Changes in the Characteristics of American Youth: Implications for Adult Outcomes / Joseph G. Altonji, Prashant Bharadwaj, Fabian Lange.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Altonji, Joseph G.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Bharadwaj, Prashant.

Lange, Fabian.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w13883.

NBER working paper series no. w13883

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Changes in the Characteristics of American Youth

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2008.

Summary:

We examine changes in the characteristics of American youth between the late 1970s and the late 1990s, with a focus on characteristics that matter for labor market success. We reweight the NLSY79 to look like the NLSY97 along a number of dimensions that are related to labor market success, including race, gender, parental background, education, test scores, and variables that capture whether individuals transition smoothly from school to work. We then use the re-weighted sample to examine how changes in the distribution of observable skills affect employment and wages. We also use more standard regression methods to assess the labor market consequences of differences between the two cohorts. Overall, we find that the current generation is more skilled than the previous one. Blacks and Hispanics have gained relative to whites and women have gained relative to men. However, skill differences within groups have increased considerably and in aggregate the skill distribution has widened. Changes in parental education seem to generate many of the observed changes

Notes:

Print version record

March 2008.