Research

This paper studies the impact of widowhood on the labor market outcomes of surviving spouses and their children. I use linked population and mortality censuses from the nineteenth century to identify newly widowed households. Recent spousal death increased the labor force participation of widows by 11 percentage points, with no corresponding increase for widowers. Effects of parental death on children are heterogeneous by gender. The recent death of the father caused boys to substitute from schooling toward market work, whereas the recent death of the mother caused girls to substitute from both schooling and market work toward housework. These results suggest that the historical rise in longevity and decline in widowhood enabled greater human capital accumulation across generations.

This paper studies the origins of nursing as a professional occupation. In the early 20th century, hospitals founded training schools for nurses to meet the growing demand for medical care. Training schools increased overall nurse supply and soon became the primary pathway for young women to receive a professional nursing credential. I estimate how the availability of nurse training affected labor market outcomes. Using linked census records and training school openings as a source of variation, I show that white women who were geographically close to an opening in adolescence were more likely to become trained nurses. Effects are largest for women from well-off families, as proxied using father's occupation. Availability of nurse training caused women to substitute away from other occupations and had little effect on labor force participation or occupation-based measures of income. Furthermore, by their thirties, women who were geographically close to an opening were less likely to become physicians. These results paint a mixed picture: Nurse training provided new opportunities for women in the workforce, reinforcing existing gender segregation in medicine. Over the course of the 20th century, nursing would grow to become the largest majority-female occupation in the United States.

Childhood vaccination rates have declined in many US states, contributing to outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases. We evaluated the association between state repeal of nonmedical vaccine exemptions and kindergarten vaccination rates. We used annual state-level kindergarten vaccination and exemption data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for school years 2011 through 2023. A staggered difference-in-differences design compared states that repealed nonmedical exemptions with states that maintained such policies. Total state repeal of nonmedical exemptions was associated with increased vaccination rates of 2 to 4 percentage points compared with nonrepeal states, a statistically significant difference. Partial repeal of nonmedical exemptions resulted in smaller, less persistent increases. These findings suggest that nonmedical exemption repeal played a role in maintaining vaccination coverage in repeal states during a period of heightened vaccine hesitancy.

This paper measures impacts of removing children from families investigated for abuse or neglect. We use removal tendencies of child protection investigators as an instrument. We focus on young children investigated before age 6 and find that removal significantly increases test scores and reduces grade repetition for girls. There are no detectable impacts for boys. This pattern of results does not appear to be driven by heterogeneity in pre-removal characteristics, foster placements, or the type of schools attended after removal. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that development of abused and neglected girls is more responsive to home removal.

Foster care provides substitute living arrangements to protect maltreated children. The practice is remarkably common: it is estimated that 5 percent of children in the United States are placed in foster care at some point during childhood. These children exhibit poor outcomes as children and adults, and economists have begun to estimate the causal relationship between foster care and life outcomes. This paper provides background on the latest trends in foster care policy and practice to highlight areas most in need of rigorous evidence. These trends include efforts to prevent foster care on the demand side and to improve foster home recruitment on the supply side. With increasing data availability and a growing interest in evidence-based practices, there are a range of opportunities for economic research to inform policies that protect vulnerable children.