Essays on the Economic Well-Being of Women
type: CreativeWork
description: This dissertation consists of three chapters: 1. The Effect of College Distance on Economic Opportunity for Low-Income Youth This chapter studies the impact of one obstacle to college completion among low-income youth: geographic distance to the nearest four-year public college. The chapter's main results show that cutting the distance to a public four-year college from its mean value of 18 miles to half of that, 9 miles, is associated with a 4 percentage point increase in the college graduation rate of low-income women. Reducing the distance to public community college also increases the probability of completing college for low-income women. These effects are robust to controlling for socioeconomic background, environment, and standardized test scores. Low-income men, who have much lower college graduation rates than their female counterparts, do not appear to be affected by distance to a public college. Policymakers should consider this finding when deciding whether to establish new campuses of public college systems or to consolidate two existing campuses. 2. A Cross-National Study of the Gender Gap in the Economic Consequences of Divorce: Decomposing the Effects of Custody, Wage Rates, and Tax and Transfer Programs This chapter estimates the economic consequences of divorce by gender in six different developed economies. Across all countries studied, women fare worse than men, due to lower average labor income and a higher likelihood of being responsible for children post-divorce. For each country we test the impact on the economic consequences of divorce of: (a) equalizing average wage rates between men and women of similar levels of education, (b) re-assigning custody of all children to men, and (c) imposing the tax and transfer programs of other countries on the United States. We find that divorcing women in the United States experience worse levels of economic well-being on average than men, and that the discrepancy is larger in the United States than in th…
abstract: This dissertation consists of three chapters: 1. The Effect of College Distance on Economic Opportunity for Low-Income Youth This chapter studies the impact of one obstacle to college completion among low-income youth: geographic distance to the nearest four-year public college. The chapter's main results show that cutting the distance to a public four-year college from its mean value of 18 miles to half of that, 9 miles, is associated with a 4 percentage point increase in the college graduation rate of low-income women. Reducing the distance to public community college also increases the probability of completing college for low-income women. These effects are robust to controlling for socioeconomic background, environment, and standardized test scores. Low-income men, who have much lower college graduation rates than their female counterparts, do not appear to be affected by distance to a public college. Policymakers should consider this finding when deciding whether to establish new campuses of public college systems or to consolidate two existing campuses. 2. A Cross-National Study of the Gender Gap in the Economic Consequences of Divorce: Decomposing the Effects of Custody, Wage Rates, and Tax and Transfer Programs This chapter estimates the economic consequences of divorce by gender in six different developed economies. Across all countries studied, women fare worse than men, due to lower average labor income and a higher likelihood of being responsible for children post-divorce. For each country we test the impact on the economic consequences of divorce of: (a) equalizing average wage rates between men and women of similar levels of education, (b) re-assigning custody of all children to men, and (c) imposing the tax and transfer programs of other countries on the United States. We find that divorcing women in the United States experience worse levels of economic well-being on average than men, and that the discrepancy is larger in the United States than in th…
author: Roeper, Timothy A
keywords: Labor Economics, college distance, cost of commuting, divorce, custody, teen birth, school absences
date published: 2017-09-01T07:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:59:05Z
provider: City University of New York - Graduate Center
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: The Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York