How do college students and postsecondary institutions react to changes in skill demand in the U.S. labor market? We quantify the magnitude and nature of response in the 4-year sector using a new measure of labor demand at the institution-major level that combines online job ads with geographic...

The main question addressed in this analysis is how the production of undergraduate and graduate education at the state level affects the local stock of university-educated workers. The potential mobility of highly skilled workers implies that the number of college students graduating in an area...

Ever since Lucy Stone decided to retain her surname at marriage in 1855, women in America have tried to do the same. But their numbers were extremely low until the 1970s. The increased age at first marriage, rising numbers with professional degrees and Ph.D.'s, the diffusion of 'the Pill,' state...

The fraction of U.S. college graduate women entering professional programs increased substantially around 1970 and the age at first marriage among all U.S. college graduate women soared just after 1972. We explore the relationship between these two changes and how each was shaped by the...

The rise of the dual career household is a recent phenomenon spurred by the increase in married women's labor force participation rates and educational attainment rates. Compared to traditional households these households must solve a colocation problem. This paper documents trends in locational...

The incomes and wages of college-educated Americans have become significantly more dispersed since 1970. This paper attempts to decompose this growing dispersion into three possible sources of growth. The first source, or extensive margin,' is the increasing demographic diversity of people who...

Considerable controversy surrounds the impact of schools and teachers on the achievement of students. This paper disentangles the separate factors influencing achievement with special attention given to the role of teacher differences and other aspects of schools. Unique matched panel data from...

Several recent published papers have asserted that a growing proportion of workers with college degrees are either unemployed or employed in jobs requiring only high school skills. Using data from the 1980 and 1990 Censuses of Population and Housing, we show that this assertion does not...

This study uses Current Population Survey cohort data and the National Longitudinal Survey for men aged 14-24 in 1966 to examine the earnings growth of college graduates relative to high school graduates during the 1970s depressed market for graduates. The principal finding is that the...