Many developing countries experience famine. If survival is related to height, the increasingly common practice of using height as a measure of well-being may be misleading. We devise a novel method for disentangling the stunting from the selection effects of famine. Using data from the 1959-1961 Great Chinese Famine, we find that taller children were more likely to survive the famine. Controlling for selection, we estimate that children under the age of five who survived the famine grew up to be 1 to 2 cm shorter. Our results suggest that average height is potentially a biased measure of economic conditions during childhood.

The finding of strong duration dependence in explaining the length of unemployment spells has influenced the design of many labor market policy reforms. However very little work has been done on more complex effects of labor market experiences and in particular on the causal effects of past outcomes involving other labor force states. In this paper we use longitudinal data to investigate the extent of state dependence in labor market outcomes for young Australians. The econometric model estimates the effects of past outcomes in three labor force states, employment, unemployment and out of the labor force, on current transitions between any two states allowing for observed and unobserved heterogeneity. Our findings suggest strong state dependence in all three states and we use the estimates to simulate various policy experiments.Keywords: Transition data, event history analysis, state dependence, unobserved heterogeneity, labor force states, policy effectiveness.J.E.L. Classification Numbers: C33, C41, J64, J68. Acknowledgment: We wish to thank seminar participants at the University of Melbourne, the University of Copenhagen, and the University of Aarhus. Tue Gørgens gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Department of Family and Community Services. The views expressed in this paper reflect those of the authors and do not represent the opinions of the Department. * Address: School of Economics, University of New South Wales, Sydney NSW 2052, Australia. E-mail: D.Doiron@unsw.edu.au.† Address: SPEAR Centre RSSS, Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia. E-mail: Tue.Gorgens@anu.edu.au. 1 Executive summary• In this paper, we extend the literature on youth labor market outcomes (employment, unemployment and being out of the labor force) by modeling the effects of labor market experiences in a general and flexible manner. The model is estimated on longitudinal data for young Australians.• Our estimates suggest that the effects from one's past experiences on the current and future labor market outcomes are large. Consequently periods of employment (unemployment) have long-term effects on the future probability of employment (unemployment) and the length of future employment (unemployment) spells. These effects are over and above the impact of many other personal characteristics and the state of the labor market.• From the perspective of society, the benefits of early intervention may therefore be substantial. If bad labor market outcomes increase the probability of future bad outcomes, a government program which is successful in placing young people in employment early would benefit the affected individuals in the immediate future and would have persistent effects in the longer-term as well.• Our findings have implications for the policy evaluation. The usual methods of policy evaluation which compare labor market outcomes before and shortly after a policy intervention provide an incomplete and possibly misleading estimate of the impacts of programs since they do not include t...

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Many developing countries experience famine. If survival is related to height, the increasingly common practice of using height as a measure of well-being may be misleading. We devise a novel method for disentangling the stunting from the selection effects of famine. Using data from the 1959-1961 Great Chinese Famine, we find that taller children were more likely to survive the famine. Controlling for selection, we estimate that children under the age of five who survived the famine grew up to be 1 to 2 cm shorter. Our results suggest that average height is potentially a biased measure of economic conditions during childhood.

This paper develops semiparametric kernel-based estimators of risk-specific hazard functions for competing risks data+ Both discrete and continuous failure times are considered+ The maintained assumption is that the hazard function depends on explanatory variables only through an index+ In contrast to existing semiparametric estimators, proportional hazards is not assumed+ The new estimators are asymptotically normally distributed+ The estimator of index coefficients is root-n consistent+ The estimator of hazard functions achieves the one-dimensional rate of convergence+ Thus the index assumption eliminates the "curse of dimensional-ity+" The estimators perform well in Monte Carlo experiments+ I thank Denise Doiron for stimulating my interest in this research project and Catherine de Fontenay, Hans Christian Kongsted, Lars Muus, seminar participants, and two anonymous referees for comments on an earlier version of the paper+ I gratefully acknowledge the hospitality of the University of Aarhus and the University of Copenhagen, where part of this research was

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. This paper assesses how the economic support provided by parents to young adults as they complete their education and enter the labor market is related to the family's socioeconomic circumstances. We address this issue using detailed survey data on intergenerational coresidence and financial transfers merged with nearly a decade of administrative data on the family's welfare receipt while the young person was growing up. We find that young people who experience socioeconomic disadvantage are more likely to be residentially and financially independent of their parents than are their peers growing up in more advantaged circumstances. This disparity is larger for financial transfers than for co-residence and increases as young people age. Moreover, there is a clear link between parental support and a young person's engagement in study and work which is generally stronger at age 20 than at age 18 and is often stronger for advantaged than for disadvantaged youths. We find no evidence, however, that a lack of parental support explains the socioeconomic gradient in either studying or employment.JEL Classification: J12, J13, J22, J24

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. This paper assesses how the economic support provided by parents to young adults as they complete their education and enter the labor market is related to the family's socioeconomic circumstances. We address this issue using detailed survey data on intergenerational coresidence and financial transfers merged with nearly a decade of administrative data on the family's welfare receipt while the young person was growing up. We find that young people who experience socioeconomic disadvantage are more likely to be residentially and financially independent of their parents than are their peers growing up in more advantaged circumstances. This disparity is larger for financial transfers than for co-residence and increases as young people age. Moreover, there is a clear link between parental support and a young person's engagement in study and work which is generally stronger at age 20 than at age 18 and is often stronger for advantaged than for disadvantaged youths. We find no evidence, however, that a lack of parental support explains the socioeconomic gradient in either studying or employment.JEL Classification: J12, J13, J22, J24

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