Working Papers

Job Loss and Marriage Entry: Gender Differences in Responses to Economic Shocks (JMP)

I examine the causal effect of job displacement on marriage and how this effect differs by gender. I exploit job displacement due to plant closures as an exogenous shock. I find that job displacement leads to strikingly different marriage responses for men and women. Displaced men experience a persistent decline in the likelihood of being married, with the probability falling by about 1 percentage point on average over the five years following job loss. In contrast, women are 1.7 percentage points more likely to be married than men over the same period, with the increase concentrated in the year of displacement and the following year. These gender differences are not driven by pre-displacement characteristics; reweighting women to match men’s characteristics yields larger estimated effects. Moreover, women’s responses are stronger among those experiencing more severe economic disruptions, whereas the patterns for men are less clearly tied to measured labor market losses. Among those who marry, spouse characteristics change only modestly, with small declines in spouses’ socioeconomic standing. Overall, these findings suggest that the same economic shock has fundamentally different implications for the marriage outcomes of men and women.

Unconditional Cash Transfers and Youth Labor Supply: Evidence from South Korea (with Jungmin Lee and Tammy Sunju Lee)

We study how unconditional income support affects early-career labor market decisions using the Seongnam Youth Dividend, a universal cash-transfer program introduced in South Korea in 2016. The program provided quarterly payments of 250,000 KRW, totaling one million KRW per year, to all 24-year-old residents of Seongnam. Using a stacked difference-in-differences design comparing Seongnam with neighboring cities, we estimate both short- and medium-run effects. The transfer temporarily reduces labor supply during the payment period: employment declines by approximately 1 percentage point from a baseline of 44%, with the decline concentrated primarily in regular employment. We find little evidence of persistent effects on employment or earnings after the transfer ends. Instead, post-payment dynamics suggest a gradual return toward baseline rather than a sustained decline. Notably, the decline is concentrated among individuals without prior wage-employment experience, suggesting that the transfer delays labor market entry rather than inducing withdrawal among those already working. At the same time, we find little evidence that the transfer generated lasting improvements in employment, earnings, or job stability. Taken together, these findings provide new evidence on how unconditional income support affects early-career labor supply decisions during and after the payment period.

Who Loses More from Job Displacement? Gender Differences in South Korea

I examine gender differences in the labor market effects of job displacement among married workers in South Korea. I compare workers displaced by plant closures with matched non-displaced workers and estimate dynamic effects on employment and earnings. I distinguish raw gender differences from composition-adjusted differences by reweighting women to the male distribution of pre-displacement job characteristics. Job displacement generates persistent losses for both married women and men, but women experience larger losses after accounting for pre-displacement job characteristics. In the composition-adjusted comparison, women’s losses are 4.6 percentage points larger than men’s in the probability of ever working and 11.0 percentage points larger in relative earnings. The presence of young children further amplifies these gender differences. These findings provide new evidence from Korea on the gendered consequences of job displacement among married workers.