Empirical evidence in the study of labor markets: Opportunities and challenges for a new household survey
Issue title: Assessing the need for a new nationally representative household
panel survey in the United States
Subtitle:
Guest editors: Robert Moffitt, Robert F. Schoeni, Charles Brown, P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, Mick P. Couper, Ana V. Diez-Roux, Erik Hurst and Judith A. Seltzer
Affiliations: [a] University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA | [b] Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Correspondence:
[*]
Corresponding author: Lowell J. Taylor, Carnegie Mellon University, NORC, IZA, and NBER, USA. E-mail:[email protected]
Abstract: Many of the key issues confronting modern societies are
closely tied to labor market outcomes: What factors contribute to the
persistence of poverty and deprivation? Why does long-term unemployment
damage re-entry prospects into labor markets? Along which dimensions is
economic inequality increasing, and to what extent should we be concerned
about these trends? To what degree is inequality transmitted within families
across generations? Why does race play such an important role in economic
success in the U.S.? How are male-female differences in economic outcomes
shifting over time? In this essay we suggest that a well-designed survey
that follows individuals within households over a long horizon is crucial for sorting some
facets of these questions. We provide some thoughts about how a future
household survey should be designed for the purpose facilitating high-value
research in empirical labor economics.
