CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 506Family Dynamics and RelationshipsGender, Labor, and Family DynamicsLabor market dynamics and wage inequality

When Work Disappears: Manufacturing Decline and the Falling Marriage Market Value of Young Men

Open access
Autor, David, Dorn, David, Hanson, Gordon·2019·American Economic Review: Insights
DOI 10.1257/aeri.20180010
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

We exploit the gender-specific components of large-scale labor demand shocks stemming from rising international manufacturing competition to test how shifts in the relative economic stature of young men versus young women affected marriage, fertility, and children’s living circumstances during 1990–2014. On average, trade shocks differentially reduce employment and earnings of young adult males. Consistent with Becker’s model of household specialization, shocks to males’ relative earnings reduce marriage and fertility. Consistent with prominent sociological accounts, these shocks heighten male idleness and premature mortality, and raise the share of mothers who are unwed and the share of children living in below-poverty, single-headed households. (JEL F16, J12, J13, J16, J23, J31, L60)

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1257/aeri.20180010

Cites

2 of 2 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Differences in exposure to globalization across industries imply a fertility decline among individuals working in industries that are negatively affected and a fertility increase among those working in industries that are expected to benefit.

    “Related research finds that differences in exposure to globalization across industries imply a fertility decline among individuals working in industries that are negatively affected and a fertility increase among those working in industries that are expected to benefit (Autor et al. 2019, Giuntella et al. 2022).”

    From Fertility in High-Income Countries: Trends, Patterns, Determinants, and Consequences (2024) · cites this paper as Autor et al. 2019

    In section C, the paper reports that trade shocks reduce births among women ages 20–39, while shocks to female-intensive employment raise births. Its analysis concerns local trade exposure and fertility rates, not fertility among individuals working in negatively affected versus benefiting industries; it does not establish the claimed increase for workers in benefiting industries. (LLM, conf=0.88)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

  • The loss of manufacturing jobs has represented a major contraction in high-wage earning opportunities, especially for less-educated males.

    “The loss of manufacturing jobs has represented a major contraction in high-wage earning opportunities, especially for less-educated males (Autor, Dorn, and Hanson 2019).”

    From Importing Political Polarization? The Electoral Consequences of Rising Trade Exposure (2020) · cites this paper as Autor, Dorn, and Hanson 2019

    The Employment and Earnings section (page unavailable) reports large declines in manufacturing employment and finds that manufacturing trade shocks reduced young men's employment and earnings, with the largest relative earnings losses among low earners. It does not establish that the lost jobs were high-wage opportunities or specifically show a greater contraction for less-educated men; low earnings are not the same as low education. (LLM, conf=0.85)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 24

  1. Ananat, Elizabeth Oltmans, Anna Gassman-Pines, and Christina Gibson-Davis. 2013. "Communi- ty-Wide Job Loss and Teenage Fertility: Evidence from North Carolina." Demography 50 (6): 2151-71.
  2. Angrist, Josh. 2002. "How Do Sex Ratios Affect Marriage and Labor Markets? Evidence from Ameri- ca's Second Generation." Quarterly Journal of Economics 117 (3): 997-1038.
  3. Autor, David H., and David Dorn. 2013. "The Growth of Low-Skill Service Jobs and the Polarization of the US Labor Market." American Economic Review 103 (5): 1553-97.
  4. Autor, David H., David Dorn, and Gordon H. Hanson. 2013a. "The China Syndrome: Local Labor Market Effects of Import Competition in the United States." American Economic Review 103 (6): 2121-68.
  5. Autor, David H., David Dorn, and Gordon H. Hanson. 2013b. "The Geography of Trade and Technol- ogy Shocks in the United States." American Economic Review 103 (3): 220-25.
  6. Autor, David, David Dorn, and Gordon Hanson. 2019. "When Work Disappears: Manufacturing Decline and the Falling Marriage Market Value of Young Men: Dataset." American Economic Review: Insights. https://doi.org/10.1257/aeri.20180010.
  7. Autor, David H., David Dorn, Gordon H. Hanson, and Jae Song. 2014. "Trade Adjustment: Work- er-Level Evidence." Quarterly Journal of Economics 129 (4): 1799-1860.
  8. Bailey, Martha J., and Thomas A. DiPrete. 2016. "Five Decades of Remarkable but Slowing Change in U.S. Women's Economic and Social Status and Political Participation." Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 2 (4): 1-32.
  9. Becker, Gary S. 1973. "A Theory of Marriage: Part I." Journal of Political Economy 81 (4): 813-46.
  10. Black, Dan A., Terra G. McKinnish, and Seth G. Sanders. 2003. "Does the Availability of High-Wage Jobs for Low-Skilled Men Affect Welfare Expenditures? Evidence from Shocks to the Steel and Coal Industries." Journal of Political Economy 87 (9-10): 1921-42.
  11. Case, Anne, and Angus Deaton. 2015. "Rising Morbidity and Mortality in Midlife among White Non- Hispanic Americans in the 21st Century." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112 (49): 15078-83.
  12. Charles, Kerwin Kofi, and Ming-Ching Luoh. 2010. "Male Incarceration, the Marriage Market, and Female Outcomes." Review of Economics and Statistics 92 (3): 614-27.
  13. Chetverikov, Denis, Bradley Larsen, and Christopher Palmer. 2016. "IV Quantile Regression for- Group-Level Treatments, With an Application to the Distributional Effects of Trade." Economet- rica 84 (2): 809-33.
  14. Feler, Leo, and Mine Z. Senses. 2017. "Trade Shocks and the Provision of Local Public Goods." Amer- ican Economic Journal: Economic Policy 9 (4): 101-43.
  15. Greenwood, Jeremy, Nezih Guner, and Guillaume Vandenbroucke. 2017. "Family Economics Writ Large." Journal of Economic Literature 55 (4): 1346-1434.
  16. Page, Marianne, Ann Huff Stevens, and Jason Lindo. 2009. "Parental Income Shocks and Outcomes of Disadvantaged Youth in the United States," in The Problems of Disadvantaged Youth: An Economic Perspective, edited by Jonathan Gruber, 213-35. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  17. Pierce, Justin R., and Peter K. Schott. 2016a. "The Surprisingly Swift Decline of US Manufacturing Employment." American Economic Review 106 (7): 1632-62.
  18. Schaller, Jessamyn. 2016. "Booms, Busts, and Fertility: Testing the Becker Model Using Gender-Spe- cific Labor Demand." Journal of Human Resources 51 (1): 1-29.
  19. US Conference of Mayors. 2007. A Status Report on Hunger and Homelessness in America's Cities: A 23-City Survey 2007. Washington, DC: United States Conference of Mayors.
  20. Daron Acemoglu. 2023. Distorted Innovation: Does the Market Get the Direction of Technology Right?. AEA Papers and Proceedings 113, 1-28. [Abstract] [View PDF article] [PDF with links] · DOI
  21. Matilde Bombardini, Bingjing Li, Francesco Trebbi. 2023. Did US Politicians Expect the China Shock?. American Economic Review 113:1, 174-209. [Abstract] [View PDF article] [PDF with links] · DOI
  22. Gordon B. Dahl, Runjing Lu, William Mullins. 2022. Partisan Fertility and Presidential Elections. American Economic Review: Insights 4:4, 473-490. [Abstract] [View PDF article] [PDF with links] · DOI
  23. Sergei Guriev, Elias Papaioannou. 2022. The Political Economy of Populism. Journal of Economic Literature 60:3, 753-832. [Abstract] [View PDF article] [PDF with links] · DOI
  24. David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon Hanson, Kaveh Majlesi. 2020. Importing Political Polarization? The Electoral Consequences of Rising Trade Exposure. American Economic Review 110:10, 3139-3183. [Abstract] [View PDF article] [PDF with links] · DOI · Paper page

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Autor, D., Dorn, D., & Hanson, G.
Affiliations
  • National Bureau of Economic Research (US)
  • University of Zurich (CH)
ORCID
Venue
American Economic Review: Insights
Publisher
American Economic Association
Published
2019-09-01
Volume
1
Issue
2
Pages
161-178
ISSN
  • 2640-205X (ISSN-L)
  • 2640-2068
DOI
10.1257/aeri.20180010
OpenAlex
W2593619334
Cited by
506
References
2
Citations by year
2026: 26 · 2025: 78 · 2024: 95 · 2023: 81 · 2022: 76 · 2021: 63 · 2020: 41 · 2019: 31 · 2018: 14 · 2017: 1
FWCI
119.69
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • American Economic Review Insights (publishedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
Funders
  • National Science Foundation (1227334)
  • Russell Sage Foundation
  • Sage Foundation
  • Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung (155804)
  • Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (CSD2006-00016)
  • Russian Science Foundation
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Demography › Family Dynamics and Relationships
  • Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics
  • Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Labor market dynamics and wage inequality
Keywords
manufacturing decline, international trade shocks, labor demand shocks, gender differences in employment, young men, marriage, fertility, household specialization, premature mortality, unmarried mothers, child poverty, single-headed households, relative earnings

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review