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Institute for Research on Poverty @irpwisc.bsky.social · 1d

📣 IRP is seeking a Research Analyst with an applicant deadline of October 20, 2025. View the full position posting and instructions to apply here: wisconsin.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/UW_Madison/j...

IRP Research Analyst - BFY

Current Employees: If you are currently employed at any of the Universities of Wisconsin, log in to Workday to apply through the internal application process. Job Category: Academic Staff Employment…

wisconsin.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com

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Middlebury College Economics @middecon.bsky.social · 5d

@middecon.bsky.social's department chair, @andrearobbett.bsky.social, has also been busy this fall. Here is her newest, on partisan discrimination in hiring, co-authored with former colleague Martin Abel and @dfstone.bsky.social of Bowdoin.

bsky.app/profile/j-hu...

The JHR @j-humanresources.bsky.social · 7d

Does #Politics matter more than race in #Hiring?
Martin Abel, @andrearobbett.bsky.social and @dfstone.bsky.social found that employers penalize workers from opposing parties by 7.5% – nearly as much as the college degree premium.
doi.org/10.3368/jhr....

Partisan Discrimination in Hiring
Martin Abel, Andrea Robbett and Daniel F. Stone
This study experimentally investigates the role of politics in hiring decisions. Participants acted as employers, determining the highest wage to offer candidates based only on their demographic characteristics, education, and partisanship. We find that both Democratic and Republican participants significantly favor co-partisans, with an out-partisan wage penalty of 7.5%. Discrimination is consistent across tasks that focus respectively on competence, shirking, feedback responsiveness, and voluntary effort, and appears largely driven by biased beliefs about partisan productivity, while affective polarization is also predictive of the out-partisan wage penalty. Discrimination does not increase in a treatment where workers benefit financially from being hired.

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The JHR @j-humanresources.bsky.social · 2d

Cash grants beat job training? A 3.5 year study in Rwanda by Craig McIntosh & @andrewzeitlin.io found both helped youth start businesses, but COVID wiped out half the gains. Neither escaped poverty. Liquidity matters – but so do bigger structural barriers.
doi.org/10.3368/jhr....

Skills and Liquidity Barriers to Youth Employment: Medium-term Evidence from a Cash Benchmarking Experiment in Rwanda
Craig McIntosh and Andrew Zeitlin
We present results of an experiment benchmarking a workforce training program against cash transfers for underemployed young adults in Rwanda. 3.5 years after treatment, the training program enhances productive time use and asset investment, while the cash transfers drive productive assets, livestock values, savings, and subjective well-being. Both interventions have powerful effects on entrepreneurship. But while labor, sales, and profits all go up, the implied wage rate in these businesses is low. Our results suggest that credit is a major barrier to self-employment, but deeper reforms may be required to enable entrepreneurship to provide a transformative pathway out of poverty.

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The JHR @j-humanresources.bsky.social · 5d

Does #Tourism actually create jobs?
@libertadgonzalez.bsky.social and Tetyana Surovtseva find that a boost in tourism creates #jobs in hotels and restaurants but eliminates them in manufacturing.
doi.org/10.3368/jhr....

Do More Tourists Promote Local Employment?
Libertad González and Tetyana Surovtseva
We analyze the impact of tourist flows on local labor markets, following a novel identification strategy that uses temporary shocks in alternative international destinations to instrument for tourism flows across Spanish regions. We find that a one standard deviation increase in tourist inflows leads to a 1 percentage-point increase in employment in the tourism industry and in other services, but it does not increase total employment, labor force participation, or wages in local economies. Instead, the positive impact on services is compensated by a fall in employment in other industries, most notably manufacturing.

The JHR @j-humanresources.bsky.social · 7d

Does #Politics matter more than race in #Hiring?
Martin Abel, @andrearobbett.bsky.social and @dfstone.bsky.social found that employers penalize workers from opposing parties by 7.5% – nearly as much as the college degree premium.
doi.org/10.3368/jhr....

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The JHR @j-humanresources.bsky.social · 8d

Our assumptions about bad influences need updating. Sarah Font and Christopher Mills found that that 20% of young prison inmates spent time in #FosterCare, but this does NOT increase #CrimeRates.
doi.org/10.3368/jhr....

Safe from Harm? Peers and Criminal Capital Formation in Congregate Foster Care
Sarah Font and Christopher Mills
More than 20 percent of young adult prison inmates in the United States have spent ;me in foster care, among whom a majority have lived in a congregate care (group-based) seCng. In these seCngs, youth are exposed to non-related peers, who may influence long-term social and behavioral outcomes. Using three decades of administra;ve data from Wisconsin and exogenous varia;on in the rela;ve imprisonment risk of foster care peers, we study how peer composi;on affects youths’ future criminal jus;ce system contact, educa;onal aLainment, and short-term risky behavior. We consider peer composi;on along three dimensions: (i) the share of peers placed in foster care for delinquency-related reasons, (ii) machine learning predic;ons of the future probability of imprisonment, calculated using pre-placement child and family characteris;cs, and (iii) the share of peers with formerly imprisoned parents. We find that peer characteris;cs have no effect on a youth’s likelihood of entering prison by age 20, nor on a number of other indicators of deviant behavior. These results hold across group homes, residen;al facili;es, and temporary placement seCngs, and are rela;vely robust to placement length and youth demographics. A one standard devia;on increase in predicted peer imprisonment risk is associated with a modest, marginally significant one percentage point (three percent) increase in a youth’s likelihood of dropping out of high school. Our findings have implica;ons for the recent movement to reallocate children away from congregate care.

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Climent Quintana-Domeque @climent.bsky.social · 12d

Short video of our 2023 @j-humanresources.bsky.social article: in-utero exposure to #HurricaneCatarina harmed infant health, especially for babies of young mothers, underscoring the need for support to vulnerable pregnant women.

📽️ www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3eR...

🔗 jhr.uwpress.org/content/58/3...

Natural disasters and early human development: Hurricane Catarina and infant health in Brazil

YouTube video by Climent Quintana-Domeque

www.youtube.com

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The JHR @j-humanresources.bsky.social · 9d

Does #NeighborhoodDiversity matter for #Assimilation? Pascal Achard finds living in native-heavy areas increases #CulturalIntegration by just 1.6% – much smaller than the 51 point gap between groups.
doi.org/10.3368/jhr....

Exposure to Natives and Cultural Assimilation
Pascal Achard
This paper studies whether a lower presence of natives during immigrants’ childhood and adolescence impedes their cultural assimilation. I examine a culturally charged consumption - the usage of hormonal contraceptives by young immigrant women - and leverage the quasi-random allocation of asylum seekers in the Netherlands to identify causal effects. While exposure to native peers has a positive effect on educational attainment, I find at most a modest effect on cultural outcomes in this context. Results from alternative identification strategies confirm that exposure may not have a large effect on cultural assimilation.

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Matthew Collins @collinsmatthew.bsky.social · 13d

So happy to finally see my Job Market Paper published at the @j-humanresources.bsky.social ! 🙌

The JHR @j-humanresources.bsky.social · 14d

Culture shapes #FamilyInvestment choices.
@collinsmatthew.bsky.social found that having a brother reduces #Education for first-born boys by 0.05 SD in cultures where sons don’t inherit from their fathers. When sons can’t inherit, parents compensate with more education.
doi.org/10.3368/jhr....

Sibling Gender, Inheritance Customs and Educational Attainment
Matthew Collins
This study identifies the causal effect of second-born gender on the education of first-born children and how it varies across traditional inheritance customs in 27 sub-Saharan African countries. When customs dictate that sons do not inherit from fathers, having a brother causes a 0.05 SD reduction in education. For boys who inherit, having a brother reduces inheritance, for which parents substitute greater educational investments. For first-born girls whose brother can inherit, having a brother causes a 0.028 SD reduction in education. Exploiting national legal reforms, I show that sibling gender effects converge when all children can inherit from their parents.

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The JHR @j-humanresources.bsky.social · 14d

Culture shapes #FamilyInvestment choices.
@collinsmatthew.bsky.social found that having a brother reduces #Education for first-born boys by 0.05 SD in cultures where sons don’t inherit from their fathers. When sons can’t inherit, parents compensate with more education.
doi.org/10.3368/jhr....

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The JHR @j-humanresources.bsky.social · 16d

Growing up with #FoodInsecurity makes you more likely to face it as an adult. Robert Paul Hartley, Jaehyun Nam & Christopher Wimer found it increases the probability of adulthood food insecurity by 10%. This persistence is linked to lower #CollegeAttendance and SNAP take-up.
doi.org/10.3368/jhr....

The Persistence of Food Security Status Across Generations
Robert Paul Hartley, Jaehyun Nam and Christopher Wimer
The persistence of disadvantage across generations is a central concern for social policy in the United States. While an extensive literature has focused on income mobility, much less is known about the persistence of material hardship. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we estimate the intergenerational persistence of food insecurity. Childhood food insecurity is associated with at least 10 percentage points higher probability of food insecurity as an adult, with estimates varying by severity of childhood exposure, life-course timing, and accounting for endogeneity and underreporting. We explore potential mechanisms behind this persistence related to perceptions, behaviors, and human capital.

The JHR @j-humanresources.bsky.social · 20d

What happens when schools fail? It might be good. Ozkan Eren, David Figlio, Naci Mocan & @orgulozturk.bsky.social
found schools that failed their #AccountabilityRating saw a lasting reduction in students' adult #CriminalActivity - they were 12% less likely to be arrested.
doi.org/10.3368/jhr....

School Accountability, Long-Run Criminal Activity, and Self-Sufficiency*
Ozkan Eren, David Figlio, Naci Mocan and Orgul Ozturk
This paper examines the impact of school accountability on adult crime and economic self-sufficiency. We employ a unique source of linked administrative data from a Southern state and exploit exogenous variation generated by the state‘s accountability regime. Our findings indicate that a school‘s receipt of a lower accountability rating, at the bottom end of the ratings distribution, decreases their students‘ criminal involvement and the likelihood of being incarcerated in adulthood. However, we do not find any meaningful relationship between a lower accountability rating and enrollment in social welfare programs. Further examination of the mechanisms reveals that accountability pressures prompted schools to implement policies that led to changes in school climate.

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The JHR @j-humanresources.bsky.social · 21d

Younger siblings with an older sister? You’re in luck! A new study on rural Kenyan households by Pamela Jakiela, @owenozier.bsky.social, Lia Fernald & Heather Knauer found that having an older sister (vs. older brother) improves children's vocabulary and #MotorSkills.
doi.org/10.3368/jhr....

Big Sisters
Pamela Jakiela, Owen Ozier, Lia C. H. Fernald and Heather A. Knauer
We model household investments in young children when parents and older siblings share caregiving responsibilities and investments by older siblings contribute to young children’s human capital accumulation. To test the predictions of our model, we estimate the impact of having an older sister (as opposed to an older brother) on early childhood development in a sample of rural Kenyan households with otherwise similar family structures. Having an older sister rather than an older brother improves younger siblings’ vocabulary and fine motor skills by more than 0.1 standard deviations.

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The JHR @j-humanresources.bsky.social · 22d

Algorithms might speed up #ChildWelfare decisions. Maria Fitzpatrick, Katharine Sadowski and Christopher Wildeman conducted a randomized control trial in Colorado and found algorithmic tools saved caseworkers about 30 seconds per case – helpful in an overburdened system.
t.co/PxEyZ8G1dL

Algorithms and Decision-making
Evidence from Child Maltreatment Reports
Maria D. Fitzpatrick, Katharine Sadowski and Christopher Wildeman
Around 40% of children experience maltreatment (Finkelhor et al. 2013), with harmful outcomes and high social costs. Child protection decisions are complex, and potentially biased and/or prone to errors due to underfunding and overload. Our randomized controlled trial showed algorithmic tools sped up decision-making but didn't significantly change child outcomes, perhaps because COVID disruptions limited outcome analysis. Results are suggestive that risk aversions played a role: high-risk cases flagged by the tool were more likely screened in, while low-risk cases weren’t more likely screened out. Time savings from the tool could enable caseworkers to spend more time directly with families.

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Umut Özek @uozek.bsky.social · Sep 5

Nice summary of this paper by @futureedgu.bsky.social

www.future-ed.org/research-not...

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The JHR @j-humanresources.bsky.social · Aug 29

🆕Authors, when you submit to the JHR, you'll be asked to disclose use of AI. Also AI is not to be named as an author or used during review.
Submit: jhr.msubmit.net
Editorial Policies: journals.uwpress.wisc.edu/JHR/admin/JH...

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Notre Dame Economics @ndecon.bsky.social · Aug 26

Moving from left to right, first up is "The Great Recession’s Baby-less Recovery: The Role of Unintended Births" from our colleague Kasey Buckles, with Guldi and Schmidt, in the Journal of Human Resources @j-humanresources.bsky.social jhr.uwpress.org/content/earl...

The Great Recession’s Baby-less Recovery: The Role of Unintended Births

U.S. fertility declined as expected during the Great Recession, but then continued to fall throughout the recovery period. This drop was more acute among young women and unmarried women, whose births ...

jhr.uwpress.org

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