Using nationally representative data on consumption, we show that Blacks and Hispanics devote larger shares of their expenditure bundles to visible goods (clothing, jewelry, and cars) than do comparable Whites. These differences exist among virtually all subpopulations, are relatively constant...

In the period since the 1960s, as in other periods, aggregate time series on real wages have displayed only modest cyclicality. Macroeconomists, therefore, have described weak cyclicality of real wages as a salient feature of the business cycle. Contrary to this conventional wisdom, the authors'...

The authors use trends in self-reported disability to gauge the impact of the growth of disability transfer programs on the labor force attachment of older working-aged men. The authors' tabulations suggest that between 1949 and 1987, about half of the 4.9 percentage point drop in the labor...

This paper shows a widening in black-white earnings and employment gaps among young men from the mid-1970s through the 1980s. Earnings gaps increased most among college graduates and in the Midwest, while gaps in employment-population rates grew most among dropouts. The authors attribute the...

Demand for less-skilled workers plummeted in developed countries in the 1980s. In open economies, pervasive skill-biased technological change (SBTC) can explain this decline. SBTC tends to increase the domestic supply of unskill-intensive goods by releasing less-skilled labor. The more countries...

This paper investigates the shift in demand away from unskilled and toward skilled labor in U.S. manufacturing over the 1980s. Production labor-saving technological change is the chief explanation for this shift. That conclusion is based on three facts: (1) the shift is due mostly to increased...