The Declining Labor Market Prospects of Less-Educated Men / Ariel J. Binder, John Bound.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Binder, Ariel.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Bound, John.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w25577.

NBER working paper series no. w25577

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2019.

Summary:

Over the last half century, U.S. wage growth stagnated, wage inequality rose, and the labor-force participation rate of prime-age men steadily declined. In this article, we examine these labor market trends, focusing on outcomes for males without a college education. Though wages and participation have fallen in tandem for this population, we argue that the canonical neo-classical framework, which postulates a labor demand curve shifting inward across a stable labor supply curve, does not reasonably explain the data. Alternatives we discuss include adjustment frictions associated with labor demand shocks and effects of the changing marriage market--that is, the fact that fewer less-educated men are forming their own stable families--on male labor supply incentives.

Our observations lead us to be skeptical of attempts to attribute the secular decline in male labor-force participation to a series of separately-acting causal factors. We argue that the correct interpretation probably involves complicated feedback between falling labor demand and other factors which have disproportionately affected men without a college education.

Notes:

Print version record

February 2019.