The U.S. Employment-Population Reversal in the 2000s: Facts and Explanations

Robert Moffitt

No 18520, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The decline in the employment-population ratios for men and women over the period 2000-2007 prior to the Great Recession represents an historic turnaround in the evolution of U.S. employment. The decline is disproportionately concentrated among the less educated and younger groups within the male and female populations and, for women, disproportionately concentrated among the unmarried and those without children. About half of men's decline can be explained by declines in wage rates and by changes in nonlabor income and family structure influences, but the decline among women is more difficult to explain and requires distinguishing between married and unmarried women and those with and without children, who have each experienced quite different wage and employment trends. Neither taxes nor transfers appear likely to explain the employment declines, with the possible exception of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Other influences such as the minimum wage or health factors do not appear to play a role, but increases in incarceration could have contributed to the decline among men.

JEL-codes: J2 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-lab and nep-lma
Note: EFG LS PE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w18520.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The U.S. Employment-Population Reversal in the 2000s: Facts and Explanations (2012)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:18520

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w18520

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().