Research

WORKING PAPERS

When Grandmothers Step In: Grandchild Care and Labor Supply Dynamics (Job Market Paper)

Grandmothers' provision of informal childcare often creates a direct tension with their own labor supply and retirement security. This paper quantifies this trade-off and examines how it is mediated by policy. First, an event-study analysis using the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) documents the existence of grandchild penalty: the arrival of a first grandchild precipitates a decline in grandmothers' employment and earnings. To identify the role of childcare demand, I then exploit the California's Paid Family Leave (CA-PFL) program introduced in 2004 in a difference-in-differences framework. The policy increases grandmothers' labor supply while reducing their grandchild care provision. To unpack the mechanisms, I develop and estimate a dynamic structural model of labor supply and caregiving. The estimates reveal a significant utility cost to unmet care demand, rationalizing the large labor supply responses observed in the data. Counterfactual analyses show that an increase in the Social Security retirement age, absent such family policies, would impose significant welfare costs on grandmothers.

REFEREED PUBLICATIONS

Long-term Economic Distress and Growing Educational Inequality in Life Expectancy (with John Bound, Arline Geonimus, Timothy Waidmann, and Vicent Pancini) Epidemiology 36.3 (2025): 287-296. [journal link]

Displaced Workers and the Pandemic Recession (with Angela Guo and Pawel Krolikowski). Economics Letters (2023): 111071. [journal link]

WORK IN PROGRESS

How do Retirement Plan Mandates Affect Labor Supply: Evidence from Microdata (with Adam Bloomfield and Melanie Wallskog)

Abstract: A growing number of states have implemented “auto-IRA” policies, in which firms must either offer an employer-sponsored retirement plan (ESRP) or enroll their employees in state-facilitated Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs), to increase workers' retirement savings. We evaluate the labor market implications of these policies using administrative data and the staggered implementation of these policies. For firms not already offering ESRPs beforehand, the introduction of auto-IRA policies generates substantial employment growth, consistent with workers valuing new employer-mediated benefits. This employment growth arises through the retention/hiring of higher-paid workers.

Understanding the Role of Long-term Economic Distress in the Growing Educational Gaps in U.S. Life Expectancy

(with John Bound, Arline Geronimus, Timothy Waidmann)

Synthetic Data Methods for Linked Survey-Administrative Data

(with Margaret Levenstein, Matthew Shapiro, Adam Shumway, Evan Totty, Gerardo Sanz-Maldonado)

Post-College Spatial Job Search and Gender Inequality (with Caitlin Treanor)

FEDERAL RESERVE PUBLICATIONS

Job Loss Consequences and the Pandemic Recession (with Angela Guo and Pawel Krolikowski). Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland Economic Commentary (2023).

Featured in Bloomberg, Crain's Cleveland Business

Revisiting Wage Growth after the Recession (with Roberto Pinheiro). Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland Economic Commentary (2020).

Using Advance Layoff Notices as a Labor Market Indicator (with Pawel Krolikowski and Kurt G. Lunsford). Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland Economic Commentary (2019).

The Evolution of the Labor Share across Developed Countries (with Roberto Pinheiro). Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland Economic Commentary (2018).

Wage Growth after the Great Recession (with Roberto Pinheiro). Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland Economic Commentary (2017).

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