Working Papers
Incarceration of African American Men and the Impacts on Women and Children
[Updated June 29, 2020] [SSRN]
[Updated June 29, 2020] [SSRN]
This paper investigates the causal effects of black male incarceration on black women’s marriage and labor market outcomes, and black children’s family structure and long-run economic outcomes. To establish causality, I exploit plausibly exogenous changes in sentencing policies across states and over years, and construct an instrumental variable for the incarceration rate. I find that black male incarceration reduces black women’s marriage, but increases employment for more-educated black women. Moreover, black male incarceration increases out-of-wedlock births and negatively affects black children’s educational attainment. Finally, black men at either the extensive or intensive margin of incarceration affect women and children differently.
Since the late 1960s, many states in the U.S. have introduced unilateral divorce, which allows a spouse to obtain a divorce without the consent of the other spouse. I exploit variation in the adoption and timing of unilateral divorce laws and employ a synthetic control method to study how the introduction of unilateral divorce affects assortative mating in the marriage market. Using the 5% censuses for 1960, 1970, and 1980, I find that the introduction of unilateral divorce increases the correlation of spousal incomes by around 40%, and the correlation of spousal education by 9%. The effect is partially driven by high-income individuals being less likely to marry down, and low-income individuals being less likely to marry up. At the extensive margin, the introduction of unilateral divorce lowers the likelihood of entering a marriage.
Prior studies have shown that women are more willing to trade off wages for short commutes than men. Given the gender difference in commuting preferences, we show that the wage return to commuting (i.e., the wage penalty for reducing commute time) that stems from the spatial distribution of jobs contributes to the gender wage gap. We propose a simple job choice model, which predicts that differential commuting preferences would lead to a larger gender wage gap for workers who face greater wage returns to commuting based on their locations of residence and occupations. We then show empirical evidence that validates the model’s prediction. Moreover, we estimate the model components: (i) the indifference curves between wages and commutes by gender, and (ii) the wage return to commuting faced by each worker. Our model shows that differential commuting choices account for about 16–21% of the gender wage gap on average, but the contribution varies widely across residential locations. The model also shows that policies that increase commute speed or density in the central city neighborhoods could moderately lower the gender wage gap.
The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Demand for Density: Evidence from the U.S. Housing Market (with Yichen Su)
[Updated October 17, 2020] [SSRN]
Media coverage: New York Times, Financial Post
[Updated October 17, 2020] [SSRN]
Media coverage: New York Times, Financial Post
Cities are shaped by the strength of agglomeration and dispersion forces. We show that the COVID-19 pandemic has re-introduced disease transmission as a dispersion force in modern cities. We use detailed housing data to study the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the location demand for housing. We find that the pandemic has led to a reduced demand for housing in neighborhoods with high population density. The reduced demand for density is driven partially by the diminished need of living close to jobs that are telework-compatible and the declining value of access to consumption amenities. Neighborhoods with high pre-COVID-19 home prices also see a greater drop in housing demand. While the national housing market recovered after June, we show that the pandemic’s negative effect on the demand for density persisted and strengthened, indicating that the change in the demand for density has lasted beyond an aggregate recovery of housing demand.
Mating Preferences and Housing Prices in China: Evidence from Online Mate Search (with Joy Chen)
[Updated May 22, 2019]
[Updated May 22, 2019]
We estimate the effects of China’s surging house prices on individuals’ marital preferences and equilibrium assortative matching patterns. Using data from China’s largest dating website, we estimate mate preferences based on users’ decision to reply to a first-time message from a contact. We find that (1) site users, in particular women, have strong preferences for home-ownership, and increases in housing prices are associated with higher reply rate by women; (2) compared to non-homeowners, homeowners have stronger preferences for home-ownership; (3) home-ownership increases users’ competitiveness and this effect becomes more pronounced for men when as housing prices increase; (4) there is weak evidence on the impact of housing prices on equilibrium assortative matching patterns.
Work in Progress
Location Choices and the Role of Marriage Market: Evidence from U.S. Young Workers
Mass Incarceration and Stopped Convergence in Black-White Educational Attainment