Essays on the Labor Market, Housing and Children's Health

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Date
2014-08-31
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Johns Hopkins University
Abstract
This dissertation studies the consequences of housing and migration decisions from three perspectives using data from developed and developing countries. Chapter 2 studies the effects of home ownership on unemployment in U.S. by developing and estimating a dynamic job search model. The estimation results show that home ownership decreases unemployment duration by about nine days. Young workers with low education levels are most likely affected---their unemployment durations are shortened by about 14 days. Counterfactual experiments show that eliminating the mortgage interest deduction is not an efficient policy for reducing unemployment and actually increases unemployment duration by three days. Chapter 3 studies the impact of mortgage status on the female labor supply in U.S. By looking at married women in SIPP 1996 panel data from 1996 to 2000, I find a positive and significant effect of home mortgage on the female labor supply. A large mortgage increases not only female's labor participate rate, but also their hours of work. Subsample results show that women with limited household wealth are more likely to be affected by the home mortgage. Chapter 4 studies the impact of labor migration on children's health in China. We use China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) in 2000, 2004, 2006, and 2009 to identify the impact of parents' migration on the health outcomes of children in rural China. The measurements of child health outcomes are weight-for-age Z-score (WAZ), height-for-age Z-score (HAZ), nutrient intake (consumption of calories and protein), the number of immunization shots that children get in the survey year and child-care. We found there were few significant effects of parents' migration on child health outcomes.
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Keywords
Job Search, Female Labor Supply, Home Ownership, Home Mortgage, Moving Costs, Endogeneity, Self-selection, Children's health, Labor Migration, Fixed effects
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