressions predicting child outcomes and moderate effect sizes for regressions predicting teacher-reported quality. Our results lend empirical support to recent critiques of the ECERS-R, and we discuss implications for its future use and for the development of future measures.