ABSTRACT
Here we study the role of negative shifts in public opinion in the economic lives of under-represented racial groups by investigating sudden changes in views towards Asian people following the anti-Chinese rhetoric that emerged with the COVID-19 pandemic, and associated changes in employment status and earnings in the US labour market. Using data from the Current Population Survey, we find that, unlike other under-represented groups, Asian workers in occupations or industries with a higher likelihood of face-to-face interactions before the pandemic were more likely to become unemployed afterwards. While widespread along the political spectrum, negative shifts in the perceived favourability of Asian people, and not of other under-represented groups, were much stronger among those who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and could have been more influenced by the anti-Asian rhetoric.
ABSTRACT
Studies on the intergenerational transmission of human capital usually assume a one-way spillover from parents to children. However, children may also affect their parents' human capital. Using exogenous variation in education, arising from a Swedish compulsory schooling reform in the 1950s and 1960s, we address this question by studying the causal effect of children's schooling on their parents' longevity. We first replicate previous findings of a positive and significant cross-sectional relationship between children's education and their parents' longevity. Our instrumental variables estimates are not statistically different from zero. However, they hide substantial heterogeneity by the gender of the child and the parent; female schooling is found to affect longevity of fathers and especially those from low socio-economic background. Taken together, our results point to the importance of daughters' schooling for parental health and to the importance of considering heterogeneous impacts.
