Intergenerational impacts of economic disruption from globalization

A wave of globalization during the 1990s and 2000s created severe disruption to the careers of workers who were employed in industries that faced rapidly rising import competition. In the United States, many geographic regions whose local economy heavily relied on import-competing manufacturing experienced sharp declines in employment rates and patterns of growing social dislocation which persist even years after the end of the globalization wave. The lone favorable outcome that has been observed in declining manufacturing towns is that teenagers are more likely to graduate from high school since there are fewer attractive work opportunities that compete with school. This project will draw on confidential data of the US Census Bureau to study how the exposure of children to industrial decline---via impacts on their own parents or on the local economy at large---affects their longer-term outcomes in terms of educational outcomes, employment, earnings, and propensity to migrate to more prosperous regions of the country. Understanding whether or under what circumstances young cohorts can recover from economic shocks faced by the generation of their parents is important to foster conditions that prevent temporary disruptions from translating into permanent, entrenched inequalities.

Prof. David Dorn
Director of the URPP and Project Leader
Department of Economics

For further information about the project and data availability please contact:  david.dorn@econ.uzh.ch