The Declining Labor Market Prospects of Less-Educated Men /
Binder, Ariel J.
The Declining Labor Market Prospects of Less-Educated Men / Ariel J. Binder, John Bound. - Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2019. - 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white); - NBER working paper series no. w25577 . - Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w25577. .
February 2019.
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.
System requirements: Adobe [Acrobat] Reader required for PDF files.
Mode of access: World Wide Web.
The Declining Labor Market Prospects of Less-Educated Men / Ariel J. Binder, John Bound. - Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2019. - 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white); - NBER working paper series no. w25577 . - Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w25577. .
February 2019.
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.
System requirements: Adobe [Acrobat] Reader required for PDF files.
Mode of access: World Wide Web.