The Lost Ones: The Opportunities and Outcomes of White, Non-College-Educated Americans Born in the 1960s

Margherita Borella, Mariacristina De Nardi, Fang Yang

Chapter in NBER book NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2019, volume 34 (2020), Martin S. Eichenbaum, Erik Hurst, and Jonathan A. Parker, editors (p. 67 - 115)
Conference held April 11-12, 2019
Published in March 2020 by University of Chicago Press
© 2020 by the National Bureau of Economic Research
in Macroeconomics Annual Book Series

White, non-college-educated Americans born in the 1960s face shorter life expectancies, higher medical expenses, and lower wages per unit of human capital compared with those born in the 1940s, and men's wages declined more than women's. After documenting these changes, we use a life-cycle model of couples and singles to evaluate their effects. The drop in wages depressed the labor supply of men and increased that of women, especially in married couples. Their shorter life expectancy reduced their retirement savings, but the increase in out-of-pocket medical expenses increased them by more. Welfare losses, measured as a onetime asset compensation, are 12.5%, 8%, and 7.2% of the present discounted value of earnings for single men, couples, and single women, respectively. Lower wages explain 47% to 58% of these losses, shorter life expectancies 25% to 34%, and higher medical expenses account for the rest.

You may be able to access the full text of this document via the Document Object Identifier.

Supplementary materials for this chapter:

• Appendix

Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX

Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.1086/707173