Results for “melissa Kearney” 13 found
From my email (on single-parent families)
I won’t do double indentation, but this is all from Rick from Baltimore:
“In your post today, you cite to an interview you gave in which you describe the negative effects of children growing up with one parent and state that “I don’t have a magic wand to wave to make all those men worthy of having a nice family, but we could do much more than what we’re doing now”. So my question is what is it that we can or should be doing? It seems like one of the more important questions of our day.
So what does a Tyler Cowen pro-parent plan look like? I can think of a number of candidates for interventions, but most of them don’t strike me as things you would advocate for either because of their limited effectiveness or their unintended consequences. Some possibilities that I can think of:
- Parenting interventions in poor communities (i.e. an army of social workers descending on poor communities to teach parenting and advocate for children).
- Shorter/fewer prison sentences in order to allow more poor men to be present for their children and improve the sex ratio in poorer communities (thereby encouraging more committed relationships).
- Similarly – more drug decriminalization? Less?
- Tax reforms of the kind advocated for by people like Brad Wilcox to encourage rather than penalize marriage. (Seems like a good idea to me, but I don’t know how many people there really are out there who choose not to wed for tax reasons).
- Better/more jobs for working class men and all-out brutes? (Seems like an obvious idea, but how? More unions? Fewer? More tariffs and less free trade? Get rid of the Jones Act? More immigration? Less? A larger standing army? A return to more vocational education as advocated for by people like Mike Rowe?)
- The re-churching of America? If so, what are your suggestions for how to accomplish this (evangelical minds would like to know)?
- Cultural shifts? Melissa Kearney points out that up and down the educational ladder, Asian kids almost always have a dad. Should we be more Asian? More Mormon?
- Less cultural feminization? Less blame cast on structural oppression and more of a return to a culture of personal responsibility as preached by Jordan Peterson et al.?
- More recognition of the downsides of the sexual revolution as described by Louise Perry? Less premarital sex and pornography? The return of the shotgun marriage?
- More cultural depictions in Hollywood etc. of successful mixed-collar marriages in order to encourage more college-educated women to marry plumbers and electricians?
What else am I missing? What do you think would work?”
TC again: I would add this. We don’t know what would work. But it can’t hurt to have the intelligentsia unified and vocal in a belief that a) this problem really matters, and b) like most problems it is not a hopeless one and improvement is possible. I propose that as step number one — are you on board?
Wednesday assorted links
1. How should prestige TV treat fascism?
2. The pushback against Melissa Kearney is an object lesson in mood affiliation.
3. New science writing fellowship. And Stigler Center journalists in residence program.
4. The Longevity Fund, from Laura Deming.
5. Foiled Danish art markets in everything.
6. New results on animals talking (NYT).
Thursday assorted links
1. The pandemic as time machine (NYT).
2. Who really disapproves of single-parent families?
3. Nicholas Kristof on the new Melissa Kearney book (NYT).
4. Meloni is not stopping Lampedusa arrivals — what is the equilibrium here?
5. Has there been a savings glut?
6. Those new service sector jobs, Taylor Swift journalism edition.
Tuesday assorted links
Population Dynamics and Economic Inequality
Broad movements in American earnings inequality since the mid-20th century show a correlation with the working-age share of the population, evoking concerns dating to the 18th century that as more individuals in a population seek work the returns to labor diminish. The possibility that demographic trends, including the baby boom and post-1965 immigration, contributed to the rise in inequality was referenced in literature before the early 1990s but largely discarded thereafter. This paper reconsiders the impact of supply-side dynamics on inequality, in the context of a literature that has favored demand-side explanations for at least 30 years, and a recent movement toward equality that coincides with the retirement of the baby boom generation, reduced immigration, and a long trend toward reduced fertility. Evidence suggests an important role for the population age distribution in economic inequality, and coupled with demographic projections of an aging population and continued low fertility portends a broad trend toward greater equality over at least the next two decades.
That is the abstract of a new paper by Jacob L. Vigdor. It was part of a recent NBER conference on fertility and demographics, kudos to Melissa Kearney (still underrated as a social force for good) and Philip B. Levine for putting it on.
Would higher male earnings drive a marriage boom?
The results of that research cast doubt on the notion that an improvement in men’s economic position will necessarily increase marriage rates. The fracking boom of the first decade of the 2000s, which gave rise to economic booms in US towns and cities where they wouldn’t have occurred otherwise, provided a rare opportunity to investigate whether an improvement in the economic prospects of men without a four-year college degree would lead to a reduction in the nonmarital birth share. In a 2018 study that I wrote with my coauthor Riley Wilson, we used a fracking boom to test a “reverse marriageable men” hypothesis…
Our first finding was that these local fracking booms led to overall increases in total births, an increase of roughly 3 births per 1,000 women…
To our surprise, the increase in births associated with fracking booms occurred as much with unmarried partners as with married ones. The “reverse marriageable men” hypothesis, which predicted that improvements in the economic circumstances of men would lead to an increase in marriage and a reduction in the share of births outside marriage, was not what the data showed.
That is from Melissa Kearney, The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind. Here is the original research. Note also that pp.96-100 of this book provide strong evidence against the claim that the welfare state has been driving the rise in single-parent families.
Tuesday assorted links
1. Learning to love Lagos. And new copies of the Gospels from the Ethiopian desert.
2. I am pleased to have recently met Melissa Kearney. And an intervention to increase the number of women in economics. AEA acts on transparency and gender issues.
4. Do black politicians matter?
5. Jason Furman on tax reform. And: “The question I first posed was what to make of a president who is rhetorically unfit yet mainstream in policy.” — from Martin Gurri. And a superb David Brooks column.
6. Review of Tesla Model 3. And Christina Cacioppo reviews various books.
Michael Strain’s new book *The US Labor Market*
It is an edited collection, I have an essay on inequality in the volume. Here is the Amazon link. Here is the book’s home page, which includes a full, free pdf. There are many famous contributors, including Jason Furman and Betsey Stevenson, Martin Feldstein, Justin Wolfers, Glenn Hubbard, George Borjas, Melissa Kearney, Casey Mulligan, and others. Here is Strain’s introduction and an organization of the book in sections. Self-recommending!
Brookings fellowship
From my inbox:
Tyler,
We’re recruiting for our next Okun-Model fellow, which is a one-year visiting position at Brookings for early career economists. Previous fellows include Melissa Kearney, Jens Ludwig, and Amanda Kowalski. If you know of anyone interested for academic year 2016-2017, or anyone who might know someone interested, please pass along the link: http://www.brookings.edu/about/employment/position/2015/es15216
Ted [Gayer]
Best non-fiction books of 2023
In the order I read them, more or less, rather than in the order of preference. And behind the link usually you will find my earlier review, or occasionally an Amazon link:
Erika Fatland, High: A Journey Across the Himalaya Through Pakistan, India, Bhutan, Nepal, and China.
Adam Kuper, The Museum of Other People: From Colonial Acquisitions to Cosmopolitan Exhibitions.
Paul Johnson, Follow the Money: How Much Does Britain Cost?
Murray Pittock, Scotland: A Global History.
Reviel Netz, A New History of Greek Mathematics.
Melissa S. Kearney, The Two-Parent Privilege.
David Edmonds, Derek Parfit: A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality.
Peter Lee, Carey Goldberg, and Isaac Kohane, The AI Revolution in Medicine: GPT-4 and Beyond.
Matt Zwolinski and John Tomasi,
Sebastian Edwards, The Chile Project: The Story of the Chicago Boys and the Downfall of Neoliberalism.
Martyn Rady, The Central Kingdoms: A New History of Central Europe.
Norman Lebrecht, Why Beethoven: A Phenomenon in One Hundred Pieces.
Ian Mortimer, Medieval Horizons: Why the Middle Ages Matter.
Jacob Mikanowski, Goodbye Eastern Europe: An Intimate History of a Divided Land.
Sophia Giovannitti, Working Girl: On Selling Art and Selling Sex.
Christopher Clark, Revolutionary Spring: Fighting for a New World 1848-1849.
Fearghal Cochrane, Belfast: The Story of a City and its People.
Jennifer Burns, Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative.
Mikhail Zygar, War and Punishment: Putin, Zelensky, and the Path to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine.
Jeremy Jennings, Travels with Tocqueville: Beyond America.
Fuchsia Dunlop, Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food.
David Brooks, How to Know Others: The Art of Seeing Others and Being Deeply Seen.
Jonny Steinberg, Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage.
Richard Cockett, Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World.
Cat Bohannon, Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution.
Larry Rohter, Into the Amazon: The Life of Cândido Rondon, Trailblazing Explorer, Scientist, Statesman, and Conservationist.
Frank Trentmann, Out of the Darkness: The Germans 1942-2022.
Tyler Cowen, GOAT: Who is the Greatest Economist of all Time and Why Does it Matter?
It is hard to pick out 2 or 3 favorites this year, as they are all excellent. I am partial to David Edmonds on Parfit, but a lot of you already know you should be reading that. Perhaps my nudge is most valuable for Jonny Steinberg, Winny and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage? So that is my pick for the year!
As usual, I will issue an addendum at the end of the year, because I will be reading a lot between now and then. I haven’t even received my 1344-pp. Jonathan Israel biography of Spinoza yet. Here is my earlier list on the year’s fiction. And apologies for any of your books I have forgotten to list, there are always some such cases.
*The Two-Parent Privilege*
A new and great book, authored by Melissa S. Kearney of the University of Maryland. The subtitle is How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind, and here is one excerpt of the summary points:
Two-parent families are beneficial for children.
The class divide in marriage and family structure has exacerbated inequality and class gaps.
Places that have more two-parent families have higher rates of upward mobility.
Not talking about these facts is counterproductive.
The marshaled evidence is convincing, and I will be blogging more about this book. While some stiff competition is coming, this could be the most important economics and policy book of this year. And yes it is remarkable that such a book is so needed, but yes it is. And here is Melissa on Twitter.
The Puzzle of Falling US Birth Rates since the Great Recession
That is a new JEP piece by Melissa S. Kearney, Phillip B. Levine, and Luke Pardue. The piece, while not easily summarized, is interesting throughout. Here is one bit:
The decline in birth rates has been widespread across the country. Birth rates fell in every state over this period, except for North Dakota. One possible explanation for the increase in North Dakota birth rates is the fracking boom that occurred in this state over those years, which has been shown in other research to increase the birth rate (Kearney and Wilson 2018). But as can be readily seen in the map, there is substantial variation in the extent of the decline across places.
Births fell the most in the South, in the West, and in the Southwestern and Mountain states. However, the set of states that experienced larger declines is varied, also including some Midwestern and New England states, notably Connecticut, Illinois, and Massachusetts. Births fell the most in the Southwestern and Western states. The sizable Hispanic population in much of this region is consistent with the particularly large decline in births among Hispanic women, driven by a decline in births among both native and foreign-born Mexicans. The fact that other states with smaller shares of Hispanic residents (like Georgia and Oregon) also experienced large declines, though, further clarifies the broad-based nature of the decline.
And this:
The percentage of sexually active women who report using long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) increased from 5.5 percent in 2004 to 10.7 in 2017 and could have contributed to declining birth rates. The simple correlation, though, between the percentage point change in LARC usage in a state and the change in birth rates is wrong-signed (that is, positive), albeit close to zero. This suggests that take-up of LARCs has likely not played an important role in explaining the decline in the aggregate birth rate over this period.
Overall it is interesting how many factors do not seem to matter much.
How to reform the economics Ph.D
This has been bothering me, so I’m putting it out there – The shift to 6 yrs for an Econ PhD is a TERRIBLE trend for female PhD students – & also some men, obviously – but especially for women. This issue warrants much more attention.
So says the wise Melissa S. Kearney.
Along those lines, I have a modest proposal. Eliminate the economics Ph.D, period. Offer everyone three years of graduate economics education, and no more (with a clock reset allowed for pregnancy). Did Smith, Keynes, or Hayek have an economics Ph.D? This way, no one will assume you know what you are talking about, and the underlying message is that economics learning is lifelong.
After the three years is up, you would be free to look for a job, or alternatively you might find someone to support you to do additional research, such as in the newly structured “post doc without the doc.” The researchers who absolutely need additional training would try to glom on to a lab or major grant, but six years would not be the default.
Of course, in that setting, schools could take chances on more students, and more students could take a chance on trying economics as a profession. Furthermore, for most of the most accomplished students, it is already clear they deserve a top job by the time their third year rolls around, usually well before then. Women would hit their tenure clocks much earlier, also, easing childbearing constraints. A dissertation truly would become just a job market paper, which has already been the trend for a long time. Why obsess over the non-convexity of “finishing”? Finish everyone, and throw them into the maws of some mix of AI and human evaluators sooner rather than later.
Over time, I would expect that more people would take the first-year sequence in their senior year of undergraduate study, and more first-year jobs would have zero or very low teaching loads. All to the better.
And if you’re mainly going to teach Principles at a state university, three years of graduate study really is enough. You’ll learn more your first year teaching anyway.
Which other fields might benefit from such a reform?
People, you have nothing to lose but your chains.