This article analyzes what is behind the recent unprecedented rise in long-term unemployment and explains what this rise might imply for the economy going forward. In particular, the authors attribute the sharp increase in unemployment duration in 2009 to especially weak labor demand and, to a...

Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation, the author investigates how much of the cyclicality in unemployment is due to variation in the job finding rate versus the job separation rate. In addition, the article explores how employment dynamics have...

This article analyzes the impact of compulsory schooling laws early in the twentieth century on long-term health. The author finds no compelling evidence for a causal link between education and health using this research design. Further, the results suggest that only a small fraction of health...

In recent decades, blacks have experienced substantially less upward mobility and substantially more downward mobility from one generation to the next than whites. These results are shown to be highly robust to a variety of measurement issues. The author examines rates of intergenerational...