The focus on efficiency costs in the empirical literature on Disability Insurance (DI) provides a misleading view of the adequacy of payment levels. In order to evaluate whether workers are over- or under-insured through the social insurance program, we develop a framework that allows us to...

The flood of veterans enrolling in college at the end of World War II contributed to widespread rhetoric that the G.I. Bill brought about the "democratization" of American higher education. Whether military service, combined with educational benefits, led World War II veterans to increase their...

This article examines the properties and prevalence of measurement error in longitudinal earnings data. The analysis compares matched Current Population Survey data to administrative Social Security payroll tax records. In contrast to typically assumed properties of measurement error, the...

One long-standing hypothesis about science and engineering labor markets is that the supply of highly skilled workers is likely to be inelastic in the short run. We consider the market for computer scientists and electrical engineers (IT workers) and the evolution of wages and employment through...

Time to completion of the baccalaureate degree has increased markedly in the United States over the past three decades. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of the High School Class of 1972 and the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988, we show that the increase in time to...

During the last 15 years--especially in the 1980s--wage inequality rose in the United States. It appears that this can be explained by a secular shift in production functions favoring workers with intellectual rather than manual skills, together with slower growth in the supply of skilled labor...