Sources of Increasing Differential Mortality Among the Aged by Socioeconomic Status

Sources of Increasing Differential Mortality Among the Aged by Socioeconomic Status
Source: Center for Retirement Research at Boston College

This paper uses data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to explore the extent and causes of widening differences in life expectancy by socioeconomic status (SES) for older persons. We construct alternative measures of SES using educational attainment and average (career) earnings in the prime working ages of 41-50. We also use information on causes of death, health status and various behavioral indicators (smoking, drinking, and obesity) that are believed to be predictors of premature death in an effort to explain the causes of the growing disparities in life expectancy between people of high and low SES.

The paper finds that:

• There is strong statistical evidence in the HRS of a growing inequality of mortality risk by SES among more recent birth cohorts compared with cohorts born before 1930.
• Both educational attainment and career earnings as constructed from Social Security records are equally useful indicators of SES, although the distinction in mortality risk by education is greatest for those with and without a college degree.
• There has been a significant decline in the risk of dying from cancer or heart conditions for older Americans in the top half of the income distribution, but we find no such reduction of mortality risk in the bottom half of the distribution.
• The inclusion of the behavioral variables and health status result in substantial improvement in the predictions of mortality, but they do not identify the sources of the increase in differential mortality.

The Income-Achievement Gap and Adult Outcome Inequality

The Income-Achievement Gap and Adult Outcome Inequality (PDF)
Source: Federal Reserve Board

This paper discusses various methods for assessing group differences in academic achievement using only the ordinal content of achievement test scores. Researchers and policymakers frequently draw conclusions about achievement differences between various populations using methods that rely on the cardinal comparability of test scores. This paper shows that such methods can lead to erroneous conclusions in an important application: measuring changes over time in the achievement gap between youth from high- and low-income households. Commonly-employed, cardinal methods suggest that this “income-achievement gap” did not change between the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth (NLSY) 1979 and 1997 surveys. In contrast, ordinal methods show that this gap narrowed substantially for reading achievement and may have narrowed for math achievement as well. In fact, any weighting scheme that places more value on higher test scores must conclude that the reading income-achievement gap decreased between these two surveys. The situation for math achievement is more complex, but low-income students in the middle and high deciles of the low-income math achievement distribution unambiguously gained relative to their high-income peers. Furthermore, an anchoring exercise suggests that the narrowing of the income-achievement gap corresponds to an economically significant convergence in lifetime labor wealth and school completion rates for youth from high- and low-income backgrounds.

See also: Achievement Gap Estimates and Deviations from Cardinal Comparability (PDF)

CA — Municipal workers get richer as cities cry poor

Municipal workers get richer as cities cry poor
Source: Canadian Federation of Independent Business

According to Municipal Wage Watch, a CFIB backgrounder comparing municipal public sector wages and benefits to the private sector, city workers in Canada continue to pressure public finances through excessive wages and benefits.

Government workers at Canadian municipalities enjoy an average 22% compensation top-up over their private sector counterparts: broken down into an hourly wage, this translates into about $6.43 more per hour for the same work.

At a time when municipalities need to re-think traditional ways of financing their operations and how this affects taxpayers, cities are encouraged to take a serious look at the impact of escalating wages and benefits on their overall budgets, instead of their annual plea for additional transfers and “revenue tools.” CFIB has delivered a letter to Canadian mayors urging them to find savings within existing budgets rather than calling for additional funding from other levels of government.

Rethinking Overtime

Rethinking Overtime
Source: Oxford Economics

Today, some 3.3 million salaried workers across the US retail and restaurant industries can be exempted from the right to receive overtime pay because they earn at least $455 per week—the so-called overtime threshold. The Department of Labor is currently preparing a proposal that would change the rules that govern overtime payment.

To better understand the effects of these changes, Oxford Economics conducted an analysis using three possible modifications of the overtime regulation—raising the wage threshold to $610, $808, and $965 per week. This report explores the effects on the retail and restaurant industries under these three scenarios.

Does it pay to win the Stanley Cup?

Does it pay to win the Stanley Cup? (PDF)
Source: University of Windsor

Yes, it does indeed pay to win the Stanley Cup (SC). Professional sports offer a unique opportunity to examine the relationship between a player’s salary and their performance. Salary statistics have become widely available and enable individual performance scrutiny in relation to remuneration level. There is an extensive literature explaining which factors influence the players’ salary in the National Hockey League (NHL), using data sets from different seasons and including various performance indicators. Although much is known about salary and performance in professional hockey, there is a lack of understanding and empirical evidence of the pecuniary value of winning the Stanley Cup (SC) – the trophy awarded annually to the NHL playoff champion and the ultimate prize in professional hockey. Our empirical analysis suggests that winning the Stanley cup the season prior to signing a new contract earns players a 19% wage premium on their next contract.
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Raising Lower-Level Wages: When and Why It Makes Economic Sense

Raising Lower-Level Wages: When and Why It Makes Economic Sense
Source: Peterson Institute of International Economics

As the United States emerges from the Great Recession, concern is rising nationally over the issues of income inequality, stagnation of workers’ wages, and especially the struggles of lower-skilled workers at the -bottom end of the wage scale. While Washington deliberates legislation raising the minimum wage, a number of major American employers—for example, Aetna and Walmart—have begun to voluntarily raise the pay of their own lowest-paid employees.

In this collection of essays, economists from the Peterson Institute for International Economics analyze the potential benefits and costs of widespread wage increases, if adopted by a range of US private employers. They make this assessment for the workers, the companies, and for the US economy as a whole, including such an initiative’s effects on national competitiveness. These economists conclude that raising the pay of many of the lowest-paid US private-sector workers would not only reduce income inequality but also boost overall productivity growth, with likely minimal effect on employment in the current financial context.

Gen Y and Housing: What They Want and Where They Want It

Gen Y and Housing: What They Want and Where They Want It
Source: Urban Land Institute

Contrary to popular belief, most Millennials are not living the high life in the downtowns of large cities, but rather are living in less centrally located but more affordable neighborhoods, making ends meet with jobs for which many feel overqualified, and living with parents or roommates to save money, according to a new report from ULI. Still, despite their current lifestyle constraints, most are optimistic about the odds for improving their housing and financial circumstances in the years ahead.

The Labor Market Returns to Math Courses in Community College (A CAPSEE Working Paper)

The Labor Market Returns to Math Courses in Community College
Source: Community College Research Center, Columbia University

This paper examines the returns to math courses relative to courses in other subjects for students in community college. Using matched college transcript and earnings data on over 80,000 students entering community college during the 2000s, this paper finds that college-level math coursework has an indirect positive effect on award completion that is stronger than that of coursework in other subjects. There is mixed evidence on the direct effect of enhanced math skills on earnings over other college-level skills.

Overall, the combined direct and indirect effect appears to be adverse: compared with other courses or college pathways, more math coursework in community college is modestly associated with relatively lower earnings in later adulthood. However, this association is sensitive to modeling, and the authors do find heterogeneous results by gender, race/ethnicity, and initial college ability, as well as by math field and level.

What Makes Lawyers Happy?: A Data-Driven Prescription to Redefine Professional Success

What Makes Lawyers Happy?: A Data-Driven Prescription to Redefine Professional Success
Source: George Washington Law Review

This is the first theory-guided empirical research seeking to identify the correlates and contributors to the well-being and life satisfaction of lawyers. Data from several thousand lawyers in four states provide insights about diverse factors from law school and one’s legal career and personal life. Striking patterns appear repeatedly in the data and raise serious questions about the common priorities on law school campuses and among lawyers. External factors, which are often given the most attention and concern among law students and lawyers (factors oriented towards money and status—such as earnings, partnership in a law firm, law school debt, class rank, law review membership, and U.S. News & World Report’s law school rankings), showed nil to small associations with lawyer well-being. Conversely, the kinds of internal and psychological factors shown in previous research to erode in law school appear in these data to be the most important contributors to lawyers’ happiness and satisfaction. These factors constitute the first two of five tiers of well-being factors identified in the data, followed by choices regarding family and personal life. The external money and status factors constitute the fourth tier, and demographic differences were least important.

State IT Workforce: Facing Reality with Innovation

State IT Workforce: Facing Reality with Innovation
Source: National Association of State Chief Information Officers

The predicted shortage in the state information technology (IT) workforce has been discussed and debated for over a decade and states have been confronted with numerous challenges when it comes to identifying gaps in a changing IT workforce. A major concern for state CIOs continues to be the significant number of state IT employees who are eligible for retirement or have been eligible, but have postponed retirement due to the economic downturn. In spite of this, there is evidence that the economy is recovering and some states are experiencing record numbers of retirement. This report outlines the current data on the state IT workforce and focuses on innovation, best practices and recommendations.

Final Report of the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission

Final Report of the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission (PDF)
Source: U.S. Department of Defense

We are honored to submit to the President and the Congress of the United States the enclosed recommendations to modernize the Uniformed Services’ (the Services) compensation and retirement system. We are confident these recommendations will ensure that the Services can maintain the most professional All-Volunteer Force possible, during both peacetime and wartime. Our confidence stems from our unwavering commitment to the interests of Service members and their families. In fact, our recommendations, which all members of this Commission unanimously support, are designed to protect both the overall value of the current benefits package and the quality of life of the 21st century Force—those who serve, those who have served, and the families that support them.

See also: Statement by Secretary of Defense Ash Carter on the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission Report (DoD)

Top-Paying College Majors Earn $3.4 Million More Than Lowest-Paying Majors Over A Lifetime, According To A New Georgetown University Report

Top-Paying College Majors Earn $3.4 Million More Than Lowest-Paying Majors Over A Lifetime, According To A New Georgetown University Report (PDF)
Source: Center on Education and the Workforce (Georgetown University)

When it comes to earnings, majors matter more than degrees. Over a career, the report finds, college graduates earn $1 million more than high school graduates on average. But averages are misleading: college graduates with the highest-paying majors earn $3.4 million more than the lowest-paying majors.

Using Census data, The Economic Value of College Majors analyzes wages for 137 college majors, including the wages of graduates who go on to earn advanced degrees. It also details the most popular majors, the majors most likely to lead to an advanced degree, and the economic benefit of earning an advanced degree by undergraduate major.
…
The report’s major findings are:
• Eighty percent of college students study a major linked to careers, while 20 percent major in humanities, liberal arts, social sciences, and arts.
• STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), health, and business majors are the highest paying, leading to average annual wages of $37,000 or more at the entry level and an average of $65,000 or more annually over the course of a recipient’s career.
• Of the 25 highest-paid majors, economics and business economics are the only two that are not in a STEM field.
• The 10 majors with the lowest median earnings are: early childhood education ($39,000); human services and community organization ($41,000); studio arts, social work, teacher education, and visual and performing arts ($42,000); theology and religious vocations, and elementary education ($43,000); drama and theater arts and family and community service ($45,000).
• Business and STEM majors — two of the highest paying — are also the most common, accounting for 46 percent of college graduates.

The report also finds that graduate degrees lead to higher earnings, especially for Bachelor’s degree holders who majored in health and medical preparatory programs, zoology, and biology.

The Causal Effects of Growing up in Different Counties on Earnings in Adulthood — Percentage Gains/Losses Relative to National Average

The Causal Effects of Growing up in Different Counties on Earnings in Adulthood — Percentage Gains/Losses Relative to National Average
Source: Harvard University (Equality of Opportunity Project)

How can we improve economic opportunities for low-income children? The Equality of Opportunity Project uses “big data” to develop new answers to this question. The previous phase of the project presented statistics on how upward mobility varies across areas of the U.S. and over time. In the current phase, we focus on families who moved across areas to study how neighborhoods affect upward mobility. We find that every year of exposure to a better environment improves a child’s chances of success, both in a national quasi-experimental study of five million families and in a re-analysis of the Moving to Opportunity Experiment. We use the new methodology and data to present estimates of the causal effect of each county in America on upward mobility.

Sacramento Tops Large Counties in Employment Growth Rate

Sacramento Tops Large Counties in Employment Growth Rate
Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Among the 50 largest counties with the most employees, Sacramento, Calif., had the highest rate of employment growth among all sectors between 2012 and 2013 (up 5.5 percent to 428,475), according to new U.S. Census Bureau statistics released today. Sacramento was followed by two Texas counties: Travis (up 4.9 percent to 514,749) and Harris (up 4.7 percent to 2.0 million). Annual payroll in Sacramento rose 9.9 percent to $20.9 billion for the same period.

Delaware led all states in rate of employment growth between 2012 and 2013 with employment levels climbing 5.1 percent to 382,128, followed by Washington (up 3.5 percent to 2.4 million) and California (a 3.5 percent increase to 13.4 million). Payroll in Delaware increased 6.7 percent to $19.5 billion.

Nationally, employment in the information sector (NAICS 51) of the nation’s economy rose 4.1 percent between 2012 and 2013 to 3.3 million, besting every other sector in rate of growth. The sector also saw its payroll rise 7.0 percent to $273.3 billion and its payroll per employee climb 2.8 percent to $83,677.

What Happened to the Class of 2010? Empirical Evidence of Structural Change in the Legal Profession

What Happened to the Class of 2010? Empirical Evidence of Structural Change in the Legal Profession
Source: Social Science Research Network

Poor employment outcomes have plagued law school graduates for several years. Legal scholars have debated whether these outcomes stem from macroeconomic cycles or from fundamental changes in the market for legal services. This Article examines that question empirically, using a database of employment outcomes for more than 1,200 lawyers who received their JDs in 2010. The analysis offers strong evidence of structural shifts in the legal market. Job outcomes have improved only marginally for the Class of 2010, those outcomes contrast sharply with results for earlier classes, and law firm jobs have dropped markedly. In addition to discussing these results, the Article examines correlations between job outcomes and gender, law school prestige, and geography. In a concluding section, it offers four predictions about the future of the legal market and the economics of legal education.

Beyond College Rankings: A Value-Added Approach to Assessing Two- and Four-Year Schools

Beyond College Rankings: A Value-Added Approach to Assessing Two- and Four-Year Schools
Source: Brookings Institution

The choice of college is among the most important investment decisions individuals and families make, yet people know little about how institutions of higher learning compare along important dimensions of quality. This is especially true for colleges granting credentials of two years or less, which graduate two out of five postsecondary graduates. Moreover, popular rankings from U.S. News, Forbes, and Money focus only on a small fraction of four-year colleges and tend to reward highly selective institutions over those that may contribute the most to student success.

Drawing on government and private sources, this report analyzes college “value-added,” the difference between actual alumni outcomes (like salaries) and the outcomes one would expect given a student’s characteristics and the type of institution. Value-added captures the benefits that accrue from aspects of college quality we can measure, such as graduation rates and the market value of the skills a college teaches, as well as aspects we can’t.

The value-added measures introduced here improve on conventional rankings in several ways. They are available for a much larger number of schools; they focus on the factors that best predict measurable economic outcomes; and they attempt to isolate the effect colleges themselves have on those outcomes, above and beyond what students’ backgrounds would predict.

EU — Hourly labour costs

Hourly labour costs
Source: Eurostat

This article provides recent statistics on hourly labour costs in the European Union (EU).

In 2014, average hourly labour costs were estimated at EUR 24.6 in the EU-28 and at EUR 29.2 in the euro area (EA-18). However, this average masks significant gaps between EU Member States, with hourly labour costs ranging between EUR 3.8 and EUR 40.3.

As Movement For Higher Pay Grows, Report Examines Who Makes Less Than $15 in the U.S.

As Movement For Higher Pay Grows, Report Examines Who Makes Less Than $15 in the U.S.
Source: National Employment Law Project

As workers across industries prepare for a historic day of strikes and protests for higher wages, a report by the National Employment Law Project (NELP) shows that nearly half, (42 percent) of workers in the US are paid less than $15 an hour.

The report, The Growing Movement for $15, which comes days before adjunct professors, fast-food, home care, child care, retail and airport workers are expected to protest in the largest-ever national mobilization for higher pay, provides comprehensive wage and demographic figures on the 42 percent of the U.S. workforce that earns less than $15 an hour.

The report finds that six in 10 of the largest occupations with median wages less than $15—including restaurant jobs, retail jobs and personal care jobs—are among the occupations projected to add the most jobs in coming years, shedding light on why the “Fight for $15” has spread quickly from the fast-food industry to include workers from various sectors of the economy.

The High Public Cost of Low Wages

The High Public Cost of Low Wages
Source: University of California-Berkeley (Center for Labor Research and Education)

Even as the economy has at last begun to expand at a more rapid pace, growth in wages and benefits for most American workers has continued its decades-long stagnation. Real hourly wages of the median American worker were just 5 percent higher in 2013 than they were in 1979, while the wages of the bottom decile of earners were 5 percent lower in 2013 than in 1979. Trends since the early 2000s are even more pronounced. Inflation-adjusted wage growth from 2003 to 2013 was either flat or negative for the entire bottom 70 percent of the wage distribution. Compounding the problem of stagnating wages is the decline in employer-provided health insurance, with the share of non-elderly Americans receiving insurance from an employer falling from 67 percent in 2003 to 58.4 percent in 2013.

Stagnating wages and decreased benefits are a problem not only for low-wage workers who increasingly cannot make ends meet, but also for the federal government as well as the 50 state governments that finance the public assistance programs many of these workers and their families turn to. Nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of enrollees in America’s major public support programs are members of working families; the taxpayers bear a significant portion of the hidden costs of low-wage work in America.

This is the first report to examine the cost to the 50 states of public assistance programs for working families. We examine working families’ utilization of the health care programs Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), as well as their enrollment in the basic household income assistance program Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF). Both of these programs operate with shared funding from the federal government and the states, and in this report we also examine the costs to the federal government of Medicaid/CHIP and TANF, as well as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the food stamps program (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP). Our analysis includes only the cash assistance portion of TANF, and it does not include costs for state Earned Income Tax Credits, child care assistance, or other state-funded means-tested programs. Overall, we find that between 2009 and 2011 the federal government spent $127.8 billion per year on these four programs for working families and the states collectively spent $25 billion per year on Medicaid/CHIP and TANF for working families for a total of $152.8 billion per year. In all, more than half—56 percent—of combined state and federal spending on public assistance goes to working families.

New Report Projects When Women in Each U.S. State Will Achieve Equal Pay; Five States Won’t See Equal Pay until the Next Century

New Report Projects When Women in Each U.S. State Will Achieve Equal Pay; Five States Won’t See Equal Pay until the Next Century
Source: Institute for Women’s Policy Research

The first release from Status of Women in the States: 2015, a project of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR), finds that, if current trends in narrowing the pay gap in the states continue, the date when women in the United States will achieve equal pay is 2058, but new projections for each state find this date is much further out in the future for women in many parts of the country. In some states, a woman born today likely will not see wage equality in her lifetime. The report finds that at the current rate, five states—West Virginia, Utah, Louisiana, North Dakota, and Wyoming—will not see equal pay until the next century. The study is the first ever to project when the wage gap will close for every state in the nation.

The report analyzes data on women’s employment and earnings, and provides state rankings and letter grades based on a composite index first developed by IWPR in 1996. Overall, the best place for women’s employment and earnings is the District of Columbia, with an overall grade of A, while the worst is West Virginia, with a grade of F. The grades take into account women’s status on the level of earnings, the gender wage gap, labor force participation, and women’s representation in professional and managerial occupations.