Parental Job Loss and Children's Long-Term Outcomes: Evidence from 7 Million Fathers' Layoffs

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Hilger, Nathaniel G.
• 署名单位: Brown University; National Bureau of Economic Research
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-APPLIED ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7782
• DOI: 10.1257/app.20150295
• 发表日期: 2016
• 页码: 247-283
• 关键词: liquidity constraints; borrowing constraints; credit constraints; housing wealth; consumption; earnings; education; IMPACT; income

摘要

How do parental layoffs and their large attendant income losses affect children's long-term outcomes? This question has proven difficult to answer due to the endogeneity of parental layoffs. I overcome this problem by exploiting the timing of 7 million fathers' layoffs when children are age 12-29 in administrative data for the United States. Layoffs dramatically reduce family income but only slightly reduce college enrollment, college quality, and early career earnings. These effects are consistent with a weak estimated propensity to spend on college out of marginal parental income. I find that larger effects based on firm closures stem from selection.