National Bureau of Economic Research
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![The Declining Status of the Teaching Profession figure](/sites/default/files/styles/homepage_feature_horizontal/public/2024-07/w32386.jpg?itok=wOemhHqV)
The Declining Status of the Teaching Profession
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Over 5.4 million Americans, or more than 8 percent of the college-educated workforce, teach in K–12 schools. Teachers play a central role in the creation of human capital and the training of the future workforce. Despite these important functions, in The Rise and Fall of the Teaching Profession: Prestige, Interest, Preparation, and Satisfaction over the Last Half Century (NBER Working Paper 32386), Matthew A. Kraft and Melissa Arnold Lyon find that the status of the teaching profession has declined in the last two decades and is at or near half-century lows. The researchers focus on K–12 schoolteachers in the US and examine
From the NBER Reporter: Research, program, and conference summaries
![Clearing the Air: Historical Air Pollution and Health figure](/sites/default/files/styles/homepage_feature_horizontal/public/2024-07/Clay%20and%20Severnini%20_%20Figure%201%20_%20Final-01.jpg?itok=ud5jbhGv)
Clearing the Air: Historical Air Pollution and Health
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Air pollution has serious and longstanding negative effects on human health. The primary focus of research on air pollution in the United States since the enactment of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 has been the health implications of particulate matter. In comparison, there has been relatively little work on air pollution and health in historical periods, even though air pollution was much higher in earlier times than it is today. Research on historical air pollution can provide new evidence on the health consequences of air pollution in the United States and offer insights that may be relevant for policymaking in settings with high levels of air pollution, such as developing countries.
Our research focuses on four topics related to historical air pollution and health: the costs and benefits of expansion of coal-fired…
From the NBER Bulletin on Health
![Why Do More Educated Communities Have Better Health Outcomes? figure](/sites/default/files/styles/homepage_feature_horizontal/public/2024-07/w32346.jpg?itok=_XtC5s4T)
Why Do More Educated Communities Have Better Health Outcomes?
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Adults who live in more educated communities have lower mortality rates. In 2010, every 10 percentage point increase in an area’s share of adults with a college degree — equivalent to moving from the 25th to the 75th percentile of area education — was associated with 97 (8 percent) fewer deaths per 100,000 people. In Human Capital Spillovers and Health: Does Living around College Graduates Lengthen Life? (NBER Working Paper 32346), researchers Jacob H. Bor, David M. Cutler, Edward L. Glaeser, and Ljubica Ristovska explore this relationship...
From the NBER Bulletin on Retirement and Disability
![Racial and Ethnic Disparities in SSDI Entry and Health figure](/sites/default/files/styles/homepage_feature_horizontal/public/2024-07/NB23-04_figure_AuthorReview_Final%20%281%29-01.jpg?itok=gjunDg-V)
Racial and Ethnic Disparities in SSDI Entry and Health
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In a new study of Racial and Ethnic Disparities in SSDI Entry and Health (NBER RDRC Center Paper NB23-04), Colleen Carey, Nolan H. Miller, and David Molitor document significant racial and ethnic differences in the use of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). Non-Hispanic Blacks and Native Americans enter the SSDI program at the highest rates relative to their share of the population while non-Hispanic Asians enter at the lowest rates. Average health status, measured by medical expenditure…
From the NBER Bulletin on Entrepreneurship
![Immigration Policy and Entrepreneurs’ Choice of Startup Location figure](/sites/default/files/styles/homepage_feature_horizontal/public/2024-05/w31634_BE_figure_Final%20%281%29-01.jpg?itok=OvWr8PiI)
Immigration Policy and Entrepreneurs’ Choice of Startup Location
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Immigrants play a significant role in the entrepreneurial landscape. In the United States, immigrants are 80 percent more likely to start businesses than native-born Americans. More than half of America's billion-dollar startup companies trace their roots to immigrant founders. There is limited research, however, on the factors that influence immigrants' decisions about where to locate their startup businesses.
In The Effect of Immigration Policy on Founding Location Choice: Evidence from Canada's Start-up Visa Program (NBER Working Paper 31634), Saerom Lee and Britta Glennon investigate the impact of Canada's Start-up Visa Program on US-based…
Featured Working Papers
Private equity firms, institutional investors, and foreign corporations owned 58 percent of US wind, 47 percent of solar, and 34 percent of natural gas electricity production as of 2020, a study by Aleksandar Andonov and Joshua Rauh finds. These new investors are twice as likely as incumbent utilities to invest in new power plants.Â
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Laws granting driving privileges to undocumented immigrants raise early childhood education attendance among Hispanic children with likely undocumented parents by about 6 percent, and also raise hourly wages among likely undocumented mothers,  Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes, Monica Deza, Genti Kostandini, and Tianyuan Luo find.Â
Banks’ automatic exchange of information with foreign tax authorities, which began in the second half of the 2010s, reduced offshore tax evasion in Denmark by about 70 percent, a study by Hjalte Fejerskov Boas, Niels Johannesen, Claus Thustrup Kreiner, Lauge Truels Larsen, and Gabriel Zucman finds.
After adoption of state-level paid sick-leave mandates, parental time spent providing childcare increased by about 5 percent, based on time diaries from the 2004–2022 American Time Use Survey, research by Johanna Catherine Maclean and Sabrina Wulff Pabilonia shows.
A Connecticut program applied to police departments with large racial disparities in traffic stops reduced the number of minorities involved in traffic stops by about 25 percent, primarily due to fewer pretextual stops for lighting violations and non-moving violations, Susan T. Parker, Matthew B. Ross, and Stephen Ross find.
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