Essays in Labor and Public Economics

This dissertation aims to better understand how economic conditions shape individuals’ life courses, including impacts on family formation, health, and access to economic opportunity. The three papers that comprise this work are animated by the idea that precariousness in labor and housing markets can have broad impacts on outcomes outside those markets.

The first chapter explores the contribution of the rise of the labor movement to the American Baby Boom. I introduce new estimates of local union membership and show that unionization has positive effects on fertility outcomes These effects are driven primarily by wage growth, protection against adverse labor market shocks, and impacts on female labor force participation. A key insight of this paper is that in setting wages, defining conditions of employment, and influencing the composition of the labor force, labor market institutions play an important but often overlooked role in shaping demographic outcomes.

The second chapter, joint work with coauthors, studies how providing financial assistance to people at risk of homelessness due to an income shock affects their healthcare use. We find that the income shock does not significantly change overall healthcare use among those not receiving assistance and, as a result, referral to financial assistance has little effect on utilization. Our paper is the first to measure the health effects of programs that are designed to preempt episodes of homelessness. More broadly, our findings suggest that social insurance against income volatility has limited effects on overall healthcare use, but perhaps larger effects on specific outcomes related to extreme hardship.

The third chapter, joint work with coauthors, investigates whether the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), the largest housing affordability program in the U.S., provides a ladder up to better neighborhoods for low-income individuals. We find that moving to LIHTC-subsidized housing is associated with relative reductions in neighborhood quality, and these effects are driven by moves to especially high-poverty areas where federal incentives promote LIHTC development. An important implication of this work is that by concentrating the supply of affordable housing in lower opportunity neighborhoods, the LIHTC may create headwinds to opportunity for low-income individuals.