Research

Institute research focuses on labor markets by addressing several core areas: the causes of unemployment and the effectiveness of social safety net programs in mitigating its effects; education and training systems to improve workers’ employability and earnings; and the influence of state and local economic development policies on local labor markets. The Institute also assesses emerging trends affecting workers and labor markets in its core research areas.

Topics

Resources

Job Quality & Economic Security

Our research explores not just the number of jobs, but also the quality of those jobs and how well they support stable households and communities.

Social Insurance & Safety Net

Examinations of social safety net programs are central to the Upjohn Institute’s mission to address causes and solutions to unemployment. Our research assesses effectiveness of current social insurance programs and explores other strategies to keep people in stable jobs and minimize the effect of economic downturns.

Education & Workforce Development

Building and maintaining skills for the labor force is a lifelong process, starting with prekindergarten programs and continuing throughout a worker’s career. The Upjohn Institute’s research elucidates how each learning stage and program contributes to a strong workforce.

Economic Development

Upjohn Institute research offers insight into specific industries and the labor market as a whole, from locally to nationally and internationally and from both the supply and demand sides. Focal areas include manufacturing, tax incentives and regional collaboration.

Working Papers
June 2025
Author(s):Vikesh Amin, Jere R. Behrman, Jason M. Fletcher, Carlos A. Flores, Alfonso Flores-Lagunes, Iliana Kohler, Hans-Peter Kohler, and Shana D. Stites
Higher schooling attainment is associated with better cognitive function at older ages, but it remains unclear whether the relationship is causal. The authors estimate causal effects of schooling on performances on the Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer’s Disease (CERAD) word-recall (memory) test at older ages in China, Ghana, India, Mexico, Russia, and South Africa. Their results indicate that increasing schooling from never attended to primary had long-lasting effects on memory decades later in life for older adults in five diverse low-and-middle-income countries.
June 2025
Author(s):Vikesh Amin, Jere R. Behrman, Jason M. Fletcher, Carlos A. Flores, Alfonso Flores-Lagunes, and Hans-Peter Kohler
The authors revisit much-investigated relationships between schooling and health, focusing on schooling impacts on cognitive abilities at older ages using the Harmonized Cognition Assessment Protocol in the Health & Retirement Study (HRS) and a bounding approach that requires relatively weak assumptions. Their estimated upper bounds on the population average effects indicate potentially large causal effects of increasing schooling from primary to secondary; yet, these upper bounds are smaller than many estimates from the literature on causal schooling impacts on cognition using compulsory-schooling laws.
April 2025
Author(s): Brian J. Asquith
Housing wealth is the largest component in most older Americans’ portfolios, and they may seek to recoup losses by working longer to help smooth consumption in retirement. Asquith performs three different analyses to approach this question and finds that all three concur that older homeowners do not significantly change their labor supply or Social Security claiming behavior in response to unexpected housing wealth gains or losses. Subgroup analyses suggest that college-educated workers may be the most responsive, even though housing wealth makes up a lower share of their total wealth, probably due to their comparably greater employment resiliency in weak labor markets.
April 2025
Author(s): Peter Hinrichs
This paper studies families’ capacity to pay for college in the United States, focusing on changes over time and differences by race and socioeconomic status. I use data from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS) to document changes over time in the Expected Family Contribution (EFC) from the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). The results suggest that the EFC has been rising over time, and that this has been driven primarily by families in the upper quartile of the income distribution. I then use data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to calculate alternative measures of the ability to pay for college. I find that it is possible to alter the distribution of who pays what amount by changing details of the EFC calculation, but the extent of this depends on details of the implementation.